Harsh Times in Umberstone Covert by Half Man Half Biscuit (2018) discussed...
Lots to decipher here, starting with the name in the middle (the one who’s avoiding you still) – no two lyrics-submitters came up with the same guess for that one. Before all that, Dr D had been fastest off the mark to identify Umberstone Covert as being between Bebington and Heswall.
See lyrics to Harsh Times in Umberstone Covert
Aiwacat
‘Scoffing at the notion’, rather than ‘stopping’, surely?
4 June 2018
Joeplus
The track that really floored me on first listen. Some grand harmonies here.
I think Geraldine was “scoffing at the notion”, rather than stopping, and the cake in the garden’s usually spelled Battenberg.
Great work on the names though, they sound right. I was hearing “cheap greenhouse” then no idea on the rest of that line.
4 June 2018
ROBR
+1 for Scoffing
Also, I hear C-C-C-Cavalcades
The name I got was Emma Rollahead
And what is a selling plate?
4 June 2018
Chris The Siteowner
Selling Plate.
Clearly ‘scoffing’, will amend! And ‘Battenberg’.
And this morning, I’m more inclined to one of the other contributors’ suggestion of “Emma Ollerhead’…
4 June 2018
Murray MEIKLE
Isn’t it “instead of the garden” rather than “and stare at the garden”?
4 June 2018
IDristhechiseller
To my mind, this is the best song he’s ever written, and a much more natural centrepiece for the album than ‘Everytime A Bell Rings’.
I hear it as “Bitter as the gaul, reaching for the mainland”, which makes more sense as a sentence whilst being equally unilluminating in the context of the lyric as a whole.
4 June 2018
Colin
‘and my roller head’, possibly? There’s definitely an ‘o’ sound to my old ears.
4 June 2018
transit full of keith
The name’s Emma something I think.
Emma Rotherhead? (surname)
Emma Rollerhead? (nickname for someone wearing hair rollers?)
Emma Rolohead? (nickname for someone whose head’s shaped like a Rolo?)
I think it’d be good to add the stutter on “C-c-calvalcades” and I’m sure it’s “scoffing” and “stare at the garden”.
Best song on the album I think. The whistle/Throbbing Gristle and gherkins/Perkins lines deserve some kind of award for outrageous rhyming brilliance, but it’s the sad and desperate story that can just about be unpicked from it all that lifts this into the very top rank of Bsicuit songs.
4 June 2018
jeff dreadnought
I agree with whoever heard Emma Ollerhead. Is there any way of knowing, other than going directly to the source?
Being the sort of person who only sees jokes by appointment, I laughed at the hadron collider one when I heard it without being totally sure I got it. To do with Higgs singlet particles colliding and travelling backwards in time?
4 June 2018
Dr Desperate
I went for Emma Ollerhead, as the surname apparently originates from Bromborough, 4 miles down the road from Rock Ferry (q v).
http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/ollerhead/1/
“Bitter at the gall” would obviously make more sense if the “at” were “as”, echoing the line from ‘The Holly and the Ivy’:
“The holly bears a bark,
As bitter as the gall,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
For to redeem us all”.
Christ first appeared in Dorothy Perkins during the intro to ‘Left Lyrics’ at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2014 (see Roger’s exemplary review), and I’m sure we’ve heard the time-slip ‘Knock, knock’ joke before somewhere.
4 June 2018
transit full of keith
Can’t fault Dr D’s Ollerhead research: it does seem to be a Wirral surname, possibly originating from a lost Cheshire village, according to this.
So +1 for Emma Ollerhead, and “bitter as the gall”.
I started with Jean Greenhalgh for the other name, google suggested the knitted toy designer Greenhowe which must be right, looking at the back cover of the album.
What’s not to like about a song that requires genealogy research tools to get the names, a grounding in particle physics to get the jokes, and which opens with that thundering bassline?
(You three are conclusive enough for me on Emma, ‘as’ and the stutter – CtSO)
4 June 2018
Poopleby
Best song on the album by far. Bathos and pathos abound but ultimately it’s a love song with attitude.
4 June 2018
Slow dempsey
What a great song.
A couple of points of pedantry:
Non sequitur is surely not hyphenated regardless of Wikipedia’s view. It is a Latin phrase consisting of two separate words.
There are some backing vocal ’Geraldine, Geraldine, Geraldine’ lines interspersed in the closing stanza. Could we have these (perhaps in brackets)?
I would like it to be ‘bitter as the gall’ but I definitely hear ‘at’. But then I thought that Amarella had a boy to steal, which was clearly wrong.
That non sequitur line might be my favourite in the album.
4 June 2018
Nick Walters
I’m pretty certain it’s ‘selling point’ not ‘selling plate’, i.e. Geraldine is getting all het up about a feature of a product or service that’s only really there to entice customers. What this product or services is, is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps a plate?!
4 June 2018
PauL f
I’ll need to go back and listen to it again, but I was hearing it as “serving plate”.
4 June 2018
transit full of keith
I doubt the knock-knock joke is scientifically sound (I don’t think the LHC actually makes time run backwards) but it works well enough with the mind-boggling stuff that goes on at CERN, ‘recreating Big Bang conditions’ etc. A nice Hadron Collider fact (and possible source of the ‘I’ll repair you’ line) is that it cost 4 billion quid and took 10 years to build, but was put out of action by a weasel chewing through a cable.
Supporters of the theory that “Hedge Cut” is a concept album might want to consider whether “non-secateur” is a possibility…
4 June 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
I’m guessing the “Hadron Collider Knock Knock who’s there” line relates to the erroneous story that scientists had found a particle faster than the speed of light (so the punchline arrives before the joke has started) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/particles-found-to-travel/
4 June 2018
THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
In my mind I had an image of a Scareacre Garden knitted by Jean Greenhowe where the Scarecrow Family sat eating battenberg cake. Doesn’t seem to exist in the real world.
4 June 2018
Nick walters
I’m wrong! Again!
I should have read Comment 4 before posting and clicked the link.
Never mind, the joy is in the learning of new stuff. You don’t get this sort of education with Razorlight albums (not that I’ve ever heard one or ever will so that’s a massive assumption, but I expect I’m right).
4 June 2018
CHris from future doom
+1 for ‘non-secateur’ or to be more precise playing on ‘non-sequitur’ / ‘non-secateur’ – in fact I quite like the idea that Geraldine and her spouse are the same couple from ETABR with the overgrown shrubbery issues…
(expecting @Exxo to shoot me down in flames, although sheer law of averages says I have to be right about one of these sooner or later…)
4 June 2018
THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
I was also wondering if there is a faint whiff of Bagpuss about the lyrics with Geraldine, a doll in need of repair, being put into condition for a competition (a mediocre “selling plate” one where the winner is sold) and then a story being weaved about her while the repair is completed.
