The Bane Of Constance is one of the more challenging songs on the album in terms of deciphering the lyrics, so we’d better get stuck into it…
Thanks to John B
The Bane Of Constance is one of the more challenging songs on the album in terms of deciphering the lyrics, so we’d better get stuck into it…
Thanks to John B
Radar
Midge Ure circa 1899? Interesting that the victim here is Nestlé, don’t think Band Aid had much time for them a century later.
(Great find; if anyone’s watching it and can get a relevant screengrab which proves the point, just email it over – CtSO)
20 October 2014
cyclops
Nice one thanks Neil – I was just going to say about our Nige having an obscure reference to the milk thief (maybe Flash Harry?) in St Trinians (George Cole) with that dodgy tache, but just seen Radar has found it, brilliant, cheers now.
20 October 2014
Radar
I think I might be leading us up the garden path with that link. Having managed to stream the film, you can barely even see his face let alone a tell-tale dandy moustache…
20 October 2014
T’Other Simon
Hello! This is my first post on here. Just thought I’d pitch in with a couple of amendments and a bit of elaboration…
Pretty sure it’s ‘upon the driveway’ rather than ‘are on the driveway’; and is it not ‘Victory V ice-cream in stock’?
And here’s some information about dubbing mixer Freddie Slade, if you’re interested.
20 October 2014
John AndErson
I hear the “Victory V I’ll scream and stomp” line as “Victory V ice cream in stock.” I also think it’s “straight sets” not straight sex.
Sounds like “goose juice” before “scrape off the roadkill” although that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
As regards the spoken bits after milk thief, I think the first one could be “You’re a fine looking woman, Marybelle.”
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Vauxhall Viceroy which was a 2.5 litre straight six, circa 1980
20 October 2014
dirk hofman
New shoes(?)scrape off the roadkill
..when the ibex(?)
Eintracht can translate as ‘in line with,harmonious’,or simply United in a sports team name..
20 October 2014
MickeyMo
I think it’s “You still with that chiseller, Idris?”
20 October 2014
MickeyMo
Or even “chiseler” to be correct.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
http://www.canmuseum.com/Staging/Images/Cans/11776L.jpg
20 October 2014
acidic regulator
“Chiseller” for me (see OED).
20 October 2014
acidic regulator
“Horse-drawn yawns” for me
“two bored kids”, bald seems unlikely
“Goose shoes, step on the roadkill” anyone?
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Constance is a poorly lady
20 October 2014
EXXO
Blimey. Straight in with the hardest song on the album, where I hadn’t even come close to starting listening properly yet. Not gonna get that report done today, am I?
As a first contribution “Eintracht Oblong” is clearly a team of sorts, so can’t see “Oblong” not being capitalised. I’d like to see it as a Wirral subbuteo team or something like that in Vince’s mind, as the Wirral is oblong-shaped.
20 October 2014
Radar
I hear ‘Where’s the B-route?’ rather than beetroot. Maybe a local bus service? And it turns out Ibex is the name of an obscure (to me anyway) off-road vehicle. Both could be ways of making good an escape…
20 October 2014
celery
Mirabelle rather than Marybelle perhaps?
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Does anyone know what the song is about?
20 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Just poring over a big contribution of various songs from Peter T. One correction suggested for this song is “straight six”, which would be an acceptable alternative to “straight sex” or “straight sets”, I guess. Keep the comments coming, even if you’re just agreeing with other people. Any suggested correction already posted above which gets two or three seconders/thumbs-up/+1s in subsequent comments, is likely to get actioned.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Ah well I had a go. See No.6
(You’re too cryptic, Bobby – CtSO)
20 October 2014
EXXO
@ Bobby
Constance says “penny for your thoughts” and Vince says “OK, but I’ll understand if you wish you hadn’t asked, this is what I’ve been thinking just now but ask me another time and and it’ll be another pile of bollocks. Sorry about that but there you go.”
Seems pretty much like every time I’ve ever been asked that kind of question meself, with only the current Mrs. Exford really understanding and tolerating my replies, so no surprises in the song for me. But at the same time by its nature anything in the lyrics could be anything and mean anything, which is why I say it’s the hardest track by a mile on the album to justify what you think you might hear.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Lewy Bodies then?
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
For what it’s worth I think It’s the best song on the album, in my humble opinion of course
20 October 2014
MR GALBRAITH
Bobby I agree entirely, and am looking forward to hearing it in a live environment sometime soon. Still haven’t got a clue what half the lyrics are though!
20 October 2014
EXXO
For those who like a bit of evolution, something about the cost of entry to Hoylake Flower Club – don’t think it was Heswall – got mentioned at a couple of gigs a while back, about 12p or 20p was it, and “this a song about finding out the bursar was secretly keeping ibex” featured at a gig a couple of years ago.
20 October 2014
acidic regulator
Finally found me copy of the 1974 Brewer. To shoe the goose To fritter away one’s time on unnecessary work; to play about, to trifle.
There’s a woodcarving of a blacksmith shoeing a goose in Beverley Minster.
More practically, geese were once shod by driving them over hot tar then sand to protect their feet on the way to market.
20 October 2014
acidic regulator
+1 for Mirabelle.
20 October 2014
themightybiscuit
I’ve no idea what it all means but I agree with Radar, it’s ‘where’s the B-route?’.
20 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
The Ramones sang a lot about mental illness
20 October 2014
CARRIE ANNE
Another vote for B route.
20 October 2014
acidic regulator
“Anyone can be 52, but only a bus can be 52B” – Spike Milligan
20 October 2014
stephen
Half-drawn yawns?
On the drive way a Victory V I scream and stop?
20 October 2014
T’Other Simon
Surely it’s ‘Victory V ice cream’, after this…
“There was the ritual swapping of guitars for She’s In Broadstairs. Hasn’t Nigel told the one before about dreaming of eating a giant marshmallow, and then waking up to find that his pillow has disappeared? On the subject, Nigel was wondering whether he he had dreamt about Victory V ice cream, or is it for real? Joy Division Oven Gloves are now available on Stockton market. The mosh pit took some time to wake up, but it was lively by the end of the gig.”
20 October 2014
Dr Desperate
As Exxo says, it’s basically a stream of consciousness song, a follow-on from the trendy mother from the sitcom saying “Penny for ’em” to her teenage son. We shouldn’t, therefore, try to make too much sense of any apparently linked phrases.
Having said that, LockJaw (sic) is the mechanism used in a class of Alpine ski-poles.
http://k2skis.com/tools/lockjaw-alu
20 October 2014
Dr Desperate
And this inflatable Chilean dictator (General Augusto Pinochet) appeared on the streets of Santiago in 2012.
20 October 2014
Dr Desperate
My ‘Midge Ure Milk Thief’ T-shirt arrived this morning, in good time for Manc.
20 October 2014
John
‘Where’s the B-route?’ I think. Also, I hope. It’s a classic Nigel construction as far as I can see.
20 October 2014
bobby svarc
@Dr D Thanks for that, I think the song’s a bit darker than that
20 October 2014
Radar
As T’Other Simon said, whatever they are, they’re ‘upon the driveway’. I’m also convinced it’s ‘iced cream’ (the original term for it) rather than plain old ice cream.
21 October 2014
dirk hofman
Horse drawn yawls, upon (defo) the driveway.
Hyphen or one/two word horsedrawn?
21 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
While yawls sounds much more promising than “yawns”, is there any way they could be horse-drawn?
21 October 2014
dirk hofman
You’d need a trailer or a canal, perhaps? Great work by the way, thanks.
21 October 2014
EXXO
I slept on “horse-drawn yawls” meself last night -what a storm-tossed night it was here- and would probably have posted it earlier meself, had the mighty tempest not brought down the internet here or something. You do see pictures every now and then of fishing yawls being dragged up & down the beach by carthorses. Mrs E. was off in the middle of the night for a flight and I fell asleep with the elements raging outside to dream of yawls being pulled across the tops from Whitby to Robin Hood’s bay to launch to the aid of several brigs in peril, but I dunno.
These by Vincent are too small for yawls. And although this one by an acquaintance of his is far too big for a normal yawl, the definition really does depend on how it is masted and rigged, and does show that if they could pull this, then horses could and did certainly pull a yawl.
It is also interesting that other songs on the album have separate unconnected references to lifeboats and canals (see inlay, no spoilers please).
21 October 2014
dirk hofman
Position of mizzen mast denoting yawl classification?
http://www.devonyawl.org/page.php?6
..and I’m hearing a ‘d’ sound before ‘upon the driveway’..
