Grit in the Gears

I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.

Monday, 5 February 2007

We Have a Map of the Piano

Múm, from Iceland, from the album 'Finally We Are No -One'

Beeswing, Richard Thompson

BEES WING by Richard Thompson

I was nineteen when I came to town
They called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags
The Hawks against the Doves

I took a job in the Steamie
Down on Cauldrum Street
I fell in love with a laundry girl
Was working next to me

CHORUS:

She was a rare thing
Fine as a bees wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way

Brown hair zig-zag round her face
And a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights
There was an animal in her eyes

She said, young man, O can't you see
I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here
I'll surely lose my mind

(CHORUS)

We busked around the market towns
And picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots
And knives wherever we went

And I said that we might settle down
Get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth
And babies on the rug

She said O man, you foolish man
It surely sounds like hell
You might be lord of half the world
You'll not own me as well

(CHORUS)

We was camping down the Gower one time
The work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for frost
And I thought maybe we should

We were drinking more in those days
And tempers reached a pitch
Like a fool I let her run
With the rambling itch

Last I hear she's sleeping out
Back on Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket
And a wolfhound at her feet

And they say she even married once
A man named Romany Brown
But even a Gypsy caravan
Was too much settling down

And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse

She was a rare thing
Fine as a bees wing
And I miss her more than ever words could say
If I could just taste
All of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
Then I wouldn't want her any other way

RedDirtGirl posted the Lyrics, Steve requested the sounds.