The universe consists of little bits of rock and lots of floating matter
God created it in six days so they say and on the seventh he was shattered
And when humans came along they said maybe God's merely an idea
And the Earth is full of stuff some is natural and some came from Ikea

Einstein had the space and time and Darwin did the flora and the fauna
And now they've found the Higs Boson they won't be splitting atoms any smaller
If there's life on other planets then perhaps we've each got a doppelganger
Though the moon you'll find has already been colonised by the Clangers

So all aboard the Starship Enterprise now all aboard the Tardis
Travelling at warp factor nine towards the speed of light away from darkness
Better mind the black holes baby I hear they can do a lot of damage
Swallow you right up and spit you out again like little bits of cabbage

We've all come such a long way since the days of the horse and the carriage
It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind that's the adage

Galileo watched the stars at night
From his apple Newton took a bite
And Pluto's been re-classified - as a dwarf planet

Stellar shaped interlace -
fleury octofoil with the maker's name on.
Logo of hungry dog -
maker's name, but it's not the same one.

Centro-symmetrical concentric circles,
tenfold rotational symmetry,
burglarproof leverhook patent fitting
warding would-be Artful Dodgers off the property.

Coalhole-cover lover - so much to discover;
coalhole-cover lover - don't want to think it over.

Woah -
people say to me I can't see the stars;
I just peruse the pavement and there they are.
People say to me I can't see the stars;
I just peruse the pavement and there - there - there -
there they are!

Rising sun operculum -
most likely manufactured in Bo'ness or Falkirk.
Lead and zinc make you think,
but cast iron's what you want to cut down wear from walkers.

British Prism Syndicate and Portland concrete,
radial array of ventilation slots,
honeycomb glass inserts for illumination -
what I like about them most is that there's lots and lots.

Coalhole-cover lover - so much to discover;
coalhole-cover lover - don't want to think it over.

Woah -
people say to me I can't see the stars;
I just peruse the pavement and there they are.
People say to me I can't see the stars;
I just peruse the pavement and there - there - there -
there they are!

We stood by the headstone of the poet Valéry
And outside the tomb of the Brassens family
Bathing in the essence of such creativity
I was hoping that some residue would soon rub off on me

But would painters, poets & troubadours be half the men they'd been
If like me they'd been as blinded In the presence of your beauty

The writing on the walls isn't all it seems to be
My heart it overrules all my head is telling me
The old masters are mere amateurs in your presence, dear
You can keep all your Titians, and your Turners & Vermeers

Lennon's ashes scattered or secreted secretly
In Yoko Ono's sideboard and brought out occasionally
To think that in a single lifetime one could live to see
The birth of Guernica, the Rite of Spring and Ulysses

But the modernists and melodies and Spanish imagery
Pale into insignificance in the presence of your beauty

The writing on the walls isn't all it seems to be
My heart it overrules all my head is telling me
The old masters are mere amateurs in your presence, dear
Forget Plato & Socrates and their philosophy

The music of the orchestra is pure cacophony
Mozart turns to muzak, Beethoven's got no ear
Old Aznavour's a crooning bore whenever you are near
Wagner's lost his leit-motif, forget Tchaikovsky's overtures…

Poet Thomas Chatterton, dead at seventeen
From a suicide attempt or severe case of VD
Reading Paul Klee's epitaph we turned to poetry
Transformed and metamorphosised by Salvador Dali

But all of this is meaningless whenever you walk in
Forget Pablo Picasso and his guitar without strings

Was it simply Lolita, or some other creature
That featured in Nabakov's dream
Where would Flaubert have been Without Madame Bovary
Or Tolstoy without Anna Karenina's beauty

The writing on the walls isn't all it seems to be
Shakespeare's lost the plot somewhat and Chaucer's gone to seed
The old masters are mere amateurs in your presence, dear
You can keep all your Titians and your Turners and Vermeers

It's morning in the cul-de-sac,
the people go to work:
boldly going on unleaded -
more Picard these days than Kirk.
And the postman's walking, whistling,
with a fistful of manilas.
He pops them through my door
and carries on down Courthope Villas.

It's rather scary here at night -
you're risking getting jumped on.
By day it's as innocuous
as something out of Trumpton.
We've got our Chippy Mintons,
Captain Flacks and Windy Millers,
and a man with a voice like Larry the Lamb
in Toytown Courthope Villas.