21 October 2014
celery
If it’s defo ‘Where the ibex?’ with no s in where’s – might it be ‘Wear the Ibex’ instead?
A bit of googling tells me (Foden) Ibex are a Northamptonshire-based company that manufactures leather goods – primarily belts, but also jackets, shoes and driving gloves. And also a brand of weatherproof goods – inner gloves and suchlike – spun from the finest merino wool and apparently much-beloved of hikers and their ilk.
Any takers?
21 October 2014
EXXO
Yeah but what hymns and poems am I thinking of that go “where the thingy, where the wotsit?”
The ibex (animal) reference has been in gestation for a few years, like so many on this album – I’ve checked up and it was 3 years ago that NB57/10 introduced a song with “this one’s about finding out the bursar had secretly been keeping ibex.”
21 October 2014
celery
@Exxo
You may well be right. In fact I think I hear a faint ‘s’ making it “Where’s the ibex?” anyway.
However, if it is a singular ‘Where’ then you would’ve thought the complete line would go “Where the B-Route? Where the ibex?” Why change half way through? Doesn’t really seem to be something Nigel would do deliberately… unless it’s just a slip-of-the-tongue in the recording studio.
21 October 2014
BananaYogi
Funny about that Victory V ice cream line. I definitely remembered an ice cream lolly on a stick shaped like a hand making a peace sign (which of course would be a ‘V’ sign if held the other way round*). Googled it, couldn’t find a picture. Mentioned it to Mrs Bananayogi, who also definitely remembered it. Until we both thought about it, and then thought perhaps we didn’t remember it at all. Further Googling revealed funny feet, hands with one finger up etc, but no ‘V’ sign. Does anyone else have a (false?) memory of this?
* probably why they weren’t made!
21 October 2014
BananaYogi
Oh and yes, I know Churchill’s original ‘V’ sign was the ‘rude’ way around – or at least I think I do!
21 October 2014
dirk hofman
Cough sweet flavoured ice cream..?
21 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
I can remember “Funny Feet”
21 October 2014
EXXO
I’m not having ‘B-route’. Nobody says ‘B-route’.
It’s a glottal ‘beetroot’.
21 October 2014
acidic regulator
Churchill’s original V-sign was indeed sometimes the wrong way round. So was (CONTENT WARNING<this one.
21 October 2014
acidic regulator
Nope. No ‘t’, not even a glottal one.
Where’s dee bee Route?
21 October 2014
EXXO
I think we can be fairly certain that nobody says that Mike, nobody over the mental age of a haversack anyway.
21 October 2014
dirk hofman
..horse-drawn lords..?
..beetroot..
straight sets..
summer hail..
21 October 2014
Slow dempsey
+1 for beetroot over b-route. The middle t is more evident than the d in cards and I can’t see it being “on the cars”
21 October 2014
Slow dempsey
Also, I now hear it as “Heard he’s got the ginger beer concession” rather than “Hey, he’s got the”.
Although my first guess had involved “ginger beards in session”, so who knows?
21 October 2014
MickeyMo
As for ‘cough sweet-flavoured ice cream’, I’ve seen Uncle Joe’s Mint Ball-flavoured ice cream on sale in Asda. Never plucked up the courage to try it though.
21 October 2014
Facebook Mum
I’ve been singing “inflatable potatoes” to myself. Thanks all.
21 October 2014
Mick Exclusion Zone
Long-time fan, first-time poster. First time on here at least; I was, on occasion, seen on the Yahoo Group in years gone by, before it turned into Pitman’s Tips.
Anyway, here’s my bit of indispensable cobblers to add to the mix…V for Vince, Victory V’s, Vauxhall Viceroy’s…is Nigel trying to make order from chaos swirling around in his head, cf. The Referee’s Alphabet. Dare I say it, some form of OCD?
Thank you for your patience.
21 October 2014
acidic regulator
Have an inflatable potato, compliments of the house.
Off-topic but along the same lines – did anyone else feel that The Wire featured a remarkably high proportion of characters whose names began with ‘B’?
21 October 2014
acidic regulator
PS you left out Vicar Shit.
21 October 2014
acidic regulator
I don’t think I want to google “inflatable dictators”. I have mental images of some seriously detumescent sex toys.
21 October 2014
Kittymc
Give me a spork! Cathedral juice and vicar shit. Initial elations … ‘Theme Tune for Something or Other’. The horn and the humming on ‘Adam Boyle’ – sublime. Kirkcudbright, of course.
“This town was tailor-made for dying in, and on these streets the gutters are for crying in…”
“Knock-kneed and hackneyed, it was ever thus…” Pathos AND silliness.
‘Baguette Dilemma’ – is it a jig? The “edgy-as-ever” bloke whooping and a-hollering on Red Rocks seems familiar. I’ve been to Hoylake. They put something in the water there. Shredded Hollyoaks scripts or something.
The Pessimist Festival in Mollington.
Cresta, naturally.
That Bridgedale and his tetchiness … the image of his ‘perfect haymaker on a stray coat’ is fixed in my imagination forever. The recollection made me smile in Tesco. Poor Gwatkin. “Gwatkin as is no longer represents Gwatkin as was.” Stringy Bob, at least, went out with a laugh.
“I write to people; they don’t get back to me. I write a second time; they don’t reply.”
Tenacious civic-minded Blackwell and his cap, 30 yards to Price Street. I want to believe it’s true.
What larks! Sanity is restored … “To sacrifice sanity thinking such things, I must have been mad from the start.”
Slope Dempsey?
Have fun in Leicester …
21 October 2014
EXXO
On demos in Ukraine these days they do a good line in inflatable sex dolls with just a cut-out face of Putin pasted on.
the lyric also reminds me (tenuously) of a time I was in Poland for an amateur footy tournament and was looking round the local market for souvenirs. It was the sort of place where German visitors popped over for the day to buy cheap knick-knacks. The stallholder saw me looking unenthusiastically at some of his old Lenin-themed memorabilia, assumed I was German and, without waiting for my answer to a question I couldn’t understand, he pulled back a curtain to reveal the secret Nazi memorabilia section, full of busts of Hitler, Nazi flags, medals, uniforms and plenty of genuine period items – all illegal in Germany of course (which is why they were on sale just across the border).
I beat a hasty retreat of course. It was remarkably like that episode from Father Ted.
21 October 2014
EXXO
@ Kitty.
Now that’s what I call an album review.
Deserves to be spared the Siteowner’s draconian redactions that does (Kitty is one of the first ever Interweb Biscuiteers after all).
(I stopped the redacting after Monday’s release – CtSO)
21 October 2014
EXXO
So quotes from songs we haven’t done yet are allowed as long as we don’t put up the whole lyrics?
22 October 2014
Kittymc
@ Exxo
Cheers, Exxo. Just over the proverbial with Offal, and felt compelled to enthuse. The old forum seems a bit dead – not a peep. Does this site redact? I wasn’t aware. Ta for the tip. I’m new to this sort of thing and I don’t do no Facebook nor Twitter neither. Your Polish adventure sounds hairy. Topically, I once melted a Spork. They’re not as sturdy as the manufacturers claim. Planned obsolescence abounds. Well, we’ll all remember what we were listening to when Gonzalo struck. If we’re not crushed by a fallen hornbeam in the night. Off to meditate now, as it beats doing nothing and all that … Looking forward to The Ritz gig no end.
22 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@Exxo. As I understand it, the embargo was on songs which hadn’t been played on air before the official release date. Now that that’s history, everyone is free to make sly allusions; but attempted full transcriptions should still be sent to CtSO. (I’m saving a couple of dubious (possibly deranged) insights on individual songs up for the lyrics comments pages when they’re created, that’s where they belong.)
22 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@KittyMC – I think CtSO redacts posts which include words like **** or (especially) ****. But it seems to depend a lot on whether or not the ******* ****** can be *****.
22 October 2014
Kittymc
@ Acidic Regulator. Well, that’s me f***ed, then. Thanks for the advice. Definitely a grower. I read that review. The man who wrote it can’t write for cough-flavoured toffee. His contortions embarrassed me… and I’m saying that as one verbose motherf**cker.myself. F**k the begrudgers … call the RNLI.
22 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@KittyMC, as for the RNLI – choose between ‘r’ and ‘w’ is all I’ll say.
