Alehouse Futsal by Half Man Half Biscuit (2018) discussed...
A storming sub-two-minute album opener, Alehouse Futsal does the perfect job of assuring everyone who’s been waiting nearly four years for a new album that NCAYCHSGYFHC isn’t going to be an experimental side project or a free-form jazz exploration.
See lyrics to Alehouse Futsal
PaUL WOOD
Happy happy happy.
But what does he do to eke out his stipend, 17s in?!
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Elbow in Delamere, eh? (2016, £41.50 plus £4.65 booking fee ) I get the feeling that on this album places in Cheshire (incl Wirral) & North Wales may outnumber elsewhere in these isles by about 3 to 1. Opening with the husky* mention, it also promises to be doggier than ever, as Mr. B pines for renewed canine companionship it seems.
*I wondered how long it would be. See post 28 in the ‘Lock up yer Mountain Bikes’ thread.
21 April 2018
JOHN ANDERSON
Very early first attempt submitted. Not sure about “cold gloss” but otherwise fairly confident.
(Thanks John – I’ll use it as the basis for version 1.0 later. Anyone else want to have a go at the lyrics in exchange for a credit, email it in – CtSO)
21 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Call dusk, surely
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
‘Gonna put up a wall in your through lounge/Where the husky knows no bounds.’
Mr. B has a thing about people not being able to control their arctic sled dogs, it seems. One of at least 2 things in this song that have previously been moaned about in live versions of songs. The other being that band that Guy Garvey tries so hard not to mention every five minutes on his radio show, who have been in ‘Paintball’. And the posh TV is always in the background of ‘Paintball’ without even needing to be mentioned.
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Blimey. I’ve been hearing ‘husky’ for a fortnight, clear as day (the middle verse is the one in the snippet). But there’s no husky at all. Maybe we’ll to wait till track two for an aggressive canine. My tail, for one, is firmly between my legs and I shall skulk off to the other end of my through lounge, behind the sliding doors where a dog may be easily exiled when visitors require.
I think I liked my lyric better though.
21 April 2018
ds
I mailed a version but the only thing fixing me is the same bit bothering Mr Wood
It sounds like “fou qu’il” which is a slightly odd translation for “how mad is he?”. It’s not that I’m fairly sure. But there’s nothing else I can easily think of
21 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
It’s call dusk on a new age dawning or call dusk on your new age dawning . I think
21 April 2018
Phyllis Triggs
Wot? No Husky? Are you sure? Currently I’m wrestling with ‘a stink eel’ and a husky possibly going by the name of ‘Bear’..
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Ha, somewhat ironically given these lyrics, I just smashed the poshest TV I’ve ever owned during the FA cup semi final that’s just finished. Not deliberately either, though Maureen’s lot had just scored what turned out to be the winner. It fell off a unit after I tried to move some fishing equipment that was spoiling my enjoyment of the match, though not as much as the match was.
Anyway I agree with John on “I speak ill to eke out my stipend”, where the assonance and internal rhyme is very typically Blackwell, but where the fact that he garbles it more like “speak eel” is just typical of the HMHB production process – in which they can’t really be arsed with too many takes.
It seems to be “a” new age dawning to my ears (but as already been shown, those ears are a pair of shitebags and anyway I’d prefer it to be “yer new age dawning”).
I have shite arl audio here, and as of half an hour ago, it’s back to a shite arl telly. Sorry about the cussing but that was not a good Saturday teatime.
21 April 2018
transit full of keith
Ha, Phyllis, glad it’s not just my ears, I’ve got ‘a stink eel’ as well. I’ve no idea what that is, perhaps a delicacy a bit like rollmop herring, but so obscure it’s never been mentioned on the internet. Or a baffling callback to “Something’s Rotten in the Back of Iceland”. All seems a bit unlikely. I’ve also got “coal dust on your new day dawning”, probably wrong, but I quite like it.
21 April 2018
Jarg alAn
What’s that one that goes ‘there’s no stink like the stink of an eel….’?