And opposite there's workmen putting up
a pair of pillars:
just how many does it take to stir
a jar of Polyfilla?
And the ladies serve elevenses -
the Davinas and Camillas.
Mixing, fixing, filling cracks up
down in crazy Courthope Villas.

I'm like Joe Jackson watching women
walking with gorillas,
or Odysseus on the wine-dark sea,
one hand upon the tiller.
Got Charybdis on one side of me,
The other side is Scylla,
And a siren's singing in my head [x3]
- I'm wrecked on Courthope Villas.

I see my father in his dressing gown
Turning on the TV now
Stirring tea for eternity in early summer

The sound of leather on willow
Richie Benaud's lilting tones
Was it Lords or Edgbaston, I really can't remember

A smattering of light applause
Bob Willis takes the first new ball
His run up always seemed so long and never ending

As I tried to fathom out the score
My father said "looks like a draw"
And we all heard Richie Benaud say
"What a truly marvellous day, it's been out there today"

Gower effortless and lazy and so nonchalant
The wickets tumble quickly like the years which have all come and gone
Like night watchmen emerging so nervously from far pavilions

As we watched the sun go down
No more Bobby Dazzlers now
My father said that we'd just seen
The last great innings of the summer

Hesitating in the polling station, fazed by names and claims and logos:
which box should I put my X in? Who swings which way? Which way's no-go?
And, to be honest, I forget who's currently in the cabinet…

But I remember
the last time that Marriott and Lane shared a mic-stand,
the tale of Jaz Coleman's sojourn in Iceland,
how Robbie MacIntosh of the Average White Band's
not the same named chap who played with Chrissie Hynde.

And I know Maria McKee is Bryan MacLean's sister,
Marillion's first ever gig was in Bicester,
Viv Stanshall's first name was actually Victor
but he called himself Viv because it sounded more refined.
I'm rock literate, rock literacy suits me fine.

Confused by early evening news, by serried footage of for-sale signs;
not sure how much tax I pay, but I know The Jam stole 'Taxman''s bassline.
My council tax gets handed in but please don't ask what band I'm in…

But I remember
the question to which We Are Devo's the answer,
the names of the two guys from Eyeless In Gaza,
how Brinsley Schwartz dealt with the Fillmore disaster
by plunging headlong into the pub-rock scene.

And I know Maria McKee is Bryan MacLean's sister,
Marillion's first ever gig was in Bicester,
The Tube never got to host Half Man Half Biscuit
because Tranmere were playing and they had to choose between.
I'm rock literate, rock literacy keeps me keen.

Six months into nuclear winter - should graft some fruit or build a plough
or cultivate new shoots of life, but, sad to say, I don't know how.
And what's that thing, that clever trick involving friction and two sticks..?

But I remember
the date Sonic Youth signed their contract with Geffen,
that Polly Jean Harvey's from Dorset, not Devon!
the Manics were quoting from Aneurin Bevan
in the title of This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours.

And I know Maria McKee is Bryan MacLean's sister,
Marillion's first ever gig was in Bicester,
I can just about tell Edgar from Johnny Winter
by the colour of the iris and the set of Johnny's jaw.
I'm rock literate, rock literacy's what I'm for

Degas was no stranger
To the prancing pirouetting ballerina

Turner was a yearner
For a misty morning sunrise on the water

Pollock dripped and dolloped where he went the paint just followed
And Van Gogh sheared off his ear with Gaugin's razor

But the daddy of them all wasn't Dali or Chagall
Cos René Magritte was the man with the artistic master plan

Oh René 'Allo 'Allo 'ow are you today
Your art's never more than a paintbrush away
Doing it for Belgium with Jackie Brel and Hergé

Oh René steam trains coming through your fireplace
If Dali was your father then Picasso was your papa
Finished with Surrealism now you're going Dada

Renoir was defender
Of the female nude in all her finest splendour

Manet said "now don't be silly I don't do no water lilies
That was my mate Monet's raison d'etre"

Andre had his pile of bricks & Rodin puckered up a kiss
And Warhol's cans of soup were simply super

But the daddy of them all wasn't Duschamp or his urinal
René Magritte was the man with the artistic master plan

Oh René 'Allo 'Allo 'ow are you today
Your art's never more than a paintbrush away
Doing it for Belgium with Jackie Brel and Hergé

Oh René steam trains coming through your fireplace
If Dali was your daddy then Picasso was your papa
Finished with surrealism now you're going Dada

