Here is a picture of me that I drew when I was nine
It's my plan to be a superhero
I think I thought my power to fight the fiends of Peterborough
Was to wear some X-Ray Specs 'cos I'd seen an Advert which said
They see through clothes and skin
But you couldn't ever get them in this country
You had to send off a coupon From Marvel Two-In-One
Featuring Ben Grimm, the ever lovin' blue-eyed Thing

But there's one thing for which they asked
That was something I never had
A Zip Code
Never had a Zip Code
And I don't know what one is

I wanted to deliver Grit to my friends and neighbours
And raise Sea Monkeys as pets
I wanted a hundred and four model soldiers from the Civil War to collect
Though they never looked like Cavaliers or Roundheads to me
And oh the cartoons advertised for Saturday mornings used to drive
Me wild with jealousy for I was stuck with Beeb and ITV
Charles Atlas said he's make a man of me in 28
But it turned out he still had nine years to wait

But like a Hostess cupcake or a twinkie
One thing continued to elude me
A Zip Code
Never had a Zip Code
And I don't know what one is

But then the sad day came when I
Retired from the comics life
To spend my money getting pissed
No more the panelologist
Until in 1999
A new thought fluttered through my mind
So I spent three pounds ninety five
At the newsagent, just to find
Out what they'd call 2000AD
When it actually was 2000AD
Turned out they called it
2000AD
But, reunited with Judge Dredd
I went to my attic and read
The complete works of Alan Moore
And John Byrne's run on Fantastic Four
The Crisis On Infinite Earths
Hellblazer, the Dark Knight Returns
Squadron Supreme, Nexus and Groo
And soon I found myself drawn to
My local comic shop, where I
Found that those comics that I'd liked
Had had a sharp increase in Price
And then I heard myself, aged nine
Solemnly telling my step-dad
Comics are an investment that
Will be worth an awful lot one day
So I rushed home, and to EBay
But my attempts to register
Were almost instantly deterred
I staggered, stumbled and I reeled
When I saw a required field
Was an enemy I knew so well
I fell back from the keyboard and shouted - what the hell
Is a Zipcode?
Never had a Zip Code
And I don't know what one is

Here is a picture of me aged thirty hunched over a screen
Where my American pen pal had told me what a zipcode means
The internet was young and hardly anyone online
So transatlantic translation of colloquialisms took up quite a lot of our time
I sold those comics and then bought more, by Grant Morrison and Alan Moore
Now, I love comics and I'm really glad that I've got my hobby back
But still things have changed, no more hand-lettered panels and the colour's better
And all the adverts are full page

I wonder is some of the mystery eroded
Will young imaginations be so fired up now that
It's a postcode
That is what a zipcode is
Yeah, I know
I do know what one is