Songs: One Of The Walls Of My House Fell In

notes / gigs / releases

One of the walls of my house fell in
It's a problem that I've got to get fixed
I need to mix up some mortar, get paint, paper and water
And a whole lot of brand new bricks
But for now I'd rather sit in the bath
And have a moment feeling all forlorn
Because one of the walls of my house fell in
When I heard you slam shut the front door

And I hear tarpaulin flapping
Passers-by laughing
The scaffolding sways in the wind
One of the walls of my house fell in

I got dragged to the pub to get myself cheered up
By my friends who all said 'Never Mind'
'We can build a new wall with a brand new front door'
'To replace the one that she left behind'
'You can re-decorate, it'll be bloody GRATE'
And yes I know they were trying to help
I said 'Thanks very much, I feel much better' but
I still wish you weren't somewhere else

And I hear tarpaulin flapping
Passers-by laughing
The scaffolding sways in the wind
One of the walls of my house fell in

It's time to repair, rebuild and redesign
Feels like I've been doing this for most of my life

I've had a string of disastrous frontage collapses
My roof has often let in the rain
But as the years have gone by I've learnt to DIY
In fact I'm practically vocationally trained
I've got a bag of spare parts from fixing my wounded heart
I've got more Allen keys than MFI
I've got a well stocked toolkit, a wide range of drill-bits
It's like an NVQ in I'll be all right

So when my tarpaulin's flapping
And I hear passers-by laughing
When my scaffolding sways in the wind
It's time for rebuilding to begin

But despite the motivational speaking
I can't help feeling
My ceiling's still leaking

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

This was came along after a weekend in NOTTINGHAM, where I had a lovely time playing at someone's birthday party. Everyone was whooping it up and having a lovely time, except for one poor chap who was obviously Not In A Good Way. Let us call him Kevin Stirk (CUNNING PSEUDONYM) to protect his ANONYMITY. KEVIN had the familiar look about him of the Emotionally Devastated, as that morning he'd been chucked. He looked in a BAD WAY and it was a bit shocking for me, and I suspect several others there, to SEE someone in this state and be reminded how BLOODY AWFUL it is. Most of my pals these days have got themselves into RELATIONSHIPS that have STAYED and made them HAPPY and it's a long old time since I had someone close have to go through this, and it brought back a lot of memories of how it felt, whether it was a friend or yourself who was going through it. It especially reminded me of all that when he said "Everyone keeps asking if I'm all right, it's really annoying." Aaah, BLESS, i VERY MUCH remember that - the only thing WORSE than being asked all the time if you're OK is people NOT doing so. It is all BAD NEWS.

I was thinking about this on the way home, about how it feels like (as the song says) one of the walls of your house has fallen in - you're cold and vulnerable, everyone can see what's happening, and you know there's going to be a HUGE lot of effort and struggle before things get back to near normal again. HOWEVER it also means that every time it happens you rebuild DIFFERENTLY, until you get to the stage where not much is left of your original house, but what you've got is all your own.

METAPHOR FRENZY! As anyone who's heard pretty much ANY of my songs will know, I LOVE this sort of thing. I reckon you can break up my songs into three categories: those that are NOT Metaphors (not many), those that ARE Metaphors but don't say so (like BBC2 (A New Hope) or Dino At The Sands) and The Rest (where halfway through i go "It's a METAPHOR! Whoo-oooh-whoo! It's a METAPHOR!"). For some reason the ones where i SAY it's a Metaphor seem to get liked a lot more than the ones where I don't mention it - maybe i am just not very good at SIDLING UP WITH SIMILES and have to make it a bit more explicit, i don't know. Actually, it doesn't SAY "It's A METAPHOR!" in this one does it? Maybe that is why i am OVER-COMPENSATING with THE POINT here a bit?

So yes, with that in mind I sat me down and WROTE the song, concurrently with Best Behaviour over the next few days while I was off work poorly, largely as a result of OVER DOING IT on the weekend which included said party. When I finished them i KNEW Best Behaviour was DONE, but wasn't quite so sure about this one, not least because when i PLAYED it to The Spike On My Sub's Desk she said "That one needs a bit of editting".

THUS I spent the next couple of days tinkering with it, KNOWING that it could be better, putting some more GAGS in (NB when i say "GAGS" this is my ARTISTIC TERMINOLOGY for things like Interesting Words, Good Lines, Better Rhymes or, indeed, GAGS) and generally GRAPPLING with the fact that there wasn't a last line PUNCHLINE. Then, this very morning (23 February 2007) on the way in to work I realised that I should move the penultimate line ("And though I hope she's the last to make my frontage collapse") to the START of the last verse then i wouldn't NEED a GRATE finishing line next, it could just do it's job of explaining THE POINT, then I'd have room for the BETTER, more (i think) GOOD lines of the rest of the verse to follow it. HA! For LO! it is always my MAXIM that when in doubt you should always SWAP lines around so the WEAK rhyme comes first, that way IT LOOKS MORE CLEVER - CUNNING, no?

With that done I thought "Oh ho! A repeat of the middle eight and THEN repeat slightly adjusted title to fade - JOB DONE!" and i think it pretty much was. The only thing to sort out NOW is to stop myself singing the whole thing in a COCK-ER-KNEE accent. I don't know why i does it gav'nor, 'onest i don't!