22 October 2014
G100
Ooh! It’s been torture waiting for the site to come back on line for this…
After my first ‘headphone-listen’ I defo heard:
“And Heswall Flower Club owe me one pound twelve”
(Spot on. – CtSO)
23 October 2014
peter mcornithologist
It may be of no relevance but there used to be a Football stadium in New York named the Eintracht Oval.
23 October 2014
T’Other Simon
This may be stating the obvious but ‘Idris’ is a well-known make of ginger beer. Hence ‘Idris’ having the ginger beer concession.
23 October 2014
dr desperate
Good spot, T’other Si, they’re only obvious when you see ’em.
I must say Idris sounds more of a chizzer than a chiseller to me – possibly one of those chizzle wizzle things that all the young people are saying nowadays, though I can recall T’other Nigel (Molesworth) using ‘chiz’ to mean a cheat or swiz, as any fule kno.
The restaurant inside the BM sells only posh Fentiman’s ginger beer, at £3.75 a pop.
23 October 2014
dr desperate
Tuborg kids??
23 October 2014
Bobby SVARC
Open your eyes lads, please! See No.10 above – I’m feeding then to you for free, eh Exxo?
23 October 2014
dr desperate
I wouldn’t normally mention it except for the fact that Adge Cutler features in ‘Footprints’, but The Wurzels’ chart-topper ‘Combine Harvester’ includes the line “Aarrr, you’re a fine lookin’ woman”.
23 October 2014
T’Other Simon
Ah. Whoops. Good spot, Bobby S.
23 October 2014
G100
@Dr D. I also heard Tuborg Kids. No idea how that makes any sense though, unless that Danish brewing family has a history of starving their children.
23 October 2014
peter mcornithologist
Maybe chiseller refers to sculpture.Idris Khan is quite gifted in this area. I am becoming obsessed with this track. There is a 9 hole golf course ,Summerhill, in Hay on Wye.
23 October 2014
dr desperate
Which is interesting, as ‘back nine’ would usually refer to the inward half of an 18-hole course.
23 October 2014
Deckard
B-route. Risky speculation as haven’t got album yet but Spandau Chant No 1 – Friday night beat route.
23 October 2014
KITTYMC
Do I scream for the beadle or do I go for the ham? OF COURSE! Thank you.
23 October 2014
KITTYMC
Yup. Makes more sense … abseil for no-one, i.e. don’t try to impress people with attention-seeking stunts, and take the good times and bad times in your stride … she’s like the clichéd old spinster who’d never been loved. Only she has been loved …
23 October 2014
KITTYMC
Still got Harry Secombe in my head though.
23 October 2014
KITTYMC
Also have in mind the Thick of It episode revolving around the subtleties between “the man of the moment” and “the man for the moment.” What a difference a tiny little preposition makes! (Tautology, naturally, intentional.) Can safely say I’ll never abseil for no man’s pleasure, I. Good manners be your speed.
24 October 2014
dr desperate
Damn you, NB10, with your tongue-in-cheek Northern wit, you’ve airshipped me again! Summerhill’s back nine would be shite, as it’s only got a front nine.
24 October 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
I think there should probably be a comma after Vince (at least according to Hart’s Rules on punctuation within quotation marks).
24 October 2014
Radar
I had something of an epiphany listening to this on the way in this morning. I reckon it might be ‘Tube orchids are underfed’ which would explain why Heswall Flower Club owe Vince one pound twelve.
Having said that I don’t know what a tube orchid is, although a quick Google does suggest that they’re often grown in vitro. Warning: Daily Mail link.
24 October 2014
dr desperate
@Jeff I agree; there was a comma there in my original transcript.
@Radar Brilliant! Brigg casts its vote for tube orchids.
24 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
The comma was, of course, missing. I’m not sure about “tube orchids”, but then I’m not convinced by “two bored kids” either. Sounds like “chew bored kids” to me, even though it can’t be, as that makes no sense.
24 October 2014
acidic regulator
An argument for the already-suggested Tuborg Kids”, perhaps?
If it’s “orchids”, it really ought to be “test-tube orchids”, which sways me against it. (As did the link to the Daily Heil.)
24 October 2014
EXXO
I’m going to tenuously put forward Count Arthur Strong as a bit of a possible background influence on this song – obviously not as big an influence as actual life and imagination like, but an influence in spirit anyway – namely the parts of the radio show that evoke genuine pathos as well as comedy – the compassion you even sometimes feel for a character like The Major in Fawlty Towers.
‘Heswall Flower Club owe me £1.12’ is a really Arthur Strong- style line (and we do know that NB10 likes the radio programme after what he said at the end of a recent version of ‘Mountain Bikes’ – “that’s when I first said, that’s when I first said, that Arthur Strong on the telly wouldn’t work” – I hope he didn’t say “would never work”, cos I think it could have, but was never realistically going be allowed to).
@ACIDIC REGULATOR: I don’t think we can expect anything in this song to necessarily be as it ought to be, though, that’s the point.
£1.12 is about right for a tube of orchid drip feed by the way, but do Heswall flower club sell anything? From their spacebook page, tweeter & other publicity there are signs of fund-raising (for Clatterbridge Cancer Care, natch) …. but not much evidence of sales.
24 October 2014
EXXO
‘Compassion’ and ‘pathos’ are words I’ve been using a lot about this album, by the way. At first it was just the end of ‘Teenage Bride’ and then the pathos in the title track (more compassion than he’s ever shown for any of his made-up failed rock acts before), but then ‘Mileage Chart’ began gradually to make me sadder too (balanced out with its statement of quiet acceptance too of course), and now this track has really started to make me dwell on old-age, failing mental capacities and death too. So there you go.
24 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@Exxo, I agree. What worries me about “two bored kids” is that it feels far too mundane to be on Vince’s mind.
As for the orchid drip feed – HFC owe Vince money, not the other way round. Unfortunately, I can’t make out the size of their typical payouts.
(We are so going to be the first result in that search once we’ve done “H” in the A to Z – CtSO)
24 October 2014
dr desperate
@ AR As the original begetter of ‘Tuborg Kids’, I did see the link to the Cafe Press ad, but I thought it was more “Kids’ clothing with Tuborg written on it” than “Clothing for Tuborg Kids”. I haven’t got the CD with me at the moment, but from memory “tube orchids” does sound a possibility.
@Exxo Deffo compassion and pathos, especially the last line of ‘Stuck Up A Hornbeam’. Vince’s utterances in this song resemble the ‘word salad’ thought disturbance of schizophrenia, and his giving permission to Constance to “make good your escape, it’s not your concern” is heart-breaking.
24 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@CtSO nothing like a bit of SEO. I’m looking forward to Wirralians searching for somewhere to display their pitiful competition test-tube orchids being directed to your site.
24 October 2014
EXXO
@Reg/Mike what I meant was it’s a possibility that he’s saying he wants the £1.12 back that he’s spent there, or that Constance has perhaps spent there on his behalf, on orchid drip feed, so they owe money as a refund (normal OAP logic, as featured so heavily in Arthur Strong’s humour). Also possible that he’s spent the £1.12 somewhere else entirely, but just says Heswall Flower Club for reasons of confused mental capacity.
24 October 2014
mick exclusion zone
Exxo, I’m pretty sure his exact words at Holmfirth were “Arthur Strong on telly just won’t work”. I do think you’re right though; it could have.
Nice to see LaMcDermott here. I doubt anyone will remember, but I was Moo on the Yahoo group forum thingy. Or at least I think I was. It’s been a while. Are Mr Blue Sky, Loop et al. still doing the rounds?
24 October 2014
EXXO
@Mick E.Z. yeah Taylo pops in every now and then – last seen in the “ELO” thread last week I think. His Mrs. not on here as far as I know but I wondered if she’s the horn on the Adam Boyle? Or perhaps Taylo would have mentioned that?
24 October 2014
mick exclusion zone
Hadn’t thought of that, but yes, it could well be Loop. Not too surprised Phil didn’t mention it. He was never one to blow his own…well, you can guess the rest.
24 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@Exxo you could well be right. Not least because, one pound twelve makes me think £1 12s. It could even be that Vince has a longstanding grudge over the oversized cheque which he never (or has forgotten he) received in the dim and distant past. The Club Secretary’s files might be very informative: they could contain a long series of letters extending over many years in inks of unusual colours.
The rather old-fashioned names Constance and Vince are also suggestive: I’ve only ever met two people called Constance: my mother, and her mother. But (wotthehell, archie, wotthehell), I’m looking for images not any (haha) one true meaning. I more and more have the feeling that Constance and Vince are getting on a bit.
