Thanks to Dr D, Rich P, Ben C, John A, Adam R, Peter T-M and Ed for their transcription contributions. This page originally published on 19 March 2022.
A handful of minor deviations in our transcriptions made me dust off some document comparison techniques, but I think we’re just about at a happy medium. Thanks all.
19 March 2022
Borough surveyor
I don’t know where to start with this one. So I won’t.
19 March 2022
woodnoggin
The “fifty winters” bit strikes me as a Beowulf reference. The growling voice on “I am the godfather…” sounds like the opening of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’. (The crazy world of Arthur Brownlow…)
19 March 2022
Hendrix-tattoo
Lyrically and musically I think this is one of the best songs they’ve ever done…
19 March 2022
That chiseller, idris
There is, or used to be, a pub in Hull called the Hull Cheese which used to be a favoured haunting ground of celebrated adopted Hullensian and third (or fourth if we’re counting Humphreys and McCluskey separately) greatest Wirralian songwriter, Paul Heaton. Likely a red herring as no one would think themselves a pub and Hull hasn’t been a town since 1897.
I hear “Neymar, top of the world”, although it’d represent quite a leap from references to Gerry Gow or Stuart Boam.
Finally, could this be a sequel to the inside-pocket reliant Mate Of The Bloke?
19 March 2022
BATWALKER
I’m kind of hoping that there isn’t a hidden, intricate explanation for the line about loft ladders. It strikes me as one of those things that’s funnier if left to the imagination, like the noodle incident in Calvin & Hobbes, or the Blackrock incident in Father Ted.
19 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
“I am the godfather of nothing whatsoever”
Possibly a (very) oblique reference to the second line of “How Soon Is Now?”?
19 March 2022
Dull Head Del
What does Grafting Haddock mean?
Anyone know?
19 March 2022
John Anderson
Another great track, the riff reminds me of Descent Of The Stiperstones. I love his spoken word interludes and this is another good one, with its crowd pleasing monkey joke. Lyrically it’s excellent throughout, I particularly like “they don’t stitch pockets into shrouds” as an alternative to “you can’t take it with you”.
I see “the godfather of nothing whatsoever” as a nod to the lazy journailstic epithet of calling Lou Reed the godfather of punk or James Brown the godfather of soul.
There were definitely blokes with wicker baskets selling seafood in London pubs in the 1980s, although they seem to have gone the same way as indispensible cobblers. In our case they were grafting crab-sticks in the back room of The Tanners.
19 March 2022
Beltane beard
Ah it’s “made it, ma”, couldn’t work that one out. “I scaled the Matalan” is a brilliant line.
Also the Ludlow/Chepstow bit makes me want to bellow it out loud for some reason when I hear it. Therefore I’m expecting some startled locals around here when I’m out on my travels.
19 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Del – there were a couple of comments about that here. It’ll refer to someone going round selling stuff in pubs (in this case, the George). We get a lot of random door-to-door fish salesfolk where I live, but I haven’t come across them pushing their wares in the pub.
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
“The snows of fifty winters” is probably a misquotation from the American adventure writer William Taylor Adams, who wrote two series of Civil War novels entitled ‘Blue and the Gray Afloat’ and ‘Blue and the Gray on Land’ under the pseudonym Oliver Optic. In one of the former series, ‘Fighting for the Right’ (1892), the hero Lieutenant Christy Passford describes the French detective Gilfleur in disguise as looking “like an elderly gentleman of fifty, with a full beard, grizzled with the snows of many winters”. NB may have seen the line misquoted in an interview with the American-Canadian SF writer Robert Charles Wilson on the French website ActuSF, in which he described himself as a mature writer, “grizzled, as the 19th century writer Oliver Optic once put it, with the snows of fifty winters”.
19 March 2022
EXXO
“The snows of [number] winters” is quite a common image that came into North American writing from translated Native American figures of speech. Think it was used in The Last of the Mohicans which was massively popular and influential of course, in 1826. I found a speech to the Canadian government by an aged native leader which used it in the 19th century. However, the “powdered my head with…” image, which feels so familiar, I can’t quite put my finger on. A film with a speech by a noble native elder? Western, or historical fantasy? Wherever the image comes from – if there is a single source – I wouldn’t call it call it a “misquotation”. NB tends to borrow such metaphor and play with it for our amusement, as well as his own, often seeming to me to take the piss out of well-used and familiar-sounding literary tropes and clichés. In another song, “your palfrey awaits” would be another of many examples of that, and a source found on google is unlikely to be the particular one.
Incidentally, that part of this song, combined with all the wildflowers and the ‘spring has sprung’ on Oblonghas been making me re-read A Shropshire Lad
(nothing to do with this song really, but reverse the numbers and it’s how I feel about Oblong)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Somewhere among the 700+ comments on the TVY New Album thread someone has already given the source of the “Made it, Ma…” quote: Arthur ‘Cody’ Jarrett, James Cagney’s homicidal psychotic character in ‘White Heat’ (1949), yells it at the end of the film, before the giant gas tank which he’s standing on and has just shot explodes. “Top of the world!” was the toast he’d earlier shared with his crooked mother, ‘Ma’ Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly).