Oh René
Hear you popped your clogs and died today
The art world's never going to be the same
Without your brolley and your bowler hated ways

Oh René,
Au revoir monsieur, auf weidersehn
L'homme au chapeau melon et le bouquet tout fait
Le jockey perdu et le domaine enchante

In the history of art Top Trump playing cards
Forget your diamonds, your clubs and your spades and your hearts
Cos René Magritte was the geezer to beat
No one could compete with his easel technique

Oh René 'Allo 'Allo 'ow are you today
Your art's never more than a paintbrush away
Doing it for Belgium with Jackie Brel and Hergé

If Dali was your daddy then Picasso was your papa
Finished with surrealism now you're going Dada (again)

This is a tale of a house in a field
where England do-si-dos with Wales.
And it's also a story of a digital camera,
and what exactly remains when technology fails.

I was down on my knees, but it wasn't to pray,
I was fixing on photographing some poor devil's grave.
Three hundred years of peaceful, euphemistic sleep,
and now some fool's kneeling on you with a silver thing that squeaks.

In some cultures they regard their ancestors
with reverence and fear.
But the dead and quick vie for dominion
in darkest Monmouthshire.

The forefathers flooded in, elbowed under my guard,
and the Llanrothal dead wiped my memory-card.
Now all I see's a sign saying 'Sorry, cannot read',
and a thousand parish dead are sniggering up their shrouded sleeves.

You want memory, we'll give you memory,
Ah - ah - aaah.

Did I disrespect Llanrothal's spectres?
Were they disrespecting me?
Were they happier with the 35 millimetre
form of photography?

Well, these photos aren't just photographs, they're 'cherished memories' -
at least that's what the Kodak user's manual's telling me.
I had nine hundred snapshots, now I've got none at all,
yet this absence is a thing, a souvenir from Llanrothal.

You want memory, we'll give you memory,
Ah - ah - aaah.

The forefathers flooded in, elbowed under my guard,
And the Llanrothal dead wiped my memory-card.
And now all I see's a sign saying 'Sorry, cannot read',
And a thousand parish dead are sniggering up their shrouded sleeves.

I want to live in sheltered accommodation
It's the place where I feel safe and warm
Wander down the corridors in my dressing gown
Ride the Stannah stairlift from the first floor to the ground

There's a gramophone record player down in the common room
We'll play the greatest hits of Humperdinck and Doonican
The warden's on duty 24/7
Just pull the red cord if you need some attention

Bingo on Tuesdays, coffee morning Thursdays
The mobile library visits on a Friday
Activities to give your life meaning and purpose
On Sundays there's a non-denominal church service

They ride the Stannah stairlift all day long
Play a spot of Scrabble and a game of Mahjong
Hips made of plastic, their gussets are elastic
Their bodies may be frail but they keep their minds active

Bingo on Tuesdays, Fish & chips Friday
Gentle exercise but nothing too lively
Ballroom dancing to some old time songs
Even Walter in the corner's dribbling along

I want to live in sheltered accommodation
Ride the Stannah stairlift from the first floor to the ground

Lonely old woman sat by the window
She wonders where all the time goes
Come the day, it won't be long
When Centenarians outweigh the newborns

As a nation we're all growing somewhat greyer round the temples
Zimmer sales are up, the equation's pretty simple
What they gonna do, 'cos they can't simply shoot us
There's going to be a boom in mobility scooters

Under one roof they get along nicely
Bitch about each other but smile politely
Characters abound in this palace of varieties
In essence they're just a microcosm of society

Welfare state creaking at the seams
Black holes in our pension schemes
You've paid your stamp, you deserve respect
They should cut your toenails free on the NHS

I want to live in sheltered accommodation
Watch silent movies starring Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton

When I was nine, I started my own comic. I christened it Kiddoez - K-I-D-D-O-E-Z. The characters, such as they were, were largely borrowings from popular culture: a giant ape called King Kong, a witch called Wichi Poo (hands up if you remember where that comes from) and a vampire, Draclia - not a misspelling on my part, but a nod to the way a classmate pronounced it. The only faintly original character was Kung Turt, a tortoise gifted in the martial arts. This was 1975. I really should have copyrighted that one, don't you think?