There’s no real suggestion in the lyrics, but I keep thinking of Fantastic Voyage.
24 October 2014
EXXO
Yes, that Jules-Verne inspired story, definitely, I’ve been thinking of that too.
Great read that about Asimov’s principles in refusing then agreeing to write it – and anything that tells me I can (one day maybe) write a novel in 54 days flat is fine by me.
24 October 2014
EXXO
If I could get in a tiny craft and travel back a few days, I think I would withdraw comment #20. Because although it still can be read that way, once you think about the age of people at the Heswall Flower Club, well, yes, it does all become … older. I’d withdraw it but then John would have nobody to agree with in #33 would he?
24 October 2014
acidic regulator
@@Exxo I once read an entertaining analysis of the technology of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. As I remember it, Captain Nemo’s quarters occupied 85-90% of Nautilus, with crew and servants’ quarters, life support, engines and suchlike irritating but unavoidable annoyances taking up the remainder. (Which somehow makes me think of a Cabinet full of people each of whose faces closely resembles a recently-smacked arse.)
I subsequently discovered that Fantastic Voyage is not an accurate portrayal of how cutting-edge science is actually carried out:(
24 October 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
That comma after Vince needs to go inside the inverted commas, not outside.
24 October 2014
KittyMC
@ mick exclusion one. Hurray! Yes, of course I remember … you were following HMHB.. before the gods that made the gods were born. The forum was a lark, wasn’t it? I do remember you in particular because you didn’t post that often, and when you did it was always kind and not about you, which was more than I ever managed,
25 October 2014
Jeff dreadnought
I reckon this Vince character is the same one as in Them’s The Vagaries.
25 October 2014
Luminous Strides
Been a HMHB fan since about 1984 .
Love this site but don’t have much time to read and have rarely contributed.
Got my CD 2 days ago but haven’t had a chance to listen yet.
I bought for the first time from probe-plus rather than Amazon and v pleased
with service.
Seen a couple of references to £1.12 – as someone who is old enough to remember pre decimal currency is it coincidence that one pound twelve pennies in ‘old money’
( which I think would have been written as £1 0 /- 12d ) was 21 shillings , which was a guinea.
Not sure what the relevance would be here though …
25 October 2014
Ninkasi
it may be my memory going but the old Unigate milk adverts with the slogan “watch out watch out there’s a Humphrey about” did they not once reveal what a humphrey looked like, usually they only showed a straw, it was basically the same as a “kilroy was here” character which Midge Ure does look like. Well that is what I 1st thought of when I heard the line
26 October 2014
mick exclusion zone
@kittymc Your posts were always a joy, as were Exxo’s. Great to see the team back together.
But anyway…FWIW, I think there’s more to this track than first meets the ear. Now I’ve lived with it for a while, it’s become my favourite on the album. And I’d say the album itself contains some of their very best.
I’m struggling to understand why a few people seem to be lukewarm about it to be honest. Each their own and all that, but I think what we can all agree on is that they’re wrong, and they’re grotesquely ugly freaks.
26 October 2014
kittymcdermott
@ninkasi … I know what you mean! Humphrey had a red and white straw, which was pretty luxurious for the times…
27 October 2014
Radar
I happened to be at the British Museum yesterday looking at pictures of witches. The only refreshments van in sight didn’t even sell ginger beer. Most disappointing.
I’m going to make another bid for ‘iced cream’ here, I definitely hear the ‘d’; then I’m going to shut up about it and do some work.
27 October 2014
dr desperate
Someone recently posted that obscure literary references on UfO were few, but I suspect he’s just getting sneakier at concealing them. ‘Give Me The Cup’ by John Hill Hewitt (the ‘Bard of the Confederacy’, no relation to Paolo) contains the lines:
“Oh! May she taste the sweets of wealth
Free from the bane of constancy.”
27 October 2014
EXXO
How would we know they were few anyway?
It’s a bit like saying ‘there aren’t many obscure life-forms in this universe”.
An interesting collocation Dr. D but surely not one that makes one automatically call for one’s Dr. Watson’s?
27 October 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Good spot, Dr. D.
27 October 2014
rubber faced irritant
My first love were The Fall so the reference to “chiseller” made me think of ‘The Chiselers’ which was a single which later appeared on The Light User Syndrome album. I vaguely remembered an online discussion about the term and, on checking back to The Fall online forum, found a post from one Steve Hanley (surely not the…). This said it was a word from Hawthorne Studies of factory behaviour in 1950’s and was a derogatory term for a worker with a slow work rate who held back other workers. It also states that it should have been ‘chiseller’ but “Mark can’t spell”.
30 October 2014
Hartychoke
I played Summerhill once. Got it round the front nine in 32, but came back in 54. (Didn’t really but hey ho!)
31 October 2014
rubber faced irritant
When the majority of people had milk bottles left on their doorsteps and full fat was still the most common variety, blue tits used to remove the aluminium foil and syphon the cream. There are numerous scientific papers on the information superhighway about why they were virtually the only birds able to do this (prior to the introduction of foil lids Robins were the prime milk thieves of the bird world).
Someone cleverer than me would be able to post a picture of a blue tit alongside Midge and demonstrate the uncanny resemblance.
31 October 2014
rubber faced irritant
Can you tell which one it is? Midge or a tit?
31 October 2014
dickhead in quicksand
I’m finally getting off the fence. +1 beetroot.
Boiled or pickled beetroot with roast* ibex – mmmmmm either way.
*roast/baked before you pedants start to get aereated. Stewed would work too.
(OK, that’s enough votes for beetroot to swing it for now – CtSO)
2 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
“Jetwash the bikes, Roy” rather than “Jetwash the Viceroy”? What with the trips to Halfords and oiling of chains and whatnot. On the other hand, I suppose this wouldn’t be the first example of bizarre acts being performed on members of the gentry (see JDOG).
3 November 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Nice try, but as Bobby pointed out above, I suspect the Viceroy is just as jetwashable as any bike.
3 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
Ah, yes. Nice one, Bobby. I clearly wasn’t paying attention.
3 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
Horse drawn yawls on the river Suir in Eire.Also Seabird yawl launched via horse drawn wagon in San Pedro California.
3 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
“Horse-drawn lawns” anyone?
I’m envisaging a pleasingly old-fashioned garden centre delivering turves, or a drop-in cricket pitch as used in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket.
4 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
It’ll be interesting to see if I can get away with this edit.
6 November 2014
Mirriam webster
That’s not how I would spell kagool
6 November 2014
BrumbiscUit
I’ve had a quick scan of the thread to see if this has been mentioned before, but it seems not. Upon playing the CD in my newly fitted car stereo with the track name display feature selected, this track was labelled as ‘The Bain of Constance’. Simple homophonic error, I suppose…
8 November 2014
Chris The Siteowner
That came about because the only pre-release tracklisting anywhere was on Amazon, and that’s how it had been spelled there. So it may have come from that. The tracklist uploaded to Gracenote came from Queen Of Quick Wit here.
8 November 2014
BrumbiscUit
Yebbut this was sourced from the actual CD itself, not a third-party source, Chris.
8 November 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Oh. I didn’t know that standard Audio CDs came with data track listings. That’s a new one on me.
8 November 2014
Gerry Gow
I don’t see a link in PMcO’s comment 127 above. This looks like what he’s referring to…
12 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
it must be yawls .or am I in the midst of a Jean Genet novel?
13 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Backs to the wall is my advice.
13 November 2014
Norbert D
I only got UfO this week, and haven’t been quite so instantly impressed by it as I was by 90 Bisodol and CSI:Ambleside. But having read the lyrics to this one, which I couldn’t decipher for the life of me on the CD, they really are pure brilliance, aren’t they? Even though I’m sure a few of ’em are still wrong (I don’t have any better suggestions though).
Is it just me who sees a vague connection to Philip Larkin’s poem “If, My Darling”?
If my darling were once to decide
Not to stop at my eyes,
But to jump, like Alice, with floating skirt into my head,
She would find no table and chairs,
No mahogany claw-footed sideboards,
No undisturbed embers;
The tantalus would not be filled, nor the fender-seat cosy,
Nor the shelves stuffed with small-printed books for the Sabbath,
Nor the butler bibulous, the housemaids lazy:
She would find herself looped with the creep of varying light,
Monkey-brown, fish-grey, a string of infected circles
Loitering like bullies, about to coagulate;
Delusions that shrink to the size of a woman’s glove,
Then sicken inclusively outwards. She would also remark
The unwholesome floor, as it might be the skin of a grave,
From which ascends an adhesive sense of betrayal,
A Grecian statue kicked in the privates, money,
A swill-tub of finer feelings. But most of all
She’d be stopping her ears against the incessant recital
Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms,
Each one double-yolked with meaning and meaning’s rebuttal:
For the skirl of that bulletin unpicks the world like a knot,
And to hear how the past is past and the future neuter
Might knock my darling off her unpriceable pivot.