19 March 2022
Dull Head Del
@CtsO Thanks for that. Been wondering what exactly it meant. We don’t have that term in Scotland. I had guessed it was either that or he was preparing fish.
Great song, probably my favourite on the album.
19 March 2022
EXXO
I get Cagney scenes going through my head twice on this album – this gas tank scene, and the one that made an even more massive impression on me as a kid, the climax to Angels with Dirty Faces where, out of shot, the priest hears Cagney’s character ‘acting yellow’ as he is taken to the electric chair. That’s one of loads of films I think of during I’m Getting Buried
19 March 2022
WOodnoggin
I can attest to the baboons at Knowsley Safari Park being cheeky blighters. The last time I visited, one of them yanked a windscreen wiper off our car. My dad was absolutely livid. If monkeys could talk, I can well imagine this gang insulting visitors while ravaging their vehicles.
19 March 2022
EXXO
Exactly the same happened on our only family visit in about 1974.
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Since the Cagney quote refers to ‘Ma’ Jarrett, I’d be inclined to capitalise her sobriquet. Also, I can’t really see why the protagonist should shift into the past tense when describing his scaling of the Matalan (a slight mangling of Matterhorn, if anyone’s looking for mountaineering references). Neither can I hear Nigel sing “I scaled“.
19 March 2022
Jeff dreadnought
I thought “the snows of fifty winters” might be a reference to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2: “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow…” etc.
19 March 2022
Jeff Dreadnought
Also, I was puzzling over the “Forestry Commission roads” line, which I’d misheard as “Forestry Commission rogues”
19 March 2022
EXXO
Good point about ‘Ma’ needing a capital, whether he means ‘Mum’ (which he obviously does) or is using her title. As for the /d/, If it was there you probably wouldn’t hear it, for v. similar reasons to how you probably wouldn’t hear a difference between “Urbek Sean” and “Urbex Sean.” So I’m not sure, and that’s when I bring meaning into it – do we imagine him up there regularly?
19 March 2022
EXXO
@Jeff – “fifty winters” could be found in other famous poetry – the Beowulf one already mentioned for example. That Shakespeare sonnet might be the most famous example of “[number] winters” in literature, but I reckon you’d need the “powdered my head with the snows of …” before you could call it a reference or a borrowing.
19 March 2022
Cream CHEESE AND chives
‘It was loft ladders what killed our Martin.’ Thoughts on use of what rather than that?
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Which was my point in the William Taylor Adams misquote (or at least correct quotation of a misquote) above: the detective’s beard being “grizzled by the snows of many winters” so that he looks elderly enough to be fifty is pretty close to the protagonist’s head being powdered ditto. I would never go so far as to suggest reference or borrowing, but it’s pretty close.
The use of “winters” to denote the passage of time, whether twelve in Beowulf, twenty in Cooper or forty in Shakespeare, is pure synecdoche. (I’ve been dying to use the word ‘synecdoche’ since I was bouleversé with it by His Grace The Duke over ‘Olaf’. I’ve also been dying to use the word bouleversé.)
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Having said all that, there’s an 1887 biography of Wilkie Collins in the short-lived periodical Men and Women which describes him as being “somewhat below the middle height, with hair and beard whitened with the snows of sixty winters”.
19 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
@ John Anderson #9:
I particularly like “they don’t stitch pockets into shrouds” as an alternative to “you can’t take it with you”.”
It’s an old phrase, though.
@CCAC #24:
“‘It was loft ladders what killed our Martin.’ Thoughts on use of what rather than that?”
Fairly standard demotic English used instead af “that” as a conjunction. Often transcribed as “wot”.
19 March 2022
gipton teenager
‘Twas I Dr D, who referred to ‘WhiteHeat’, but in a personal flight of fancy about Old Joe and Awkward Sean. As regards Grafting Haddock, in the 70’s sellers were commonplace in the pubs in Leeds. In crowded pubs they used to hold the basket over their heads and walk sideways. I’m sure you can guess what everyone called them…
19 March 2022
gipton teenager
…sorry, should have said that they sold all kinds of shellfish, cockles, crabsticks etc.
19 March 2022
EXXO
@ Dr. D – some top vocabulary there.
“The snows of X winters” though can be traced beyond doubt (beyond mine anyway) to native North American sayings as a way of counting age. Cooper was trying to convey the way native Americans spoke.
Love the Wilkie Collins description, and the source reminds me of my days poring over original copies of Men and Women in the UL. The language there absolutely can be traced back to the native American figure of speech via the likes of Fennimore Cooper.