Unoriginality was of little import, however, as the only readers were myself and my friend The Chew. The Chew was called The Chew through one of those childhood nicknaming processes that involve several leaps of lateral thinking and tend to invoke a sense of bathos when explained. His comic was called The Brick, later relaunched as Tenko, and finally as Squain - his pièce de résistance.

We used to sit in his backyard, at a collapsible blue table, our felt-tips whirling. What The Chew's illustration style lacked in finesse, it made up for in vigour and sheer velocity of execution. Squain alone ran to more than eighty issues - all featuring the adventures of such people as Uru Urgatroyd, The Super Eight and Fergus O'Kelly.

My comic, Kiddoez, trundled steadily along, acquiring new characters like a Napoleonic army gathering a train of hangers-on. There was Percival V Piggy, a pig television executive; Squeax, a mouse who told jokes but was otherwise devoid of personality. At one point, I made The Chew into a character himself. He fought crime, clad only in a pair of purple ankle-boots and some painfully tight underpants - something that he never did in real life, as far as I was aware. But superheroes' friends never are aware, are they? That's the point.

Different cultures measure the turning year in different ways, but for the 1970s comic-reader it was simple: regular issues, with an annual and a summer special to mark the solstices. The Chew and I adhered to this dictate; we were no mould-breakers, after all. But the years were indeed turning, and other forces were at work. I decided to have one of my characters, Sidney, fall in love. This involved creating a female character who was not a witch - something that severely tried my drawing skills. And then The Chew and I started going to different schools.

I abandoned Kiddoez a few pages into the 1978 summer special. It wasn't planned - I just never completed it. Even now, it flashes those accusatory blank pages at me whenever I stumble across it. Not only did you dump your characters, it seems to say, you dumped them on holiday. Shame on you.

I last saw The Chew in a pub fifteen years ago. It was out of my mouth before I could stop it: 'Listen,' I said, 'I still remember the names of all The Super Eight.' And together, we enumerated them - Hamey, Buddy, Spilly, Tadpolet, Concorde, Angry Dad, Captain Brilliant, Stinker Smelstar - before going back to whatever we'd been talking about before.

I was drawn to Francis Bacon
And of course Picasso's paintings
I was taken by Salvador Dali
I like a bit of Hirst just as much as next person
And my cloth cap I do doff to LS Lowry

There's no place I would rather be
Than walking round a gallery
Soaking up the oils and acrylics in front of me

From abstract expressionism
To post modern impressionism
That Titian in the Tate looks very well hung to me

Of course I know my stuff
I'm an amateur art buff
I give Brian Sewell a good run for his money

I was drawn to Francis Bacon
And of course Picasso's paintings
I was taken by Salvador Dali
I like a bit of Hirst just as much as next person
And my cloth cap I do doff to LS Lowry

We've got Sensation at the Turner Prize
Sharks pickled in formaldehyde
What a lot of twaddle you've given us Mr Saatchi

I recall all the YBAs
And Mr Le Corbusier
Hey, I was with Gilbert & George underneath the arches

So let me be your guide
I know all the schools and styles
I stared the Mona Lisa right between the eyeballs, you see

I was drawn to Francis Bacon
And of course Picasso's paintings
I was taken by Salvador Dali
I like a bit of Hirst just as much as next person
And my cloth cap I do doff to LS Lowry

I'm a fan of Klimt & Miro
I was Joseph Beuys's alter ego
I'm always very moved by Edvard Munch's Scream
I like a bit of Emin, doesn't everyone, now and again
And my cloth cap I do doff
My cloth cap I do doff
Yeah my cloth cap I do doff to LS Lowry

So let me be your guide
But when it comes to art you'll find
It's all rather subjective innit really

I'm driving to work in my Morris Marina;
it needs a new hose and a new battery.
I spent the weekend with my friends in the Cotswolds -
I slipped over twice and there's still mud on me.

In the office, Kim's boiling the kettle
and Karen's highlighted her hair.
And Julia's phoned in - she's just sprained her ankle,
tripped over a dog-chew halfway down the stairs.

And although I spend hours worrying about girls,
I still seem to have plenty of time.
And the '90s stretch out like a long range of hills
I'm in no special hurry to climb.

And most Friday evenings I sit swigging stout,
playing tape after tape on a yellow boom-box.
I finally drift off around the fifth track
and get woken again by the click when it stops.

And coffee-breaks find me with Julie -
her earrings hang down like G-clefs.
It's Highway Code quiz-time - I'm the questionmaster:
it's her test next week, but she's not told Geoff.