(Phil’s got slightly less interesting things in his head, mind)
13 November 2014
Norbert D
(That last bit isn’t in the poem)
13 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Translate that Larkin poem into Basque, or expect to get ignored around here!
Exxo has made this point before, against me, and I think he’s right: NB10-57 hardly ever alludes; he quotes. That’s not to say that the sob (not you, Exxo, for once) never alludes; but it is always important to bear firmly in mind the deep philosophical propositions which enigmatically underpin* much of NB57-10’s verse; as a recent example, the chorus in Gwatkin springs to mind.
IMO the more you listen to UfO, the more butt it kicks
*BS available by the yard, reasonable prices.
13 November 2014
Mattkin As-is
“…it is always important to bear firmly in mind the deep philosophical propositions which enigmatically underpin…”
Now that has – unintentionally I’m sure – put me in mind of Vogon poetry.
“counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor” anyone?
13 November 2014
toastkid
DIS (and EXXO indirectly) – re “NB10-57 hardly ever alludes”: surely the songs are full of allusion?
“No frills, handy for the hills, that’s the way you spell New Mills” – what is this if not an allusion to “A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork, that’s the way we spell New York”? from Cocaine by Dillinger?
“We built this city on a trad arr tune” – “We built this city on Rock and Roll” by Starship.
That’s the first two that spring to mind. There must be many more like this.
13 November 2014
EXXO
I’d put those into the category of direct parody meself. Allusion is more subtle, and doesn’t quote or re-use that much of the same structure as the original.
Having said that, I do now think we can identify a certain amount of allusion in the songs, and I do now withdraw that remark I made to Mike when I felt he was ‘trying too hard’. Sorry Mike. We could debate for example whether ‘The Bane of Constance’ alludes to certain sci-fi tropes or just re-uses them; it doesn’t quote or reference them as far as we can see (as of yet). However, ‘Teenage Honved Fan’ certainly parodies titles like ‘I was a Teenage Werewolf’ and does allude to scenes from those werewolf movies.
The thing about allusion is that by definition it’s meant to be noticed, by those who have the common ground of shared experience to notice it, but also by definition it’s not a quote or citation. When NB57/10 wants sources to be noticed he tends to parody or quote them more directly. But not always.
Then there are the lyrics where you think “that sounds like it might be from something like….” and you search it turns to be a hidden quote or paraphrase of Tolstoy or Wilfred Owen or someone, but that’s still not allusion.
13 November 2014
EXXO
So yeah, The Larkin poem could well be a source of inspiration for ‘Constance’, but I can’t yet see an allusion. The sci-fi stories could be inpirations for both Larkin and Blackwell, but whereas we could argue convincingly that Blackwell’s ‘tiny craft’ is an allusion to the Verne/Asimov/etc, Larkin’s mention of ‘Alice’ refers directly to another literary source.
13 November 2014
toastkid
OK, i’m not a teacher, right, but surely parody and allusion aren’t mutually exclusive – allusion means “to reference indirectly”. You could parody something without explicitly saying “I am parodying X” (which you shouldn’t have to do, anyway: if your parody is any good people should get it without you having to say “Hi – Ronald Reagan here”, like a bad impersonator), and in that case you’re alluding to X.
Maybe we’re arguing about where the bar for “indirectly reference” lies. To me, “indirectly reference” means “don’t actually say the name of the thing you’re referencing”, but to you it seems to mean “avoid naming it but also don’t be too obvious about it”. I’m not saying either point of view is right or wrong, it’s an interesting point about the semantics of the word “indirectly”.
13 November 2014
EXXO
Yes, I must admit I’m using the terms as they are used in literary criticism, where like any field of study it’s necessary have distinctions, as far as is possible. Been using the terms for about 37 years now so can’t help it really.
13 November 2014
EXXO
I think assumptions of the author have to be taken into account too. “You’re so beige” assumes almost everyone listening will immediately know it’s semi-quoting and thus parodying “you’re so vain”. There’s no allusion. But what if somebody listening doesn’t get it immediately? Does that make it less of a parody and more of an allusion? Not at all – it’s just a parody they didn’t get. Allusion is subtler.
13 November 2014
toastkid
Hmm – is “You’re so beige” parody though? That would imply that he’s making fun of Carly Simon, which i don’t think is the case – he’s just borrowing the lyric to make fun of the target of the song (who I assume isn’t Carly Simon). Hence not parody? I still don’t get how parody and allusion are mutually exclusive.
13 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
The best example of I can think of for something that is both an allusion and a parody is Adam Boyle. The song has to be alluding to someone (Frank Turner? Alex James?) or a mixture of people. And whoever it’s alluding to, it’s also parodying.
By the way, if you’re the only person who “gets” an allusion and no-one else does, does that make it an illusion?
13 November 2014
EXXO
OK, I’m not saying any of these terms are mutually exclusive but it’s necessary to distinguish them as much as we can or we all get confused.
Most parody (or witty re-phrasing of other people’s lines if you prefer in some of the cases cited, Toastie) depends on the audience’s general recognition of what is being skitted. Sometimes on stage between songs NB57/10 might do some kind of witty adaptation of a few lines from some band or other and hardly anyone in the audience gets what he’s on about, so the parody falls flat at that moment for most of us, but it’s still way more direct than an allusion, as long as you happen to know where he’s coming from.
I do think it’s an erroneous interpretation of ‘indirect’ in the definition of ‘allusion’ to say that because something is not mentioned it is indirect. As someone said above, very little parody (or witty re-phrasing) actually says “now here’s a parody (or a witty re-phrasing) of X by Z,” but it’s still direct.
13 November 2014
EXXO
“The whole song has to be alluding to someone.”
No it doesn’t. It may be, but to me this smacks of the whole “moody chops must be someone like Morrissey” syndrome. Most of NB57/10’s objects of scorn in such cases are archetypal and generic.
OK, so the “Leigh-on-Sea so it must be The Horrors” and the “Revelations and bad tattoo so it must be The Libertines” had some substance about them, though both have been denied by our lyricist.
“Booked two weeks off at the end of July” suggests to me he’s not even a professional musician … although it could, I suppose, at a pinch, be a subtle reference to the treadmill of the recording contract, the promotional and touring grind which NB57/10 has rejected so totally (see ‘Mileage Chart’).
13 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
I wasn’t really presuming to know what the lyricist’s intentions in writing this song were, of course. Who knows who, if anyone, he had in mind?
Morrissey, the Horrors, Alex James … it doesn’t “have” to be any of them, and obviously we’re just speculating (whatever terms we frame the speculation in). But isn’t that one of the things that makes them such great songs – you hear them and think you recognise the kind of character they’re portraying? And wouldn’t this site be a much duller place without all the theories – even the more far-fetched ones?
13 November 2014
SIMON P
Whoever is being parodied, I don’t think it can be Frank Turner. He went from post-hardcore (Million Dead), to being a bloke with an acoustic, to a rock band (but never lad rock, you should see the demographics of Sleeping Souls gigs), and then there’s Mongol Horde…
13 November 2014
Jeff dreadnought
I take your point, Simon. Various names have been put forward on the Adam Boyle thread, where I make my case for Alex James being a bit like the Adam Boyle in the song. The idea of him “taking two weeks off” kind of works, as he seems to have largely turned his back on being a “professional musician” to concentrate on his many media commitments.
13 November 2014
Chigley Skin
It was me who mentioned Frank Turner on the Adam Boyle thread; as I said in that comment, I don’t for a minute think the song is specifically aimed at FT, he’s just who I personally picture in my mind zooming the highways and byways with The Golden Bough on the passenger seat (largely due to the fact that he did launch himself very enthusiastically into trad-folk influences between about 2006 and 2009, though he’s since jibbed that stuff as well).
These characters always seem generic satirical creations to me, although Shit Arm Bad Tattoo is, shall we say, one of the more keenly-focused efforts…
13 November 2014
THe drummer out of flintlock
I don’t see anything to suggest that Adam Boyle is a professional musician: the only people who would have bought Union Jack guitars, to play (or display) in the house would be fans of Oasis. He’s just a bloke who’s a bit of a dilettante.