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Trouble with all that assonance is you create tongue-twisters for yourself – I reckon he has to go /i:/ and /ɪ/ and back to /i:/ in “speak ill to eke” and he ends up with 3 x /i:/
21 April 2018
Jarg alAn
Obviously should have read #11
21 April 2018
Chris The Siteowner
OK, I’ve posted up the most favoured combinations of lyrics from the five sets submitted today – thank you all. Of course, there’s plenty of room for discussion still; for my part, although I’m sure the lyric is ’10K TV’ (which makes sense), it really sounds to me like ’10K VD’ (which doesn’t, unless Dr D knows otherwise).
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Thanks Chris. Truly you are spoiling us with this early chance to ask why have you consistently capitalised ‘Alehouse’ and ‘Futsal’ in the lyrics? Unless you think his vengeance upon the “you” in the song is the song itself? Interesting interpretation if so.
21 April 2018
Chris The Siteowner
Fair points, Charles. As I said, the lyrics were a ‘best of’ compilation of what was sent in by fellow Biscuiteers today, and there was a majority in favour of capitals. But I’d be more than happy to change that; if the song was called, say, ‘restaurant snooker’, would we capitalise either of those words? Probably not. Comments welcome.
21 April 2018
Jarg alAn
10k PB ? (mine depends on the speed of the bus)
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
No capitals for me ‘cos although it’s possible that his vengeance is the song itself (after all, the lyricist does define what he does in life in the first verse) it is just a possibilities.
Also no capital in ‘Timeslip’ for me. Two words: time slip stories. Far more ubiquitous than just limiting it to some kids’ stories from so long ago.
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
I think Alan might be right.
Mine was in 1982 when I was skinny.
21 April 2018
JOHN ANDERSON
Could this be the Timeslip in question?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeslip
21 April 2018
Dagenham daVe
It sounds a bit like ‘PV’ which makes no sense so I’m going for ‘TV’
A PB is a PB, you wouldn’t describe one as ‘brand new’. Well I wouldn’t anyway.
21 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Another vote for PB, personal best. TV never sat comfortably for me despite the fact that I’ve repeatedly sang it to myself.
I’m generally crap at sorting out in my head what’s often meant by the lines of his songs, and when I’m feeling brave enough I shall be requesting what’s bleedingly obvious to the rest of you, I’m sure. But is alehouse futsal akin to a pub shoeing ?
21 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Anyhow, why Haile Gebrselassie if not PB ?
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Yay! The first chance to pull the wings off one for the new album!
So…futsal is essentially a trendy version of 5-a-side, originating in Brazil, played with a smaller, heavier, softer ball and a few years ago was supposed to be THE ANSWER to make British kids start caressing a ball sexily like Brazilians. It was supposed to be our way into ‘the beautiful game’. It became quite trendy a few years back and is now well past its peak.
Meanwhile “alehouse football” is how people dismiss skilless hoofing, pub teams … who play on a Sunday morning.
So “alehouse futsal” will be something somebody witty would say on watching some people play futsal who should never have been made to play it, sort of fat kids with sausage rolls going to futsal on a Tuesday night sort of thing. Kind of of the opposite of the beautiful game it was meant to be. For example, it’s not really meant to be that competitive – it’s for skills practice, really, but you can bet British parents would make it competitive for their kids.
Now it may just be that our man has stored up this wonderful oxymoron as a stupendous title for a song, even though it has little to do with the other lyrical content – highly likely – but it’s also possible that the “you” in the song are the kind of couple who want their children to play beautiful sexy Brazilian football**, and the narrator is in some way going to thwart this notion.
**but who definitely don’t have a husky
21 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
Or then there’s “I’ll give you XXXXX!!” where XXXXX is something somebody else says, which you’d like to make them rue.
Maybe one of many possibilities is that the “you” in the song has/have scoffed at the narrator’s or narrator’s kids futsal session, where he, the narrator, is a trainer or participant, and oh-so-scathingly called it “alehouse futsal” .. while on another occasion boasting of his/her/their own new 10k PB … and yes, don’t people have “fitness apps” on their phones these days that would tell them they should be going for a new PB all the time as if they were Dr. Thomas bloody Wessinghage?