4 June 2018
MrSpecialpants
I thought it was ‘reaching for the Merlot’
4 June 2018
I, problem cHimp
This has made my my Monday – back to work, soundtracked appropriately in the car by ‘National Shite Day’, but buoyed by the posting of this, my favourite song on the album and one for which I seem to have got an anwful lot right (well done, me…)…
In the first verse, I really wanted to hear ‘silly plate’, imaging Geraldine clumsily smashing crockery and, tearful at the implications for her physical/mental health, having to be consoled by the narrator, but it clearly isn’t…
I suggested non sequitur/non-secateur, so definite +1 for that and further evidence to add to my list of neighbours suggestion from the MoCS thread… And I’m pleased others hear ‘Emma Ollerhead’!
For me, the true wonder of his song lies in the fact that it manages to be so beautifully moving, while not diluting the word-play and humour we have come to expect…
4 June 2018
John Anderson
I would join the chorus of those who consider this (and ETABR) to be the album’s standouts; it encapsulates everything we all love about HMHB.
The first three lines alone contain a woman’s name which seldom crops up in the rock ‘n’ roll canon, a low-key sporting reference, an ironic band namecheck and an obscure (to most of us ) Wirral place name.
As regards the moot points, I’m sure it’s “stare at the garden” rather than “instead of the garden”, It fits with the notion of the protagoinist’s desire to mend Geraldine’s mind. He uses the idyllic scenario of a garden so splendid that you would simply stare at it, as a metaphor for her improved mental state.
I agree that it sounds more like non-secateur than non sequitur although i’m not sure whether that’s a deliberate pun or just a vocal stumble. On the subject of non-sequiturs generally, I can only think of one figure in any genre who who eclipses Nigel in this respect and that’s Ralph Wiggum.
4 June 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
@Duke of Westminster – comment 21.
If she were Madeleine, not Geraldine, I could see where you are coming from
4 June 2018
Dr Desperate
To be fair (as we say nowadays) I wasn’t suggesting Nigel was singing “bitter as the gall”, just that it would have made more sense.
Now I come to think of it though, there could be a link between that line and the first: imagine an ex-TG fan, now self-consciously respectable, garden-owning and equestrian. One of her stable, not expected to win in any higher grade so entered for a lowly selling plate, develops a gall (‘a painful swelling, particularly in a horse’ Chambers Dictionary) and is unable to run. She reaches for the Mainline Super Groomer
https://www.equineessentialsdirect.co.uk/horse-and-pony/grooming/brushes-and-combs/mainline-super-grooma
but then descends into mental illness, identifying with her playworn childhood friend Morag MacScarecrow.
The protagonist hopes that by repairing her doll he can simultaneously fix her head.
(I may be over-thinking this.)
4 June 2018
The Almost illegal elton welsby
Just a quick +1 for all the lyrics as they are now written.
This is a great song faw shaw but it ain’t no “Mod Diff”. I predict some Luton Town / Millwall, 1985 moments in the 2019 Lux Familiar Cup.
4 June 2018
Gerry Gow
I think there’s one more “c” in the Cavalcades stutter making it “C-c-c-cavalcades”.
4 June 2018
paul f
@GWA – I think the point is that elementary particles don’t seem to be bothered which direction time is running in.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2018/may/08/what-time-is-it-and-why
4 June 2018
SPT
Pronunciations of convenience abound in this song. Not just non sequitur, but isn’t ‘covert’ usually c-uh-vert rather than c-oh-vert in this context? (If I were a proper pedant I’d look up the proper phoentic doodads for that.) Wouldn’t scan though.
4 June 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Umberstone is, apparently, a shade of grey masonry paint (https://www.diy.com/departments/sandtex-umberstone-grey-smooth-matt-masonry-paint-5l/259167_BQ.prd) so if the narrator and Geraldine were using it to camouflage themselves – meaning that there is a missing comma in the title – “Harsh Times in Umberstone, Covert” – then the pronunciation would be correct.
However, I suspect this interpretation is unlikely to gain favour among the majority
4 June 2018
Dr Desperate
According to ‘Dialect in the Viking-Age Scandinavian diaspora: the evidence of medieval minor names’, the PhD thesis of Nottingham University Research Fellow Eleanor Rye, Umberstone Covert was known in the 13th century as Homilton, from either Old English *hamol (‘mutilated stone’) or Old Norse *hǫmull (‘layer of pebbles’).
So there’s that.
4 June 2018
The harbinger of nothing
What is the significance of Umberstone Covert as a place? From what I can gather it seems to be a small wood, although from the link posted earlier, it could just be a road. Why is it a good place for a harsh time?
4 June 2018
i, problem chimp
Maybe it’s just a place-name that stuck in Nigel’s head, stored up for future use… I see it as a reference to a significant place from the couple’s past, maybe somewhere they used to go or were at during a previous difficult time, presented here as evidence that they can get over Geraldine’s current problems…
There’s so much to unpick (pun intended) here – for what it’s worth, I’d still love the first line to feature an actual plate, that G drops, reducing her to tears as she has to face up to diminishing physical and/or mental capabilities, but is first admonished and then reassured by the narrator.
I’d like to think of the sewing references reflecting the reality for the narrator that, despite his reassurance,s he sees that looking after G is going to be rather like looking after a toy, rather than a person, but he is still committed to doing whatever he can, particularly by being the one to remember all the happy times from the past (the stitch in time, which could also, like the Hadron Collider reference highlight the fact that G will lose the ability to differentiate between past and present or even to remember the past at all).
The second verse echoes this idea of a carefree past, with a tinge perhaps of regret for not having made more of some of it.
The lines in the second chorus about ‘re-upholstering your head’ and being on hand ‘to cast your mind’, reflect the fact that, once G is bed-bound, all the narrator can do is to be there to help her keep it together mentally and remind her of past happiness, but again highlighting the dehumanising nature of G’s plight – he may as well be mending a doll, because he can’t actually mend her.
The final line is bitter-sweet – from Umberstone Covert, despite the harsh times, G can now no longer go outside and has to be content with staring at the garden, which along with the cake is a pleasant enough end, a peace of sorts, but devoid of conversation, devoid of any real action, a far cry from the G remembered earlier on; a person who has in effect become the doll on the back cover, staring out the window, reduced to smiling but not much more…
Or it could just be about a doll…
4 June 2018
Kittymc
After ‘Tonight Matthew’ and ‘Soft Verges’, I think this is one of Nigel’s most tender and heartbreaking songs. It made me cry and laugh and laugh at myself and then cry again … genius.