13 November 2014
toastkid
My take on any of the songs which appear to be about a specific person (even Shit Arm) is that they’re about fictional characters, who may be *inspired* by real people, but it’s not aimed at the real person. So, Shit Arm is aimed at *a type of person*, and Pete Doherty is one of them but it’s not just aimed at him.
Obviously songs which specifically mention someone like Nick Cave are about Nick Cave, but “Moody Chops” for example isn’t, though he might have provided some inspiration for it.
14 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
I may have been trying a bit hard to make the Alex James thing fit. Apart from anything else – as others have pointed out to me – the Union Jack Epiphone was Noel Gallagher, not him. That Britpop stuff is all a bit of a “blur” (sorry) to me. So to go back to the original point, I agree that the song is probably neither alluding to nor parodying the author of “All Cheeses Great and Small”. Shame.
14 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
I keep changing my mind, but +1 for “straight sets”. For now.
I’m no longer convinced that the kids are bored. They could even be wild.
14 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
“I should oil my chain”
He certainly should, it’s been 14 years since he dismounted at the roadside to lubricate his chain.
16 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
The WP page “double entendre” may need updating? (Plus sources, oc.)
17 November 2014
Gerry Gow
“Cuboid kids” ?
24 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
Not sure if it’s a term that was/is confined to the north east but chisel was/is a slang name for cocaine.So is Idris a cokehead?
24 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Nothing relevant about C and chisel(l)ers in Urban Dictionary, but check the example here.
24 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
The Fall did a song about chiselers called Chilinism. Just listened to it again but still none the wiser.
24 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Two boiled kids? Tube-oiled kids?
Time for a quiet lie-down I think, I can hear the car and van sirens.
24 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
“Chewable kids are underfed” (i.e given chewable multivitamin tablets – the modern equivalent of Haliborange? instead of enough actual proper food)?
24 November 2014
EXXo
I was going to hold out till Xmas Day with this one – the most opaque by far of the lines NB10 told me on Saturday- but OK, if nobody’s got this by next Saturday (and nobody will) I’ll give you it just to celebrate my half-birthday.
Blimey – power corrupts doesn’t it?
24 November 2014
Gerry Gow
“tube bored kids”?
25 November 2014
celery
Similarly… “tube-awed kids”?
25 November 2014
EXXo
It’s a name.
Someone’s kids.
25 November 2014
rubber faced irritant
Sounds like “Tuborg” to me, but I’m not holding my breath.
25 November 2014
MICK EZ
Lager, Lager, Larger.
25 November 2014
gerry gow
Two Bjork kids.
25 November 2014
EXXo
Trying to think of clues that can’t be instantly googled.
After an incident in the 60’s, someone with the name we are looking for might have looked askance at another person mentioned very prominently in one of HMHB’s greatest songs.
25 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
@@Exxo should we be thinking cricket?
BTW if you haven’t already done so, scribble something on the back of a fag packet or whatever about “Alpha & Omega’s” in BPG. I’m not convinced by any of the suggestions so far.
25 November 2014
EXXo
Not cricket.
It’s not a sporting reference in the song, but there was a moderately famous sportsman (back in the day) who had this name and who never looked the same after an encounter with a HMHB hero.
25 November 2014
John AndErson
Is it something to do with Kendo Nagasaki?
25 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
Yo. Connected with Bartelli taking his mask off?
25 November 2014
Jeff Dreadnought
Tennis?
25 November 2014
celery
1966 And All That?
25 November 2014
EXXo
Someone’s getting warm….
25 November 2014
EXXo
Anyway I can confirm “horse-drawn yawns” and can also tell you that none of these 3 lines is currently correct as they stand.
Goose shoes, scoop off the roadkill
Straight six, jet-wash the Viceroy
Summerhill, shite on the back nine
One of the correct lines is a suggestion that’s already been made. I’ll confirm it as soon as someone says it again (same policy with ‘Baguette Dilemma’).
Always thought this was the hardest song simply because by the nature of his affliction Vince does not make sense.
25 November 2014
bobby svarc
This place is turning into a fookin madhouse
26 November 2014
SIMON P
I presume then that “straight six” is in fact “straight sets” (which was my first guess)
26 November 2014
EXXo
Yep, well heard John A, Dirk, Mike (Dickhead IQ) and Simon.
“Straight sets” confirmed.
Oh and the “Chiseller” line is correct as it stands too.
26 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
@Exxo .Wild guess here .Old Hungarian footballer Czibor?
26 November 2014
EXXo
Not quite but that’s the best bit of forensic acoustics yet.
26 November 2014
Chigley Skin
Another stab in the dark: Martin Chivers, who featured alongside Alan Gilzean and almost certainly locked horns with Bob Wilson once or twice?
26 November 2014
EXXo
Not football related
And I’ll say again that my sporting clue is just a way to get to the name, which does not refer to a sportsman in the song, just to a neighbour whose kids Vince seems to think are underfed.
Some people would tell you it wan’t a sport anyway
26 November 2014
Chigley Skin
(Sadly, I’m trying to engineer links here because it’s clearly a “b” sound in the middle of the name. Just hoping that the Chiv may have been partial to accepting alms in his yowth).
26 November 2014
Schoon
Tibor?
26 November 2014
Chigley Skin
Veering back towards Kendo Nagasaki following Exxo’s last nugget of info. Count Bartelli’s real name was Geoff Condliffe, and I’m pretty sure it’s beyond even the most dextrous of Merseyside accents to turn that into the name we hear in the song. Anyone else get on Kendo’s bad side in the Sixties…?
26 November 2014
EXXo
Well played. “Tibor’s kids are underfed.” Confirmed as a neighbouring family. Nobody other than Vince believes them to be emaciated.
My clues were of course referring to Tibor Szakacs, who lost an eye to Kendo Nagasaki in 1966, and played the Albert Hall for ever.
26 November 2014
celery
Congrats to Schoon and thanks for the fun Mr. Exxo, sir …but Tibor? What a (massive) letdown…
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
@@Bobby S “turning into” lol
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Updating “Thornley” on WP so missed the unmasking:(
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
I’ve just watched a couple of clips of Szakács Tibor in action. I’d forgotten how entertaining pro wrestling could be,
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Props @@Schoon!
Now we need to explain why we’ve all heard “shite” in a line where Exxo knows something the rest of us don’t.
26 November 2014
Slow dempsey
I think that the words we’ve not yet correctly identified come at the start of each of the lines, ie “Goose” and “Summerhill” are wrong.
Good shoes?
BTW I still hear “Heard he’s got the” rather than “Hey, he’s got the”
26 November 2014
Chris The Siteowner
+1 for “heard”. I think.
26 November 2014
Gerry Gow
I hear what @JA (5) heard “Goose juice”.
26 November 2014
EXXO
“Goose shoes, scoop off the roadkill.”
Three words are wrong in that one. Unlike last night’s revelations, the correct version here actually makes sense and is funny. Think cuisine.
“Summerhill, shite on the back nine.”
One word is wrong, and it’s easy for me to say but I was never happy with ‘Summerhill.’ The vowels aren’t right, and there are too many of them! By association with ‘Sawgrass’ (famous course in Florida) I remembering searching last month for “Saw Hill Golf Course”, but in vain. In fact it turns out it’s not a golf course at all. Nor even a place name.
26 November 2014
EXXO
Another +1 for “Heard” (I didn’t ask about that line).
26 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
Instead of shoes,is it juice?
26 November 2014
John AndErson
Or, if we’re talking cuisine, possibly jus?
26 November 2014
EXXo
I was a bit mischievous in choosing the word ‘cuisine’. I hoped it would ‘out’ the gourmands with their ‘jus’ and suchlike. Nothing like that.
26 November 2014
EXXo
Blinis 🙂
26 November 2014
Slow dempsey
Not ‘choux’ either then?
26 November 2014
John AndErson
Out The Gourmands would be a excellent sequel to Irk The Purists.
Altogether now:
“Crème brulee, remoulade, soupe a l’onion. Vichyssoise, bouillabaisse, compote….” etc etc
26 November 2014
EXXO
“Crème brulee, remoulade, soupe a l’onion. Vichyssoise…”.
Yeah but then someone would talk to NB10 at the match and find out that
in fact he sings “home brew day, lemonade, soak an onion with fish sauce..”