21 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Thank you Charles, it’s worse than I’d even imagined it to be. A fine rant is AF and a new favourite. It seems that they’re hitting another high
21 April 2018
ds
It’s deffo PB. It goes with the Gebreselasie line after and why not brand new if they just done a personal best in those endless bloody fun runs
21 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
I suppose one of the many wonderful things about these songs is that many will hear 10k TV and legitimately nod in agreement. Even though Nigel sings 10k PB. I probably do likewise on other songs and laugh at inaccurate references. Friday can’t come soon enough.
21 April 2018
Bobby svarc
Right folks, see you all in about 3 months.
22 April 2018
dr desperate
A few thoughts:
I must admit I was one of those who suggested capitalising the title throughout, having misheard the second line as “cold busk” rather than the more sensible “call dusk”. In this interpretation the protagonist was intending to kill his irritatingly on-trend acquaintance’s Sunday morning by playing the song AF outside his house (or through the wall).
However, Exxo’s “I’ll give you XXXX” also occurred to me in my sleep last night, as in the line “I’ll give you bloody what if you don’t stop saying what, what, my lad” from ‘Billy Liar’ (a scene later reprised less northernly by Jules Winnfield in ‘Pulp Fiction’).
For both these reasons, I now join the minuscule majority.
Similarly for time slip, which may refer to these strange occurrences on Bold St.
https://exemplore.com/paranormal/The-Liverpool-Time-Slips-The-True-Story-Of-Mysterious-Occurences-In-Bold-Street
10k PB does fit quite well with Haile Gebrselassie, though I’m straining to hear the ‘n’ at the end of 10.
Stipends are often eked out by impecunious clergymen in 19th century literature, with a later example occurring in W LLewelyn Williams’ 1919 ‘The making of modern Wales; studies in the Tudor settlement of Wales’.
All in all, a rocking opener in the manner of the last couple of albums, carrying on the list of grievances from ‘CORGI Registered Friends’ and the house conversion-reversal theme of ‘Friday Night And The Gates Are Low’.
22 April 2018
dr desperate
Incidentally, does one detect a certain Velvet Underground influence in the first verse? Nico sings ‘Sunday Morning’ on TVU&N, and ‘Loaded’ contains the tracks ‘New Age’ and ‘Train Round The Bend’ (“Oh train comin’ round the bend”).
If so, should ‘New Age’ be capitalised?
22 April 2018
SL Obispo
10k PB; Hoylake Gebreselasie
23 April 2018
Chris The Siteowner
Interesting…
23 April 2018
Dagenham daVe
Ignore my previous thoughts, I’m now leaning towards PB.
23 April 2018
Transit Full Of Keith
“Hoylake Gebreselassie”? – lifts a great line into a brilliant one if true, although I can’t really hear it myself.
The idea of hidden place names made me wonder if he could be eking out his stipend with “a Speke eel”?
If only there were someone on this site who combined knowledge of the local pronunciation of Wirral placenames, phonology, and angling in the Merseyside area, we might be able to resolve these things.
23 April 2018
dr desperate
I agree Hoylake Gebrselassie would be brilliant as a sort of converse Congolese Unsworth, but I don’t think the ‘k’ is there, no matter how hard I try to hear it.
No reason why Nigel shouldn’t sing it that way live though, and it does give me an excuse to recall the clerihew I once wrote at a John Hegley gig:
“Haile Selassie’s horn-rimmed glasses
Gave rise to cries
Of Rasta Four-Eyes”.
23 April 2018
pROBLEMCHIMP
I think it’s definitely ’10k PB’ and ‘Hoylake Gebreselassie’. I can hear the ‘k’, trust me, I’m from the Wirral.
23 April 2018
pROBLEMCHIMP
‘Time slip’ to me merely means long and boring.
Although I like the idea of the ‘I’ll give you…’ as a retort, the stress is wrong for that, it should be firmly on the ‘I’ll’.
23 April 2018
Transit Full Of Keith
Turns out there is an annual Hoylake 10K charity fun run …
23 April 2018
Slow dempsey
A collection of thoughts:
‘Call dusk’ appears to make sense but I’m pretty sure that there’s an ‘a’ in there and that the last word starts with a ‘b’ sound. ‘Call a busk’ is the closest I can come to.