And I'm realising songs on a squeezebox or harp
are punk songs if you want to think so.
I should really be suffering from mal de siècle,
but we've still got one decade to go.

Memories in winter snow
Back to the park we used to go
Passing by the frozen fountain
Where we kissed so long ago

You were so alien,
So Scandinavian
So radiant
My leading lady

Summer nights clog dancing
By the bandstand in the rain
Crude melange of rough and rumble
Through Lambeth's Easy Street refrain

This was the age
Of the silent movies
We rue the day
The talkies came

Me, just a tramp in make up
Simple slapstick twinned with pathos

Still reminiscing in the park
Practising routines
This Kennington clown prince
Soon became a king

Although you know I had to go
I'm still sorry all the same
Fame and fortune were just calling me
4000 miles away

But not today
Reminiscing in the park
Those old routines
This Kennington clown prince
Soon remember me

There up on 42nd Street
Those City Lights these Modern Times
My never-ending winning streak

We're the honourable members of the Chip Chap Club,
and we meet to moot our findings and submit our subs.
Well, we're five working men six days of the week,
but on Sundays we're the Chip Chaps from beside Bow Creek.

We've an interest in neolithic knapped flint tools
and all manufactures palaeoethnological.
We've a dozen quartzite scrapers and what seems to be an axe
and a clutch of other miscellaneous artefacts.

Mr Smith, secretary, Mr Herring, our chair.
Mr Swain? Yes, present. Mr Thornhill? Here.
And the younger Mr Swain? I'm sorry I'm late -
there were problems with a drive-belt and a chain-guard plate.

For we're two boilermakers and a factory hand
and a storekeeper from Fore Street and his stockroom man.
Though we bide amongst the brickfields and Mechanics' Institutes,
we can feel the Stone Age strata underneath our boots.

Oh, and sometimes on half-holidays we take a train,
Messrs Herring, Smith and Thornhill and the two Bill Swains,
and we meet with other doyens of geology,
from the Kentish Weald to Enfield on the River Lea.

There's a photographic image of us seated in a group -
five fine fellows held together by the River Thames's loops.
We take tea and bread-and-butter and we write our minutes up -
we're the honourable members of the Chip Chap Club.

In the mists of time we had the Starship Enterprise
And Space 1999 the merest twinkle in our starry eyes

We travelled in the Tardis with the Doctor and his granddaughter
Retro-futurism was the new world order
All our hopes and dreams were finally going to be realised

But whatever happened to the jetpack
Whatever happened to the future we had planned
The horizon was blue it was gleaming and new
Full of polyester tunics and vacuum packed food
And the jetpack it was Such a simple format
The future was here, there was no turning back
When science fiction suddenly became science fact

In 1969 we all had the moon within our sights
And Harold Wilson dreamed about the white heat of technology

Before the health & safety act came into force
Before the nanny state arrived to control all our thoughts
Had belts like the Tomorrow People and we weren't afraid to use 'em

Bu whatever happened to the jetpack
Whatever happened to the future we had planned
I hear there was a setback due to greenhouse gas
Putting paid to the idea of a future career
For the jetpack there was A scientific drawback
And like all the best things there's always a catch
But the thought of teleporting, well what's wrong with that

But the future didn't work out quite like they all said
'Cos now we're all riding bicycles instead

Instead of flying round on jetpacks
Whatever happened to the jetpack on our backs
Whatever happened to the transit beam and the teleport pad
All the mod cons we thought that we'd all have
Like the jetpack - this was long before the iphone and the app
It was going to be real, this was no passing fad
If you don't believe me - ask your Dad - about the Jetpack

Vauxhall vox pops
Stockwell mop tops
Mods and rockers
At the 88 bus stop

Millbank tower
Looking down from on high
Grey reflections
In a grainy sky

Henry Moore sculpture park
Tate gallery after dark

Vauxhall bridge
In the setting sun
After office girls
They just wanna have fun

Warehouse stores
And timber yards
Phil Jeays playing
At the Battersea barge

Duckies and the gay bar scene
Nightclubs and God bless the queen

Late for work once again
(Blame the trains)
In the London rain….

And they call it Vauxhall Riviera
Every city dwellers dream
They call it Vauxhall Riviera
It still looks like an eyesore to me

Back to Home Page

Copyright © 2008  OpenHaus Communications 2019