“Bouillabaisse” would deffo be “bouillabaisse” though. Good working man’s food popular round the Three Bridges area of Wallasey docks or the demonic moorings at Stoak.
Anyway back to the line in question – it’s cooking instructions rather than ingredients.
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
“Juice”, or perhaps “chews”.
“Step off the roadkill”? (“step” was an earlier suggestion.)
“Sow a hill”? Or, sew/so.
26 November 2014
Slow dempsey
“Moose stew, soup of the roadkill.”
No? Didn’t think so.
26 November 2014
EXXO
And Dempsey’s got one of the key words there!
Everything else should surely fall into place now like the unravelling of a particularly bad mixed metaphor.
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Goo stew?
I was disturbed to find that glue stew exists.
26 November 2014
Gerry Gow
“Goose stew, soup of the roadkill”?
26 November 2014
EXXO
No goose. No other ingredients in fact, just roadkill.
(and I meant a bad mixed metaphor by me obviously – it’s a great line)
26 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Exxo. Is Summerhill actually the name of another obscure golfer?
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
“Scraped off the roadkill”?
I remember seeing “sail dogs” on roads in Alabama. So called, because you could sail them like Frisbees. (Avoid “sail armadillos”, they can take your sump out.)
26 November 2014
EXXO
We’re nearly there. We just need the first word of the instructions, which doesn’t begin with ‘g’, and (surprisingly) to get away from ‘off’ (or ‘of’) cos I know that’s what it sounds like but it’s not what the man told me. It’s easy to imagine there might be a double track where someone does sing “off” but it’s not what I was given.
And @Peter – no not a golfer. Not a proper noun. More an excuse for being shite on the back nine.
26 November 2014
Slow dempsey
Sore heel: shite on the back nine?
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Scraped from?
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Coot stew?
26 November 2014
EXXo
Well in Mr. Dempsey. Nice colon too.
“Sore heel, shite on the back nine” confirmed.
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Ahhhh – cook stew, I suspect.
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
And stir-fry the roadkill.
26 November 2014
peter mcornithologist
@ Mr.Dempsey. Well done sir.I’ve had great fun searching through lists of obscure golfers.There is a Swedish fellow named Sanderlin.Shame about the missing G.
26 November 2014
EXXo
Not cook (fine effort though).
Stay with scrape.
26 November 2014
schoon
Quick?
26 November 2014
SIMON P
So just to confirm, we’re at “XXXX stew, scrape up the roadkill?”
26 November 2014
EXXO
Someone’s paying attention (unlike the L’pool defence there).
26 November 2014
SIMON P
It’s not “gut stew” is it?
26 November 2014
SIMON P
Oh no scrap that, clearly I wasn’t paying attention as I missed the “not G” post
26 November 2014
Rubber faced irritant
Well Tuborg wasn’t that many letters away from Tibor’s so I’m ready to put my head above the parapet again. That said; take a bow Slow Dempsey.
So my each way bet is Cushe Shoes.
26 November 2014
Rubber faced irritant
Oooops. It was Schoon who deserves the accolades for Tibor but SD should share the limelight for sore heel.
Must pay more attention in class.
26 November 2014
EXXO
Everybody make a list** of 20 verbs than can collocate with ‘stew’ and I bet less than half of you will have this verb on your list, even though it’ll probably be in the top 5 verbs that collocate with ‘stew’ in English.
**avoid the temptation (strong though it may be) to post your lists here. This thread has been self-indulgent enough by me as it is, and the ‘guessing game’ format is probably best retired when someone’s got this one.
26 November 2014
Chris The Siteowner
Well, I’m with Mick on this one, but I keep reminding myself that at least it’s not the horse racing results.
26 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
Is Urban Dictionary needed to resolve XXXX? There’s a word I’ve been avoiding.
26 November 2014
EXXO
Mind you twenty verbs with the sound /u:/ in them might be stretching it a bit. So for the sake of the experiment, just pretend you’ve never heard the song eh?
26 November 2014
Chigley Skin
Surely it can’t be as straightforward as “DO stew…”?
27 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
“Not-G” has at least ruled out any suicide pact reference.
27 November 2014
Jeff dreadnought
Brew stew
27 November 2014
bobby svarc
Stu from Leicester
27 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
My top stew-related verbs are cook, stir, simmer, skim, serve and eat. I can’t hear any of them here.
I do hanker after a live version which includes the line “stir-fry the Viceroy”, I’ve heard of someone who has a good line in wok sets.
27 November 2014
EXXO
It can indeed Chigley, bravo. I was about to confirm “Do stew, scrape up the roadkill”, when I realised I’d gone all Vince (again) and it’s not “scrape” that I was told at all, it’s “scoop” of course.
“Do stew, scoop up the roadkill” confirmed.
End of guessing games.
27 November 2014
dickhead in quicksand
{Weeps uncontrollably.}
27 November 2014
it’s all caps
“You’re a fine looking woman, Mirabelle”
Perhaps too self-evident to mention, but, as I’m not going to let that stop me, does this reference the outro from “Combine Harvester” as sung by the Wurzels?
15 December 2014
TAYLO
I always assumed the fine looking woman was Annabelle, as in Annabelle Giles- Midge’s posh former squeeze.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabel_Giles
16 December 2014
Dagenham dave
For what it’s worth I think it’s ‘ B route ‘ not ‘beetroot’ and I hear ‘Tuborg kids’, just don’t ask me what it means.
19 December 2014
Phyllis Triggs
As well as discussing literary references here, is there room for musical ones too? Only earlier on this evening Steve Lamacq played Brassneck by The Wedding Present and I reckon the bassline forms the bedrock of The Bane Of Constance.
25 February 2015
TAYLO
I hadn’t considered the Brassneck link but yeah I can hear it now.
See also’ Isolation’ and ‘AOR’.
26 February 2015
Norge Dougal
A few listens of the song and I was reminded of an episode of Rex the Runt from 2000, in which the characters go around the character Vince’s head in a submarine.
Episode can be found on youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBWIYFdb4m4&t=251
Inspiration for the song, y’think?
3 March 2015
kittymc
Chris, have I been barred from the HMHB lyrics page? My posts seem to have been redacted to a point of … never happening. Please say I’m banned! I don’t think life could get any more Biscuit than being banned from the HMHB page! Punk never dies!
11 May 2015
Chris The Siteowner
Nobody’s been banned, and nothing’s been redacted, although the temptation to ‘accidentally’ delete horse racing tips, asides about Nigel Pearson and other non-HMHB-related stuff is sometimes almost overwhelming. Sorry if teh interwebs has swallowed up any of your contributions, Kitty.
11 May 2015
Bobby SVARC
Tara m’duck
11 May 2015
EXXO
This is quite ironic in the thread for a song about irrelevant ramblings. Or one of several HMHB songs which are about irrelevant ramblings.
But it does stiffen my resolve to walk out of the next gig where’s there’s any irrelevant banter between songs.
Seriously Mick don’t go. Triple A is hot favourite the first race at Rock City Notts tomorrow and I need you to tell me which is better value: Leicester 40/1 to go down or Ipswich 11/2 to go up?
11 May 2015
Chris The Siteowner
Oh god. Personally I’d like Leicester to stay up and Ipswich to join them, but there’s a perfectly good site run by When Saturday Comes to tell everyone that. Which reminds me, good article about Dukla Prague in the latest issue.
11 May 2015
peter mcornithologist
@ Bobby Svarc. If you do leave, I and all the family McOrnothogist, will miss your comments.
12 May 2015
bobby svarc
@CtSO. OK man, fair enough. It’s your party and you are to be congratulated on running this site, Your post that was aimed at me was a bit snidy and uncalled for imho, but like I say it’s your gig and the last thing I want to do is spoil your fun.
12 May 2015
Chris The Siteowner
Sorry Mick, shouldn’t have singled your comments out in that way. It’s the type of comment (i.e. not band- or lyrics-related) which I’m having a go at, and there are many “offenders”. I took it to heart when someone told me at the last gig: “I used to prefer your site when it was all about people arguing over punctuation”. I hadn’t realised how much it had changed. Unreserved apology if you took personal offence.