It is ‘PB’ rather than ‘TV’ and though ‘Hoylake’ had a certain attraction, I hear only ‘Haile’.
That leaves the question of what the protagonist is doing to eke out his stipend. I’m not at all convinced by ‘speak ill’. The first sound is either ‘A’ or ‘I’, followed by ‘sp…’, there’s a ‘k’ sound in there and we end with ‘…eel’ or ‘…eal’ but not, at least to my ear, ‘ill’.
‘A Speke eel’ would fit but whether such things exist and how one could utilise them stipend-wise is outside my sphere of knowledge.
23 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Still confident it’s call dusk and PB. As for eking out his stipend, I’m completely stuck and don’t think it’s speak ill. I hear keel or perhaps Keele ?
23 April 2018
CHARLES EXFORD
On the latter point I’m sticking with the garbling theory he means to say “ill” but sings “eel” and isn’t bothered enough to go back and re-record. Anyone who’s done any recording, especially of fast stuff, will back me up on this that you garble things when you go back and forth between adjacent sounds like /ɪ/ and /i:/ like a tongue twister. Those two sounds are very close in how they are formed by your speech organs, but not as close as /k/ and /g/, which are almost identical. You wouldn’t really expect to hear a separate /k/ in “Hoylake Gebrselassie”, but just an elision of /k/ and /g/ like might say in “fake gear”.
However, much as though I’d like it to be ‘Hoylake’, I hear an initial sound closer to the /aɪ/ of ‘Haile’ than the /ɔɪ/ of ‘Hoylake’. And if you’d expect to hear an /i:/, as most commentators seem to say “Haile” as if it was “highly”, well Mr. B seems to be saying it closer to the correct pron of /haɪle/. His in fact /haɪleɪ/, which yeah, gives it the same /eɪ/ as ‘Hoylake’.
So to me he seems his usual contradictory mixture of the fastidious and the sloppy.
23 April 2018
Third rate les
I met Gebrselassie once (Haile) before a London marathon, in which he beat me, by nearly 50 minutes. Got my pb then too.
Bit nippy, and a lovely smile.
23 April 2018
dr desperate
So (as the kids say), here’s a scenario:
A hero, let’s call him Nigel, is tricked into attending an insufferable middle-class party where he’s cornered by a bloke who’s just discovered The Velvet Underground. He’s pissed and he’s boring the arse off Nigel with time slip stories he’s read in the Echo. In the background his friends are murmuring about the reasonable rates they got for their two weeks in the Fens.
“Oh yeah, we always drink craft beer at our picnics.”
“Well, they wouldn’t let us take ours in when we went to see Elbow at Delamere Forest last year.”
Conversation turns to 10k runs, for which the host has just achieved his personal best. “Oh, highly Gebrselassie” thinks Nigel, and begins to plot his passive-aggressive revenge.
When a game of Charades is suggested for a laugh, he quickly guesses ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, then deliberately gives them a two-word phrase that he doesn’t want to be found, and remains behind his metaphorical wall of animosity until the party grinds to a standstill.
Still don’t know where the aspic eel comes in, though.
24 April 2018
EXXO
A few futsal thoughts of varying potential relevance:
(i) the ball is harder not softer. Sorry to mislead you above.
(ii) Tranmere have a ‘state-of-the-art futsal hub‘ at Prenton Park, with yer actual TRFC adult futsal team playing Sunday afternoons in front of a small crowd to promote the sport, but mostly its kids sessions in the evenings. Not much on Sunday mornings as far as I can see.
(iii) Some futsal leagues do operate on Sunday mornings. These are far more likely to be kids’ teams but there must be some adults. Has the protagonist been invited to participate in the annoying 10k-running Elbow fan’s team, or more likely oppose them and give them an experience not dissimilar to the alehouse football described in ‘On the ‘roids’? Or (even more likely?)are they trying to volunteer him to be the coach for their kid(s) futsal outfit?
(iv) Just remembered that a few years back Mrs Exford’s pub 5-a-side team switched for a while to futsal, just to be able to play some form of the game on the night/at the venue which suited most of them. So she’s definitely played a fair amount of alehouse futsal.