Re: “Eat Battenberg instead of the garden” or “Eat Battenberg and stare at the garden” … I’m really not sure anymore, and I suppose it really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things! Just seemed like staring at the garden was the antithesis of a giddy escapade. But then maybe that’s exactly what Geraldine needs just now. That would also fit well with the ‘concept album’ theory. We need to just cut our fucking hedges, accept what life is, and enjoy some simple pleasures when we can. The end of Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ comes to mind (spoiler alert):
Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide, “There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not travelled over America on foot; had you not run the baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you had brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.” “Excellently observed,” answered Candide; “but let us take care of our garden.”
It’s Tuesday. Tee hee.
5 June 2018
Chris The Siteowner
If an entire comments thread could be given a Silver (or even Golden) Biscuit award, I think it might be this one.
Not that they actually exist, Lancashire-Evening-Post-Writer-who’s-asked-to-be-presented-with-their-promised*-one.
*Arguably promised, that is, June 2014
5 June 2018
Dr Desperate
Would it be too difficult to set up a system of Silver and Golden awards using a cryptocurrency such as ₿iscuitcoin?
5 June 2018
THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
@GWA – comment 25.
I am not suggesting that the lyric is simply about Bagpuss. Rather, that the tropes from Bagpuss have some kind of influence on the mind of the narrator usininfluencing him to interpret/elaborate the thoughts he has about the fragile mental state of Geraldine.
5 June 2018
S
This might seem unlikely, but bear with me… but why the choice of the name “Geraldine” (apart from scanning well for a great chorus).
Take a look / listen to the Glasvegas tune of the same name – it’s about a social worker, one who “When you’re standing on the window ledge / I’ll talk you back from the edge”. It’s almost as if the tables have turned, with the narrator now saying: “I will mend you / And I will tend to you”, returning some sort of favour.
Maybe not, mind…
5 June 2018
Dr Desperate
Candide agreed with Pangloss that “when man was put into the Garden of Eden (q v) it was with an intent to dress it, and this proves that man was not born to be idle.”
Nigel, on the other hand, seems to see the garden as practically the last step before death.
The Bride in OAKMTB was overlooking the lawn when she died, as was the protagonist in TLP before his final Stannah. Black apes gibbered on dark lawns in ‘Epiphany’, and after Graham died his widow needed a helping hand with hers in DMDNST.
Darling sugar honey was pushed through garden gates in RIAF before being slashed, and the late Ted Moult had helicopters in his. Even the doyen of topiary in RHIA-W? precedes a tale of sudden demise.
Never mind them deathbeds, from now on I’m steering clear of flowerbeds.
5 June 2018
EXXO
Well played John – deserving of a ‘lists thread’ revival, perhaps? To which I’d the hopelessly despairing mother who hangs about the laurel walk… and probably the grey falling on the green.
5 June 2018
EXXO
@S:
De-realing Geraldine, realigned (5, 4 … or 4,5)
5 June 2018
Dr Desperate
(4, 5) won’t you come out to play?
(4,5) greet the brand new day.
On a not-unrelated topic:
“Inflatable animal in New Orleans.” (3,4)
5 June 2018
EXXO
Ha, Ron’s genus are a bit of a sore point at the mo’ for me and my girl. Our fishing club’s had a phocine foe stuck in our most prolific weirpool for two months now, at least sixty miles from the sea, filling his guts where the silver salmon sojourn and the beautiful barbel breed, and various attempts to net the increasingly porcine phocus and other hokus pokus have failed. We had him for a few seconds last week but just he broke one of the divers’ ribs and laughed at us.
5 June 2018
Excavated RitA
@S When I heard her name and the reference to a selling plate, it brought to mind the former jockey, Geraldine Rees. Briefly made the papers as the first female jockey to finish the National in 1982. She now breeds and trains horses near Preston (qv). Exxo’s cryptic solution is much more fun.
5 June 2018
Dick Quax Running Shoes
Just for a laugh re ‘gall’ and ‘reaching for the mainland’: the Gauls tried and failed to conquer the Greek mainland a number of times, most notably under Brennus in 279 BC. An experience that might make any given Gaul rather bitter.
According to Peter Bing in The Well-Read Muse: Present and Past in Callimachus and the Hellenistic Poets (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), ‘The Gallic invasions of the Greek mainland and Asia Minor seem to have inspired a considerable body of poetry with its own conventions and stock phrases.’ Conventions like invoking Throbbing Gristle? Who could say . . .
6 June 2018
Bobby Svarc
Cheers! For that Rita.
6 June 2018
Geraldine
It’s a ‘wok to rely on’.
6 June 2018
third rate les
On the Hadron Collider joke:
Old mate of mine (and of PAUL F) is chief physicist at the Atlas detector there and wrote the following article on this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2018/may/08/what-time-is-it-and-why
6 June 2018
atombowl
Apologies if mentioned elsewhere but Umberstone is a cul-de-sac in Virginia Water. Not sure it has a covert though
6 June 2018
EXXO
I suppose I should say something about Umberstone Covert.
The thing is, that unlike all of Mr. B’s other Wirral references (but like many of his other geographical references elsewhere), I seriously doubt that the bard has ever set foot there. It’s private woodland, a couple of barbed wire fences away from the bridleways that are so familiar to him, and he is not one of the world’s most natural trespassers.
But it is, undoubtedly, the sort of woodland where, if you set up a bivvy during hard times, you could live undetected off the land for a while. There would certainly have been pheasants there once upon a time, and there are certainly rabbits. Yum.
7 June 2018
poopleby
Just a thought. I hear “mainland” as well but I originally thought it was “reaching for the mainline”. That could explain Geraldine’s apparent mental deterioration.
BTW, I like “non-secateur” but I agree it’s “non-sequitur” with a little poetic licence to try to rhyme it with laissez-faire.
7 June 2018
dr Desperate
I suppose there could be another Velvets (q v) link there, from ‘Sister Ray’:
“I’m busy searching for my mainline
I said I couldn’t hit it sideways…”
7 June 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
I think even a lot of people whose Latin is quite good use a non-standard pronunciation something like /se·kwɪ·‘teəwhich does rhyme reasonably well with an English pronunciation of ‘faire’. I’m pretty sure I followed some teachers in pronouncing it that way, and nobody has ever picked me up on it.