12 May 2015
Bobby SVARC
Apology accepted, Flounces like this are legendary on our Bentleys Roof LCFC site 🙂
12 May 2015
EXXO
If you don’t want an off-topic banter board, which is how many specialist fora get round these issues, then an alternative solution might be the following. Identify the topics of annoyance – let’s say the first two might be (i) posts about teams which are or are not mathematically safe at any given moment, which could naturally come to dominate the thread for that song, and (ii) betting – which naturally has a huge presence in ‘HMHB lyrics culture’ – and for each of these topics get someone to write a half-decent article about its significance, then from then you can move posts on those topics from the song thread into the respective ‘article’ thread.
I’ll forward you two such articles and you can decide if you want them.
Meanwhile to me it seems perfectly relevant that one of the golden generation of 1963 Nigels, in a season where so many of our teams have been mathematically unsafe, should be a subject of frequent comment in that song thread.
12 May 2015
Bobby SVARC
Anyway Chris, Can’t you introduce a new section on this site aimed at those who like a little tickle now and then and also can talk sport, so to speak?.
I know first hand that running a site isn’t cheap and I’ve said before that I would be more than happy to bung in a few quid to help out, The alternative HMHB messageboard sites are truly horrific and are not my cup of tea at all. It’s good on here but surely its more than people arguing over punctuation, isn’t it?.
12 May 2015
brumbiscuit
@CTSO: ‘… I took it to heart when someone told me at the last gig: “I used to prefer your site when it was all about people arguing over punctuation”. I hadn’t realised how much it had changed…’
It’s a dilemma, I know. Chapeau for starting the HMHBLP site in the first place. It’s a truly wonderful resource and place to, virtually, be. Therein lies the ‘problem’: it’s so good, and I enjoy the banter of the fellow forumites so much that I feel relaxed enough to broaden discussions – often into irrelevance. You could, justifiably, feel disgruntled at this, or you could take it as a compliment that you have created something so good. I’m not sure how I would feel if it were my site though.
Another issue is how stifling such sidetracks are to wider participation. Do lurkers feel excluded by the banter? If so, that’s not a good thing. Maybe some have felt empowered to join in by the irrelevances, I don’t know.
I’m on a cycling forum, yacf.co.uk , as a member, but I also voluntarily chip in £1/month to pay for server charges, etc. I’d willingly do that here, if it could allow you to set up something a little more sophisticated on the software front. Of course, you may not want to do that, and it is your baby, after all. What say some of us have a chat over a jar or two at the Old Cannon in Bury St Edmunds next month? We could do that anyway, of course…
12 May 2015
Chris The Siteowner
Not sure what extra sophistication I could set up, although maybe I could move to a dedicated server for extra speed, if people found the site slow. Otherwise, very little opportunity to spend money past the pennies it costs at the moment. Nice idea about a jar next month though.
13 May 2015
brumbiscuit
I suppose I mean forum software allowing membership, multiple child boards, private messaging and stuff like that. I’ve set up corporate sites before, so would be happy to help, but you may not wish to tread that path.
As for BSEd, I’m not sure what time we’re arriving yet. I may have to work the morning, but I’m trying to rearrange the days to avoid that. If I can, I’ll aim to arrive about 4pm and then fill up at a ‘Spoonies before finding the Old Cannon. A day rambling around Foxearth and Long Melford awaits on the Saturday.
13 May 2015
Mick rAnsom
Shaw Hill Golf Club in Chorley Lancs is apparently ‘shite on the back nine’..
1 July 2015
Featureless tv producer steve
According to Spotify, “The Bain of Constance” is the title of this song.
Given the type of things we argue about here, I wonder if they have any idea how unspeakably cruel that is.
30 July 2015
EXXO
Google a poem called “Give me the Cup” by John Hill Hewitt and you’ll see the phrase “the bane of constancy”.
It seems to me highly likely that our man will have come across the poem while exploring the work of this giant of nineteenth-century American popular music.
Just look at all the stuff he done http://www.pdmusic.org/hewitt.html some of it very popular & influential.
4 November 2015
Dr Desperate
An interesting collocation indeed (see posts 116 + 117 above)..
6 November 2015
Jeff Dreadnought
Further googling suggests it was a phrase borrowed in turn from a sermon given in the 18th century by Presbyterian minister Nicholas Brady, who preached that “Unbelief is the Bane of Constancy”.
6 November 2015
EXXO
Sorry John – top work in your 116 shirt
More than a touch of early onset here as you know.
6 November 2015
IdriSDachiseller
On the subject of Midge Ure, I wondered if it was a reference to those ads his mucker Geldof did in the 1980s for the Milk Marketing Board which featured St Bob helping himself to a pint of the back of a milk float. I presume the irony was that Midge would have found himself tainted by association as a result whilst failing to attract the plaudits he deserved for co-writing that Band Aid song. If he had to lie low for a while as a result, it might explain why he seemed to disappear.
1 December 2015
paul f
Spotter’s Badge Idris!
1 December 2015
paul f
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zblGk69is64
Can’t say I remembered it myself – but I was a student at the time, and probably watching less television than normal.
1 December 2015
Peter mcornithologist
I guess it has been mentioned several times over the years but the mans lyrical genius probably masked the superb craft of Ken .
10 September 2016
CARRIE ANNE
When played live, Ken swaps instruments with Neil, who then takes up the lead guitar on this song whilst Ken plays the bass parts. See Roger Green’s reviews.
11 September 2016
EXXO
Not just when it’s played live. Neil tends to play all the guitars in recordings for the songs he writes – on the last album that was: ‘Westward Ho!’, ‘The Bane of Constance’, ‘Old Age Killed My Teenage Bride’, ‘Urge for Offal’ and ‘Adam Boyle’s Cast Lad Rock Aside’.
Given the relatively small amount of time they spend together, it would be daft for him to sit there teaching Ken the guitar bits when he can just do it better himself. It sometimes takes years for other band members to learn the guitar parts to Neil’s satisfaction (hence the 4 or 5 years before ‘Asparagus’ got played live, for example).
13 September 2016
BOBBY SVARC
Anyone who has a relative who suffer from dementia will understand this. Yesterday my daughter visited her Gran who, sadly is in a home. Her Gran had written some cards for my two grandchildren, Alfie and Evie, on closer inspection, my daughter informs me that I now have a granddaughter called Elvis.
23 December 2016
dr desperate
My Christmas card this year demonstrates an unfortunate misuse of the diacritical mark the macron. It’s a picture of Santa with his Elvēs.
23 December 2016
parsfan
We got a card a couple of years ago from an elderly aunt wishing us a “Merry Christmas and Happy 1914”.
23 December 2016
Peter mcornotholgist
Good to share .In my mothers eyes I was Jim McOrthinologist returning from the pit . A wonderful song
23 December 2016
hendrix-tattoo
@Bobby, dementia is a horrible’ illness, my Gran also suffered but the sad thing was, she was has fit as a horse.
The old girl would of gone on forever
if she did not have this dreadful disease.
24 December 2016
Bobby svarc
My Daughter’s gran has Lewis Body Dementia, sometimes visiting can be very harrowing. It’s strange that when she was my mother in law I couldn’t stand the bloody woman.
24 December 2016
Allan Lear
Does anyone else think “inflatable dictators” could be a reference to Steve Aylett’s book The Crime Studio, in which the bankrobbers make their escape in a series of hot air balloons the envelopes of which are indeed inflatable Maos, Stalins etc. ?
6 January 2017
Gje
Pretty sure it’s “straight six, jet wash the viceroy” after many careful listens.
Vauxhall Viceroy was a straight six engine and that amendments would fit with the general flow – ie words pre and post comma in each line are vaguely related.
Brilliant, brilliant Biscuit bite.
27 March 2017
Bobby svarc
@GJE: See comment #6. I thought that as well but it has been confirmed that it isn’t. I’m still sceptical though.
27 March 2017
Gje
@BOBBYSVARC I spotted that – I’m with you.
11 March 2018
The harbinger of nothing
Can I buy inflatable dictators anywhere round here?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44409775
9 June 2018
The harbinger of nothing
Pretty sure there are some on sale in Singapore today.
12 June 2018
Featureless tv producer steve
In the interest of pedantic pedantry, I would like to point out that Halfords does not appear in the A to Z of HMHB. I was reduced to doing a freaking google search to discover that it’s a place that sells bikes, apparently?
(Sorry, no idea how that slipped through. Even more surprised it’s taken you lot so long to spot the omission. Here we go – CtSO)
15 February 2021
transit full of keith
You’re right, though Halfords usually consists of a small bike department attached to a bigger motoring parts and accessories shop. Plus a few shit tents, for some reason.
15 February 2021
dr desperate
You still with that Covert Human Intelligence Source Idris?
22 March 2021