24 April 2018
Low drone of the treadmill
I’d love it to be ‘Hoylake’, but I don’t hear it either.
As per Dr Desperate, I wondered if the intended wordplay is ‘Highly Gebrselassie’, as in a sarcastic sort of ‘that’s very Gebrselassie of you’.
24 April 2018
Transit Full Of Keith
Think Dr D is onto something with the Velvets references. Not sure about the whole charades and party scenario though. In about a decade, I am sure of it, someone will unearth a source for “Speke eel”, perhaps in the correspondence of a hard-up Victorian vicar, in a dusty box in Birkenhead library. For the time being, let it be ‘speak ill’. Definitely “PB” and “Haile”. But Hoylake Gebrselassie would be brilliantly sarcastic. Apparently “alehouse football” was either coined or popularised by Bill Shankly, talking about a vicious Southampton foul in 1970.
25 April 2018
dr desperate
Speaking of eels eking out stipends, my favourite exchange from PG Wodehouse’s ‘Uncle Fred Flits By’ goes thus:
“I’ve told you a hundred times, mother, that Wilberforce is only jellying eels till he finds something better.”
“What is better than an eel?” asked Lord Ickenham.
25 April 2018
dr desperate
That spot-on Shankly reference takes us into an entirely different scenario, with Nigel threatening physical violence on his interlocutor at their next futsal meeting.
According to LFCHistory.net, Shanks came out with his ‘Alehouse Football’ comment after Southampton centre-half John McGrath tackled Alun Evans around the neck with his legs, leading to him being taken off the field and playing no further part in the match. For years afterwards, whenever the Saints visited Anfield they were greeted by the Kop chanting “Alehouse, Alehouse” every time they committed a foul.
25 April 2018
Azza
Should be 10k PB . As in Personal Best for a 10k run
25 April 2018
CArrie anne
Who knew this was a “thing”? https://laughtimewithbonnie.com/
25 April 2018
dr desperate
Or this?
http://andeverythingelsetoo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/laff-time-77-adults-only.html
25 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Laugh time always has struck me as an odd lyric , to the point where I listen hard each play in case it’s something else. Don’t think I’ve ever heard it used before. More bothered about the stipend saga though, will be listening closely on Friday
25 April 2018
Polo-necked Jean
Can confirm Nigel sang ‘ I speak ill ‘ and PB tonight at Leamington. I’m unsure though of the pronunciation of the athlete’s name to comment on ‘highly’ or ‘ Hoylake ‘ sorry
28 April 2018
BIG CON
It sounds like PB to me as well.
As I was 1 of the 75 lucky winners at Leamington Spa can I send attempts at other lyrics or should I just keep a low profile for a couple of weeks?
29 April 2018
Chris The Siteowner
Please feel free to send them in BC, although we won’t publish any more until the album is officially released. But all contributions gratefully accepted, and credit will be given.
30 April 2018
Jimmy Clitheroe Junior
There was me thinking 10k (kw) PV (photo voltaic)
http://www.yougen.co.uk/blog-entry/1967/It%2727s+a+bit+of+a+sun+trap%273A+installing+a+10kW+domestic+solar+PV+system/
Mind you, for ‘animosity’ had misheard as the more sinister ‘muzzle velocity’ in a sort of Blood on the Quad way.
18 May 2018
PaUL WOOD
Been listening to the new album on repeat and want to add a vote for Transit full of Keith’s, “a Speke eel to eke out my stipend”, which came to my mind too .Simply, some free food to make his money go further. Surely they have eels here? 🙂
https://liverpool.gov.uk/leisure-parks-and-events/parks-and-greenspaces/speke-and-garston-coastal-reserve/
18 May 2018
eXXO
Rather than a simple (but slightly mispronounced) statement of what Nigel Blackwell does for a living, with “ill” pronounced more clearly as at a recent live gig? Fair enough, then.
19 May 2018
EXXO
Of course it’s never even occurred to me that mispronouncing “ill” slightly is in itself a clever play on words (can you be clever even when doing something accidentally? Maybe). He speaks ill … badly.
Sick.
19 May 2018
Chris The Siteowner
The most recent live version sounds like “I speak eel” to me. Make of that what you will.