It’s Mr. B’s middle syllable without the /w/ that seems to make it a bit of a play on “secateur”, whether intentional or not.
7 June 2018
Slow dempsey
Anyone have any insight into what the cheap mischief could have been, why it was restricted to (most) Tuesdays and what about it caused the lasting rift with Ms Ollerhead?
Just some questions in corners of my mind that lurk.
8 June 2018
Cathedral juice
@Slow Dempsey – perhaps cheap mischief means low-priced booze? I haven’t myself come across ‘mischief’ as a synonym for alcohol, but I can imagine people using it, esp. for say White Lightning (maybe by association with the 1987 film White Mischief). Hence some tanked-up anti-social behaviour that distressed Emma O. On Tuesdays because that’s when the offie was selling stuff off, or had an offer on?
Alternatively (or additionally), the cheap mischief could simply involve capers and japes that don’t cost anything but might annoy people. Was Emma averse to Throbbing Gristle, or indeed to whistling?
8 June 2018
The duke if westminster
Capers and gherkins stuffed into her pudding when Emma wasn’t looking?
9 June 2018
MrSpecialPants
I reckon Emma sought rather than saw Christ, possibly following a date with a weirdo with a doll.
10 June 2018
dagenham dave
I agree with S (comment 39) re the Glasvegas links. It was the first thing I thought of and there are some similarities there.
On this subject whilst tidying up I’ve discovered I own a signed Glasvegas ‘Geraldine’ poster from 2008. I have absolutely no recollection of how I came by such a thing.
11 June 2018
I, problem chimp
Possible echoes of a couple of Dylan songs on the album, Man of Constant Sorrow obviously but also Hard Times In New York with HTIUC?
13 June 2018
transit full of keith
I think it’s more likely that it’s present-day Geraldine picking out gherkins, seeing Christ in Dorothy Perkins, and failing to be cheered by the narrator’s recollections of the good (or harsh-but-carefree) times.
But there is also a possibility that the ‘cheap mischief’ played by the narrator (with the past, carefree Geraldine) involved tampering with one Emma Ollerhead’s lunch, and contriving to appear to her in the guise of Jesus while she was out shopping.
15 June 2018
Gerry GOW
Although I was aware of Throbbing Gristle, I didn’t know much about them. Their Wikipedia page has filled in a few gaps. Oh, and they have a “Whistling Song”. Judging by the YouTube version of it, I (and I dare say others) would have difficulty whistling it though.
15 June 2018
alan
CTSO – I was led down a faint path of hope for my Golden Biscuit… like the promise of imaginary puppies.
And I even used a mawkish manner to beg for anything fashioned out of plastic.
I left NW5 trying to I try to put everything into perspective, set the lack of GB against the scale of human suffering, and I thought of the Mugabe government, and the children of the Calcutta railways but I remember Thersites.
(I feel terrible – CtSO)
21 June 2018
Kittymc
I saw “cheap mischief” as the latest celebration of the long-standing tradition of profitless chicanery – stuff done just for the lark. Sending a dead sanderling to Phil Cool, for example. Doesn’t cost much, and there’s no profit in it, but Stringy Bob must’ve been giggling in the post office. An inexpensive way to liven up a Tuesday, like. See also, the thrill of seeing someone pull a sour face when confronted by a gherkin. The sad thing is that Geraldine doesn’t do things like that anymore. There’s a bit of the Stringy Bob about Geraldine, now I think about it… but while Stringy Bob wandered off into the hills to die, Geraldine got bed sore and stuck. Heartbreaking, either way.
23 June 2018
EXCAVATED RITA
“When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble; give a whistle”
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
24 June 2018
bobbybottler
I don’t know if anyone has said it yet but it struck me, from the very first listen, that Geraldine is an old lady with dementia.
Apols if that’s blatantly obvious to absolutely everybody else.
29 June 2018
pROBLEMCHIMP
I hear ‘kinky escapades’.
I see this song as a lovely depiction of how the descent into middle age can turn us into dithering wrecks, battered by life and having lost the fiestiness of youth. Maybe that’s just me?
Anyway, I grew up very near Umberstone Covert, and although I’m a few years younger than NB, the use of the word ‘harsh’ at the time, always referred to the smoking of weed. Which we used to do a lot of, often in woodland settings. As well as drinking cheap cider in the day time whilst skiving off school and having kinky escapades.
Overcome with nostalgia now…
29 June 2018
dr Desperate
Harsh, as alluded to in the title of this recent New Scientist article. Also the name of the band supported at two shit gigs by Urge For Offal.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2169163-harsh-europes-cannabis-died-just-as-the-first-farmers-arrived/
29 June 2018
1966 Mick
This track bubbled up through the more obviously catchy ones to become my favourite. For the melody, atmosphere, pathos of the lyric etc., but as much as anything for the tremendous bass line.
29 June 2018
CHris from future doom
re: ‘cheap mischief’ – I also like the idea that Cheap Mischief were the local pub band that the protagonists would go and see most Tuesdays (sounds like it could be one of the crap band names from Four Skinny Indie Kids). I then imagine Emma Ollerhead to be the lead singer of said band, who Geraldine and her partner would rib mercilessly between songs / flick rubberbands at which she finds most annoying. Most annoying.
29 June 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
@Bobbybottler (post 66) – maybe, although we had a song about dementia on the last album (The Bane of Constance) and though that’s no reason for Nigel not to revisit the subject, I’ve always assumed that Geraldine is suffering with depression. But I’m no authority so your interpretation could be equally valid.
2 July 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Actually, I wonder if Geraldine has (multiple) addiction problems? Maybe to gambling (which is why she’s obsessed with a ‘selling plate’) and/or drugs – the references to harsh as noted above, “a rock to rely on” (crack cocaine)? If so, it’s a considerably more sympathetic portrait of drug use than “What made Colombia Famous” or “New York Skiffle”
16 July 2018
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
The intonation sounds to me more like “Astonishing there for to think of you now” but what do I know as later in the song it sounds to me like “Reaching for the men and…” and neither of those provide a better “meaning” than the words plumped for at the moment?
As to who is picking out the gherkins, it would be strange if it was Geraldine rather than Emma Ollerhead. Geraldine is addressed in the as “you” whereas the person picking out the gherkins with a sour face is “she”.
GWA – Is Bane of Constance about dementia? Are you thinking that the nonsense in Vince’s mind means he has dementia? My reading is that it is the flotsam of an inquisitive but flittering intelligence rather than someone with dementia.