19 May 2018
EXXO
Not to me – I agree with whoever said in the gig thread it was “speak ill”.
19 May 2018
EXXO
Nice shirt. Can’t help wondering if anyone in the front row will have an identical one at the next gig.
19 May 2018
Dr Desperate
From ‘The Giant Frog’ (an Australian Aboriginal story) in ‘Museographs: Art, Myth, Legend and Story’ by Caron Caswell Lazar:
“Then a very small eel called Namubun (…) placed himself right in front of the giant frog and began to tell him off in eel language. If you speak Eel you will know that it includes twisting the body around according to what is being said.”
Make of that what you will.
19 May 2018
Phyllis Triggs
Eels! Eels!Eels!
19 May 2018
The harbinger of nowt
Phyllis, what’s that a reference to? I wonder if it’s the same thing referred to on an episode of Hey Duggee, my daughter’s favourite TV programme, which contains numerous references to films etc. It could be a song from the Mighty Boosh, but based on the context of the episode in question, it looks to me like it might be from an ’80s computer game of some sort.
Incidentally, I like the sound of both picnics with craft beer and Elbow in Delamere. I’m not even Slightly Gebrselassie though.
20 May 2018
Phyllis Triggs
Harbinger Of Nowt, it’s a line from Standing On The Shoulders by J.D. Meatyard – frequent support act at HMHB gigs and well worth a listen.
Agreed on picnics with craft beer and Elbow in Delamere (*with reservations on that one!) I think it’s not the activities themselves which are being targeted but, as I think Exxo has already pointed out, the way people go on and on about them.
As always, NB is bang on with his observations. Whereas once he might actually have written your 10K TV it’s now 10K PB. Ostentatious displays of material wealth as signifiers of success are old hat, now its all about touchy feely lifestyle stuff and obsessive self-improvement.
*I find Elbow dull but have to admit that hearing One Day live in the setting of Delamere would probably set my spine atingle. That’s a song I’d love to hear sung by someone less earnestly Mr Nice Guy than Garvey. Let’s chuck in a bit of grit and defiance. Maybe J.D. Meatyard could do a cover?)
20 May 2018
Harbinger of nowt
Thanks Phyllis. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t explain the Hey Duggee episode though. That will have to remain a mystery!
Got some home-grown rhubarb at home, if you’re interested.
22 May 2018
Phyllis Triggs
Oooh!
22 May 2018
Cathedral juice
Regardless of what it might mean in the song, giving someone alehouse futsal seems like a handy shorthand expression for behaving more aggressively / confrontationally towards someone than would be expected given the situation. Whether a studs-up challenge in a futsal game, or the use of industrial language to express disagreement in a setting where polite passive-aggressive behaviour is the norm … academic conferences, third sector committee meetings, that sort of thing. I can see myself using the phrase in future, if only when talking to the other Biscuiteer in this marriage: e.g. “I felt like giving him some proper alehouse futsal, but I bit my tongue and counted to ten.”
I’d be interested to hear what other HMHB titles / lines have found their way into people’s everyday vocabulary like this. Does anyone think “oh shit, Pete’s CORGI registered friends are over there” when they spot some blandly irritating friends of a friend? Or maybe someone’s thinking of using “fancy swerving the Checkatrade?” instead of “fancy an early night?”
I don’t think these are quite the same as PBRs – but I’m happy to stand corrected, or at least cower shamefacedly corrected, if the consensus is otherwise.
24 May 2018
Kittymc
I initially thought it was: “Your time slip stories I avow/How boring they are, softly now”. I was obviously wrong, deffo, so thanks for clarifying. I must’ve made an erroneous mental connection with the “softly spoken friends” previously disparaged. I’d been thinking that “softly now” constituted an amusing threat to such portentous ‘I speak very quietly so you have to listen really carefully to me because everything I say is of massive import’ types. Damn them, either way. “Are boring the arse off me now” is what I hear now.
I also considered “coal dust/call dusk/cold dusk on your new age dawning” and was pleasantly uncertain about it all for a while. Cloth ears, and all that – reupholstered, ta.