16 July 2018
Featureless tv producer steve
That was my take on the Bane of Constance too, Duke. I found it amusing and whimsical, and suggested that it was a continuation of the relationship that began in Them’s The Vagaries, with all the attendant hilarity.
I was roundly voted down, and made to feel like a horrible person for days.
17 July 2018
dr desperate
If I’ve learnt anything from visiting this site (I haven’t) it’s that there are as many versions of what the songs are about as there are fans.
Whimsical, bitter-sweet, poignant, hilarious, there’s only one person who knows for sure, and he’s probably not sure.
17 July 2018
transit full of keith
True that. Although this isn’t as open a field as some (eg Lilac Harry Quinn). It’s clear enough that Geraldine is in the realm of the unwell (rather than just, say, having lost her sense of humour). I would go with it being some relatively serious kind of anxiety-related disorder, maybe depression-related. Like DBT, I can still enjoy the song as a belter, with a dark and complicated bleak story wrapped up in it.
At the same time it’s quite possible it’s about early-onset dementia. To be honest, I don’t really want that to be true, because for me it seems to take things to a different level of grim – so bleak it becomes harder to enjoy the song in the same way. In particular, the hadron collider joke .. that would be one of the blackest things ever set to music, wouldn’t it?
17 July 2018
Third Rate Les
I must have missed the debate on Bane of Constance, but if that’s a depiction of dementia, then I’ve had dementia my whole life. I took it as a wonderful depiction of the nonsense that goes on in our minds all the time.
I didn’t pick up a dementia theme in this one specifically, although plenty of general decrepitude of which that could be a part. The Hadron Collider joke, however, strikes me as just the kind of in-joke that only a long-standing couple would find funny, or even be able to tell at all.
17 July 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
It’s the title that particularly makes me think TBOC is about dementia – Constance is (presumably) Vince’s wife who now has to care for a him while he talks about an ancient debt from Heswall Flower club and confuses an 80s pop star with a milk thief. The line about him not blaming her if she ‘made good her escape’ (e.g. by putting him in home) also seems to indicate this.
I’m not saying this is the ‘correct’ interpretation, just how I’ve always seen it (at least since the lyrics were fully deciphered on here!).
Geraldine, on the other hand, seems more likely to be suffering from depression or as I suggested above, maybe an addiction problem.
But surely a bit of controversy is good for this site’s appeal?
17 July 2018
Idristhechiseller
Re: Bain Of Constance.
UFO was my first HMHB album and I bought the rest as I when i managed to turn up a copy. This meant that, having heard BOC and visited this site, I was quite happy to buy into the dementia theory-though, as some said on the thread in question, Vince’s musings are probably more akin to the thought disorder you’d see in schizophrenia. It was only six months or so later when I managed to track down Cammell Laird Social Club and heard Them’s The Vagaries that it hit me: the narrator was recognisably (to me at least) Vince, a good decade and a bit before forward rail travel and Insufflated limestone particles had exerted their effects on his brain. I can’t help but see one song as a sequel to the other.
Geraldine, I’d say, is definitely depressed and the Large Hadron Collider joke is our narrator’s doomed attempt to raise a knowing smile out of her. I can only hope the Battenberg does its trick.
17 July 2018
Bobby Svarc
It is about dementia.
17 July 2018
Stephen Hero
As mrspecialpants says, it’s surely ‘sought Christ’ rather than ‘saw Christ’.
28 July 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Chances are that if he sang “sought Christ” the /t/ would be at least partly audible, which it isn’t.
I’m hesitant to try to make any overall sense of this song, but in this particular episode of cheap mischief, a burger was perhaps spiked with a halucenogen, causing ergotic episodes. A dizzy escapade indeed.
29 July 2018
EXXO
An odd feeling on Saturday to be dropped off at the match by my dad (81). The deal was that I would get a fridge into and out of the car for him and we would drop it at the Clatterbridge dump (recycling centre) on the way to the match at Prenton Park.
As we exited, I noticed that the adjacent Umberstone Covert, which I have passed before but knew to be private and fenced off, with no public rights of way, is accessible through a gap in the wall. So the chance had to be taken.
A notice printed from a home PC and pinned to a tree tells us that [I paraphrase as I didn’t have a camera] “Trespassers who are respectful of this private woodland, which as been in the same family for 120 years (with the lease due to expire in 80 years) will be tolerated. However recently many trespassers have been causing damage and disturbance and these people will be reported to police by the owners, who will now patrol this area on a daily basis …”
For whatever reason it doesn’t mention that it is still part of the vast Leverhulme estate, now held in trust.
14 August 2018
EXXO
I should add, regarding the trespassers, that the notice looked like it had been there a couple of years rather than a couple of months, so this is presumably not a case of thousands of ‘Hedge’ fans staging impromptu new age dawnings in newly-famous patch of woodland.
14 August 2018
EXXO
Anyway, the only thing I wanted to ask Mr B. on Saturday about this song was to confirm “bitter as the gall”, which he did (source). He then volunteered that the particular gall in this simile is the stuff the Roman soldiers offered to a famous crucifixion victim.
14 August 2018
dr Desperate
“They gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when He had tasted it, He would not drink” (Matthew 27:34).
That makes me five for five on confirmations, five and a half if you include ‘highly’. I shall continue to think of ‘grey falls on the green’ as ash-sprinkling because I can (and because I believe NB considers it not bad anyway).
15 August 2018
kittymc
Oh, the gall! When I was a girl and had to go to mass, I used to look up at the crucifix and think I could almost smell the vinegar. I remember a teacher telling us how when they pierced Jesus’ side, all that came out was ‘like water’ because he was already basically dead; he’d bled so much through his feet and hands that there was no more blood left when the centurion stabbed him. Hence, no blood on Christ’s belly on the crucifix, just some horribly pale oozing…
I think I was always a bit confused about the gall the Romans put on Christ’s wounds (with torture in mind) and the yellow bile (one of the Greek humours) that seeped out of his body when the Romans stabbed him. Poor Jesus.
Anyway, I completely understand why Geraldine’s not sure about things, and why she might be a bit bitter now.
20 August 2018
Jim offshore central america
The only benefit of hearing the ‘new’ album months after its release is having this website – and this thread in particular (Gold medal winner, for sure) – to assist, divert and entertain….
Thanks to he who organised the download for me (you know who you are), and thanks to all the posters on this thread. The absolute standout track on first listen, and without this thread I’d have been forced into that twilight zone of bliss-less ignorance and Google search.
Cracking album, but this is the #1 song thereon, for sure….thanks lads and lasses!
1 September 2018
Toxteth
Cracking track it’s a proper love song
3 September 2018
transit full of keith
@OffshoreJim, you’re not wrong there, it was the standout track for me on the first listen and each of several dozen listens since (the other tracks change places). I now have a mental image of the opening bassline drifting across the waves from your vessel to the bemused penguins of the Ross Ice Shelf – improbable I know, but a nice thought
3 September 2018
Jim offshore central america
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I know I’m months behind, and I’m aware that many of the ‘names’ on here are pseudonyms, so maybe one of you is Terrence Oblong? That apparent non-sequitur arises after my simple Googling of ‘Umberstone Covert’, which yielded this, dated April 9.
https://www.abctales.com/story/terrence-oblong/harsh-times-umberstone-covert
This can’t be a coincidence, but my brief trawl through ‘letters sent’ found no reference to ABC Tales, so I’m bunging it out here for the better informed (that’s you) to set me straight. Muchas gracias!
(Real name – Jim. Real location – what it says on the label)
4 September 2018
EXXO
Terrence’s stories got a bit of coverage on here when the track titles were first released, and nobody claiming to be him made an appearance then. He’s obviously a big HMHB fan but apparently not one who has much Wirral knowledge or comes on here.
4 September 2018
Chris The Siteowner
He has been on: as Dave Clark for this set of stories and as Terrence Oblong for the previous album.
4 September 2018
EXXO
Oh yeah. Please ignore my comment.
4 September 2018
Jim offshore central america
I knew someone would know, and I guessed at who it might me. Ha! The usual suspects – I was right. Thank you gentlemen….
4 September 2018
transit full of keith
@Jim, either I’m crapper at geography than I thought, or I’d got the mistaken idea you were floating somewhere off Antarctica from some discussion of Shackleton in another thread. Bon voyage anyway
4 September 2018
Jim offshore central america
Keith – I daresay it was Exxo’s reference to Ernie, and the banter that ensued that misled you. I’m floating around off Nicaragua (as you do), a long way from Antarctica! All that banter began with my inability to download ‘No one cares…’ MONTHS after its release. All good now – on my umpteenth listen, it’s another belter from NB10…
5 September 2018
EXXO
Catching up nicely Jim, but you’ve perhaps not yet reached comment 733 in the ‘New Album’ thread:
Four tracks are Neil’s tunes on which he also played guitar (Knobheads On Quiz Shows, Bladderwrack Allowance, Terminus and Mod Diff etc). Nigel wrote the other eight and did all his own guitar work too, though he did get Neil to put the solos on ‘Colombia’, Man of Constant Sorrow’ and ‘Emergency Locksmith. Bagpipes are still work in progress but defo getting there.
5 September 2018
Jim offshore central america
Exxo – Ta muchly for the ‘re-post’…. with 35,677 comments, and a mere 785 on the ‘new album’ thread, I doubt I’d have got there…..
….and while we’re on the subj, they’re a cracking band even without the genius lyrics. This becomes very clear when one listens to an ‘oldie’ – still cracking, but without the polished guitar and bass work of today. Well that’s what I think, anyway.
5 September 2018
Marcus
I think the first bit of it after all the Geraldine’s goes ‘selling point’ not ‘selling plate’. After all, what is a ‘selling plate’?
Whole album is brilliant. More power, energy and lyrical genius than anything that has ever won the Mercury Music Prize.
(See comment 4 above for ‘selling plate’ link – CtSO)
2 October 2018
Marcus
See above. Good point and thank you. I was never into horse racing.
6 October 2018
The Tangerine Wizard
I think it’s a song about depression too.
One of their greatest ever songs.
10 October 2018
Chris The Siteowner
Meanwhile, Exxo is indulging in some major covert speculation about this song in the “Emma Ollerhead” entry of the A–Z. I probably shouldn’t have drawn attention to it, but harsh times.
2 December 2018
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
It does suggest that the Duke of Westminster (post 21) had it right all along. Apologies for my scepticism, Your Grace.
5 December 2018
EXXO
Well if we’re dealing with imaginary scenarios involving knitted dolls that (one guesses) have their origins in the entertainment of the grandkids, anything is possible, I suppose, and it may be undignified to do too much speculating once one accepts that it’s all a bunch of gorgeous nonsense. But to me the different vignettes from different episodes in the characters’ lives are not coherently linked. It is possible that (in that particular snippet of the action) one or more of the characters are planning to disrupt or fix a horse race in some way, and this is not necessarily connected to the (later promise about) tender fixing of the upholstery in Geraldine’s head. But that thing about two meanings of “fix” (it so she dreams of me) only came to me in writing those last couple of sentences, as did “we will fix it, we will mend it…”
5 December 2018
EXXO
…which I’d ‘remembered’ as the lyrics of the Bagpuss mice song, which I hadn’t heard for maybe 40 years, but of course, aren’t quite that.
5 December 2018
transit full of keith
In light of Mr Blackwell’s on-stage claim that “there’s only one human in this song”, I’m baffled. So Geraldine (despite her ability to whistle) is presumably an actual knitted doll, rather than a person compared to one, having had her metaphorical stuffing knocked out in some way (as most people previously thought).
I like the fact there is a song that doesn’t make obvious sense on the album, though. If I’d had one tiny doubt about the cavalcade of excellence that is “Hedge Cut” it was that most of the lyrics are more straightforwardly comprehensible than previous albums, and personally I like most the more enigmatic songs that take a while to reveal themselves. This is a fantastic song, one of their very best.
6 December 2018
EXXO
Surely, when entertaining young kids, we’ve all grabbed their toys and created strange and impossible mischief with them – things that toys couldn’t actually do, way more ? And kids who like that sort of thing will then demand more. I remember when me and a five year-old, who (ironically) I was trying to get into writing, used to create little home-made books about his obsessions (the Titanic, Lord Sauron, the Daleks, Pirates, etc, etc ), they were often based on exaggerations of episodes that had recently been created with his toy figures … but in writing my bits of the collaboration (usually while he was drawing a picture of a monster), I’d always add quite a lot of surreally-amusing adult themes to entertain his mum (and of course posterity) as well … and if I were a song-writer, there would certainly have been ditties about them. And if I were a truly great song-writer, recently branching out into all kinds of themes involving old age and death, it would be very moving and beautiful and touch enigmatically upon such themes, with promises to mend and befriend till the end, and maybe one such ditty would become a song for an album, rather than one for the grandkids.
I find ‘Fix It So She Dreams of Me’ quite similar in the ambiguity and impossibility of actually understanding it all, but still enabling every listener to get whatever they want from its beautiful enigmatic sweep. Except that one appears inspired by snippets of various kinds of modern fiction, rather than messing about with dolls.