24 May 2018
dirk hofman
.. a +1 for posts 45 and 47, Highly Gebrselassie, it’s another swipe at the targets and how about ‘your Times Lit stories’, haile unlikely I know but hey ..
26 May 2018
Michael Edinburgh
I believe that the lyric “your time slip stories I avow, are boring the arse off me now” must refer to the Outlander TV series and books authored by Diana Gabaldon. Fans of the books are obsessive, and would seem to be an ideal target for HMHB.
(More here – CtSO)
3 June 2018
GORDON BURNS
I thought I heard Nigel sing: “Is hardly Gebrselassie” at the London gig on Friday.
… although the album is clearly “highly”/”Haile”.
10 June 2018
Quality Janitor
‘Highly Gebrselassie’ gets my vote.
As in, ‘yeah right, you ran that fast’
22 June 2018
dickhead in quicksand
Is it only me that thinks of Epica? (Runs away and hides.)
5 August 2018
EXXO
Mike – if you aren’t fully hidden yet – please tell me you haven’t spent the last two years constructing Wikipedia pages for an entire elaborate spoof sub-genre?
5 August 2018
EXXO
“I speak ill to eke out my stipend” confirmed (source).
“That’s me [Nigel Blackwell] saying what I do for a living.”
13 August 2018
EXXO
“Haile” confirmed (source). No Hoylake. I forgot to ask about whether there was a sort of intentional resonance of “highly” as well. Because there is anyway.
13 August 2018
transit full of keith
Never thought there was an eel in there, not really, honest.
Thanks for that Exxo. The comment (about what he does for a living) changes my whole view of the song. I’d been hearing it as another song about an altercation with a particular neighbour. But now it seems directed at the listener, like a statement of intent for the album (a bit like ‘Irk the Purists’). ‘Alehouse Futsal’ is doing what Biscuit songs do – delivering a shoeing, but with grace and artistry, and from which the listener is not spared. Brilliant.
13 August 2018
paul f
Gah – just as I’d convinced myself that it was a puntastic “highly”.
13 August 2018
The harbinger of nothing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45382474
I’ll give you øl hus…
4 September 2018
cream cheese and chives
Alehouse futsal if ever I saw it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/45908455
19 October 2018
Steve Boyle
I reckon it is Timeslip the TV programme and not time slip
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154091/
14 December 2018
cream cheese and chives
https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/man-alive–not-in-our-class-dear/z6mm47h
This is brilliant. I put it here just because I thought it was so good. The word stipend is used so that might be a justification. I could have used the market researchers and put it on the NSD page instead. Poor sods conducting polls or in this case ignorantly classifying passers by.
7 August 2019
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
Congratulations to Haile Gebrselassie for also achieving life’s second-greatest honor (mention in a HMHB song being the highest, obs) by being an answer in today’s New York Times crossword puzzle.
I see in the comments some of you had heard of him before, and even met him. Personally, I would never have got the answer were it not for this song.
5 September 2019
Robiscuit
Almost definitely “Highly” and not convinced by “speak ill” which I can’t make sense with “eke out…”
11 February 2020
EXXO
Where it says “(source)” in brackets in comments 79 & 80, that was me saying that the man himself had confirmed the lyrics as written here. Apologies if that wasn’t clear. It was something CtSO started when Nigel B. first started confirming lyrics (beginning just over 10 years ago with the revelation of “porcine feed”), and Chris always used to put a link in explaining “the source.”
“I speak ill to eke out my stipend” is the lyricist’s own typically self-effacing statement of what he does, and does best: “I slag people off to continue to earn an increasingly meagre living”. Though ironically this last album was the most successful for 34 years, enabling the odd radiator to be installed for the first time at Blackwell Towers, according to what one hears.
11 February 2020
Robiscuit
Cheers Exxo – didn’t realise we had access to the horse’s mouth. Be fascinated to hear whether the garage is being used to store something stopping the MOCS moving on as I can’t get it off the playlist at the mo!
14 February 2020
dr Desperate
‘Timeslip’ the film was on Nigel’s favourite channel, Talking Pictures TV, last night. It’s described in the Radio Times as a “Quaint British sci-fi oddity in which an atomic scientist gets a dose of radiation that propels him seven seconds into the future”.
17 March 2022