Meanwhile Geraldine could also be a knitted Jean Greenhowe horse, and the “I” figure could be the doll from the cover who rides her and will love her forever, like Emily with her Bagpuss (interesting that Emily seems to be big name in the Jean Greenhowe universe). The possibilities are endless, but some of them are naughty enough to need to beg their original designer’s pardon. Oh shit, maybe the whole thing is about the idea of a forbidding, but possibly forgiving matriarchal deity!
6 December 2018
EXXO
Please ignore the random rogue words “way more” near the beginning of that comment and insert something else, maybe “like whistle to a band that rhymes with whistle”.
6 December 2018
EXXO
Then there’s Emily Davison and the Epsom Derby, a story which Mr. B has previously wound us up about on stage (see gig review of 9/12/09). No stickling and re-upholstering for her, unfortunately.
Then there was that lilac harlequin.
6 December 2018
THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
I was listening to this one again recently with the objective of ascertaining whether there was anything inconsistent in the lyrics with a possible scenario in which someone middle aged (most likely female) is talking to a favourite doll she has had since she was a child and uses the doll to articulate what she feels about herself – like the dolls they give to children who psychiatrists think may have been sexually abused to help them describe what happened by referring to what happened to the doll as they can’t talk about what happened to themselves.
As far as I can see there is nothing that jars with that interpretation. There are some hints at this scenario in the lyrics: (i) “When events are unfolding inside I’m on hand to cast your mind”; (ii) “Your problems, I’ll treat them as mine”; (iii) “We’ll eat Battenberg and stare at the garden” – i.e. they both do the eating and staring as one because they are one.
12 January 2019
EXXO
For me it all starts with Jean Greenhowe. She’s the definite thing we know is ‘human’ and certain in the song, she is the deity who creates the pattern of the dolls. Therefore all the other characters are dolls, behaving badly. So badly they need to beg the pardon of their ultimate creator (so there are definite elements of piss-take of the whole idea of a creator deity in this song, as in so many).
I wonder if (bleedin’ obvious alert if you grew up in a knitwear house) everyone realises that ‘cast’ is a knitting pun? ‘Cast on’ as the way of starting any piece of knitting, including repairs where the stuffing is falling out; ‘cast your mind back’, with all kinds of shades of nostalgia, dementia, etc; possibly, but probably not, the more contemporary concept of ‘casting’ something from a device onto a screen.
12 January 2019
Bobby Svarc
Isn’t the narrator a human?
13 January 2019
EXXO
Could be. But in that case Mr. B had forgotten about Jean Greenhowe when he said there was only one human in the song (and he’s said it at least three times that I know of).
13 January 2019
dR desperate
As Kierkegaard points out in his ‘Philosophical Fragments’, Christ’s dual nature (or ‘hypostasis’) as simultaneously divine and human is the ultimate paradox, one that can only be resolved by a leap of faith away from reason towards belief in God.
Don’t know if that applies to Jean Greenhowe though.
13 January 2019
carrie anne
One of my favourite songs on the album, and it’s certainly an intriguing story.
I like your interpretation @Duke of W, as in my head the narrator is a middle-aged woman too, suffering from, amongst other afflictions, agoraphobia (staring out at the garden), perhaps brought on in part by some traumatic experiences in Umberstone Covert and Dorothy Perkins. Her only company is a collection of hand knitted dolls, and in her lonely isolation she talks both for and with her creations, reflecting her own emotions. Perhaps in the song she’s reprimanding the doll Geraldine for not having the happy go lucky personality she once had. But she won’t give up on her, and will try to mend her in body and mind.
I think you are correct @Bobby Svarc, – the other ‘humans’ mentioned – Jean, Dorothy, Throbbing Gristle – seem to be just bit part players in the tale.
But of course I could be completely wrong, and not for the first time.
13 January 2019
EXXO
I don’t think Throbbing Gristle are in any way characters in the song, just music that rhymes with (and obviously jars comically) with “whistle”; Dorothy Perkins is a shop again there for the rhyme, but not a real person as far as I know. Emma Ollerhead must be a doll, otherwise there would definitely be more than one human in the song.
For me it’s just about whether Mr. B. forgot Jean Greenhowe when he said there’s only one human in the song. ‘Cos otherwise it must surely be that it’s either she’s the only one, and all the other characters are dolls including the narrator. If Mr. B forgot Jean Greenhowe then the narrator can be a person (creator of all the dolls).
13 January 2019
Jodrell banksy
Another possible knitting-related pun: is the Battenberg to be eaten the cake, or the lace?
13 January 2019
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
It all depends on whether we are approaching the song from a perspective of “new criticism” – in which the text is all important and authorial intent or listener response is irrelevant – or from a psychoanalytic one – in which authorial intent can be established from the text.
If the former, then Jean Greenhowe is the only person is the song – the words of the song, not the singer’s act of writing/performing it – are the only ones to consider.
If the latter, then there are two people in the song – the omniscient singer and Jean Greenhowe.
Of course, if one takes new criticism to extremes, then all of our earlier interpretations about depression/addiction etc are valid if supported by the lyric, regardless of Mr B’s intention or view that there is only person in the song.
I leave it to others to take a post-structural or Marxist approach to the lyrics…
14 January 2019
POP-TART MARK
Oi, Keith, he’s trying to pull the ‘four schools of literary criticism’ and all that malarkey. You gonna sort him out or shall I?
14 January 2019
Bobby Svarc
The narrator comes across as a bit of a Norman Bates character (no relation) who possibly talks for both.
15 January 2019
THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
It’s even possible to read the lyrics as NB being the narrator character casting the mind of Geraldine (“Dear Nigel” in anagram) and there being something a bit “meta” about it all. A bit like in Coroner’s Footnote where the narrator intrudes, moving the train backwards and forwards or even leaving it an uncertain position (not unlike John Fowles and the narrator turning back his pocketwatch in The French Lieutenant’s Woman).
In the Coroner’s Footnote, “the fates around these parts are ruthless”. In Geraldine, the fates are a bit kinder but the picture framed is still a sad one.
16 January 2019
dR desperate
Now I come to think of it, that anagram (first spotted by Exxo) does raise the possibility of Nigel being the character addressed as “you” throughout, with all the stitchwork stuff being merely metaphorical.
However, I still think it’s “mainline” (see comment 53 above).
16 January 2019
EXXO
Given Mr. B’s liking for messing about with names, it is mathematically pretty definite that the choice of Geraldine is, as I mentioned, a deliberate anagram of ‘Nigel dear’ (which I think has a Michael Winner sort of ring about it). But that’s just on the level of wanting to include the name in a song. It won’t mean that the character is necessarily to be identified with him. In ‘Multitude’ Elgin is a much cleaner anagram of Nigel, but that’s just about wanting to include that anagram and not really about including himself. In ‘Mileage Chart’, Elaine is a real dog’s name backwards, and in ‘Lilac Harry Quinn’, well that’s how a child might pronounce her favourite kind of rabbit. But none of them mean that anything is anything else, they all just seem to be a bit of Mr. B messing about with names like wot he is wont…
The Nigel might be “you” interpretation really belies the whole Jean Greenhowe dolls scenario which is signalled very deliberately by the album cover in the same way that the last album cover very deliberately gave clues to the whole Soylent Green scenario in Gwatkin. Plus you’d then really need to twist things to make it “only one human in that song”, which he really did mean literally.
16 January 2019
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Eniale (Elaine backwards) is an odd name for a dog – have I missed something?
Am contemplating a PhD on Marxist post-feminist critiques of the lyrics of this song, in which the petit bourgeois knitting pattern business of Jean Greenhowe is considered in the light of the prevailing patriarchal nature of Wirral society.
17 January 2019
transit full of keith
Surely, Comrade Gok, in a true Marxist analysis, Jean Greenhowe – a hobbyist knitter, who later built a business empire on the production of knitting patterns – represents the historical process of the Industrial Revolution itself? In her early life – the craftsperson in the cottage, precarious, but in control of the product of her labour – later, the bassline echoing the rumble of the textile mills, Greenhowe growing rich on the surplus value of an army of anonymous knitters. And their products: knitted figures, soft and woolly, stuffed, unable to act out their destiny, arranged in comforting petit-bourgeois tableaux. The very subjects of capitalism itself. Orwell could not have come up with a more telling satire.
But in this most dialectical of songs, comrade, we can hear the calling of another possible world. Could the mispronunciation (koh-vert for kuh-vert) be a revolutionary gesture, encoding Lenin’s concept of the “covert”, conspirational Party vanguard as the accelerators of historical change?
The overthrow of the old autocracies, the final “eating of the Battenburgs” (he’s even giving us clues!) lies somewhere ahead, in an unknowable, but inevitable, future. But our protagonists, at this juncture, occupy themselves with the consumption of a pacifying capitalist product, a mass-produced, pink and yellow confection – whose very name mocks them with the name of their oppressors.
At this impasse in late capitalism, they are trapped, as Bragg memorably put it, “between Marx and marzipan”. Harsh times. Let them eat cake, indeed.
17 January 2019
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
@TFOK
Damn, there goes my PhD proposal. If this was one of those social media type places, you’d definitely get a like for that!
17 January 2019
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Art imitates life imitates art, or something. Not sure if it is a Jean Greenhowe pattern
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/575365001/half-man-half-biscuits-nige
24 January 2019
dR desperate
No, it’s a Frances Burscough (my sister) pattern – she made the original one for my birthday.
Worth every penny!
24 January 2019
Alice van der meer
I’m convinced you lot are all mad, y’know.
Probably why I feel at home…
24 January 2019
BOBBY SVARC
She charge you for your birthday present? 😉
24 January 2019
dR desperate
When I say “worth every penny”, I mean to the layman.
24 January 2019
EXXO
Further clarification tonight after a storming rendition:
“There’s only one human active in that song. Not including Jean Greenhowe.”
I think the same thing was then repeated with “only one person active in the song”
Heckle from audience: “Christ was a person.”
NB: “Well he was three people really, but [laughing], no ….” [seeming to indicate that we are not to include Christ as the one human in the song either, fortunately].
I wish someone had heckled “what about Emma Ollerhead? Is she human?” But you can’t have everything.
Anyway it does seem likely that the narrator voice is human, and other characters are dolls. Above all Geraldine, whose fragment of the CD cover was enlarged and projected behind the band for most of the gig. Nobody heckled about the anagram thing either, but that will doubtless happen at a gig soon enough.
The song was preceded (but not introduced), with a ramble in which Nigel expressed an unfulfilled desire to go back to the house where he was born, and ask the current owners (who he doesn’t know) if he could see the room in question (cos he has no memory of that house). This is about 600 yards from Umberstone Covert.
2 February 2019
dr desperate
He also mentioned that when they called the midwife, she was the widow of a Thetis victim (see Fuckin’ Hedge crossword) called Harwood. Acting Petty Officer George A, one assumes.
2 February 2019
Bobby Svarc
Any sign of Janet Armitage last night? The last I heard she was stuck in snow at Hexham
2 February 2019
EXXO
@Dr. Desperate. Yes, and that’s a story he’s mentioned before, which to me indicates it’s not a typical wind-up, like say the story of his great grandad training the Emily Davison horse. Whereas if I said “Fitter Shaw”, the only Cammell Laird employee who escaped through the hatch of the sinking Thetis, was my grandad…
2 February 2019
I, problem chimp
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/fury-after-labour-party-election-16075100?fbclid=IwAR06uW5hEZ5LeoYGouO-omKgfA1ksav51ZQsKS94udTMZdpysvY4COSOjew
Wonder if there’s an Emma in the family?
4 April 2019
Pirx The Purist
I’ve been pondering about the first line, and I wonder whether Geraldine is a depressive who has been ‘triggered’ by the death of a horse in a selling-plate race, as depressives (and I know whereof I speak) can be brought down to that state by, as ’twere, clamping onto an unfair or unjust story (involving no-one or nothing who/that they know) to the point of obsessive thought about it? An identification with the ‘victim’ up to the point of imagining oneself as the ‘victim’?
Admittedly, the narrator’s rather harsh and dismissive response to Geraldine’s fugue is out of keeping with the tone of his sentiments in the rest of the song, but anyway…
22 August 2019
Chris The Siteowner
Now we’ve had a while to digest the significance of “Umberstone Covert”, perhaps Exxo, Dr Desperate, Problem Chimp or anyone else who has anything to say about it might care to add to its A–Z entry, as it could well be the last item in the songbook to break its duck for comments there. Your comments could have a wider influence than you think, because we’re now the first Google result for anyone searching for the term. Take that, Ordnance Survey website.
29 August 2019
Richard HOBSON
Couple of years late, but I’ve been thinking about this.
I first heard it as “salad plate” and sometimes still do. But that wouldn’t make sense; you would care what was on your salad plate.
11 March 2020