19 March 2022
professor Abelazar woozle
@John Anderson/Pirix – yes, “no pockets in a shroud” has long been thrown at money-grabbers to remind them that there’s ultimately no point in wasting your life hoarding pictures of the Queen. There’s a fine song by Jez Lowe that uses the line too – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6-7eZXGA-U
I’m still racking my brains about the original source of the first four lines – I’ll have to dig out my side-by-side copy of Beowulf for a look and I’m starting to think it might be in another work of Medieval literature I’ve read in the dim and distant past – maybe Chaucer, maybe Piers Plowman, maybe Mallory?
@Dr. D – going off topic, if you want another good obscure word, try “agnomical” which is one I use to baffle managers with.
19 March 2022
Cream CHEESE AND chives
@Pirx The Purist NB57 doesn’t strike me as someone who would use what in place of that. I wondered if he were assuming the character of someone who would…
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Thanks for that, @Prof. Next time I find myself idly wondering, I’ll use it.
19 March 2022
clown in a yaris
Every time i hear the ‘It was loft ladders what killed our Martin’ i just hear Alan Bennett. Sounds just like classic Bennett humour.
20 March 2022
dr Desperate
The phrase “happy as Larry” seems to come from the land Down Under, with some of the earliest citations being “We would be as happy as Larry if it were not for the rats” (New Zealand writer G. L. Meredith, around 1875) and “Now that the adventure was drawing to an end, I found a peace of mind that all the old fogies on the river couldn’t disturb. I was as happy as Larry” (Australian Tom Collins (Joseph Furphy), 1903). One theory is that Larry was the Australian boxer Larry Foley (1847 – 1917), who never lost a fight, retired aged 32 and collected a purse of £1,000 for his last bout. Other theories are available.
20 March 2022
dr Desperate
In the 1939 film adaptation of ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’, Robert Donat as the eponymous schoolmaster says farewell to two of his pupils off to fight in the Great War, Lieutenant Peter Colley and his batman Perkins, whom he greets with, “Why, bless my soul, if it isn’t the town cheese”. (**SPOILER ALERT** Neither of them comes out of it very well.)
20 March 2022
EXCAVATED RITA
I’m not entirely convinced that the title is linked to the former practice of selling seafood in pubs. As others such as GT have pointed out, the produce was seafood, such as cockles and whelks. In my memory, sold in a paper bag with a wooden pick. I’m not sure therefore how haddock would work. Also, I’m not aware these comestibles were prepared in a pub. They seemed to come from somewhere on the coast and we’re sold by someone going from pub to pub. Happy to have my doubts allayed.
20 March 2022
Pop-tart mark
Next you’ll be telling us they don’t sell cucifiction nails in Bunners or wolf nipple favour pringles at the amphitheatre 😉
20 March 2022
MUrderous giraffe
@DrD #36. Goodbye Mr Chips became “Good pie, missed the chips” at the hands of Muir or Norden in the aforementioned My Word book.
20 March 2022
Another gobshite
‘Loft Ladders Killed Our Norman’ of course, was the working title of the ‘Creative Hub’ LP.
20 March 2022
Gerry gow
E. Nesbitt wrote ‘a contented mind is a perpetual feast’ in The Story of the Treasure Seekers. Googling around this, some religious analysis has it as a combination of 1 Timothy 6.6 and Proverbs 15.15. Rather nicely 1 Timothy 6.7 is ‘For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.’ Pockets, shrouds etc.
20 March 2022
Willshed
I now get the grafting relevance. To me it’s a word used for working hard but makes sense in the sense of the fishmonger selling his wares in a pub or social club as i well recall even in to the late 90s. “Seafood, crabsticks, whelks” would be the cry , soon appended by the oh so fancy at the time “pepperaaaahhhhmi” Never saw any haddock in the basket though
20 March 2022
paul f
Whilst I was happy to reminisce earlier about the regular seafood salesmen in pubs “back in the day”, I agree that “grafting haddock” can’t possibly refer to that practice. I think it’s far more likely to refer to the sale of meat and fish obtained from dubious sources in the back rooms of pubs by the northern equivalents of Derek Trotter.
21 March 2022
transit full of keith
The talky bit and the switches of musical pace and theme remind me of ‘Emerging from Gorse’. Another song about being contented where you are, I guess, like Oblong of Dreams and Mileage Chart. “I scaled the Matalan” is perfect. Speaking of the Matterhorn, I wonder if Nigel takes a view on whether Whymper cut the rope.
21 March 2022
EXXO
Speaking for myself, when I illustrated the probable meaning of “grafting” [ + something in a pub] with the obvious example of the seafood sellers, I was merely illustrating the meaning of the verb which had been enquired about. Surely nobody is suggesting that selling haddock in a pub is or was in any way a serious proposition?
(PS – Birkenhead’s George & Dragon doesn’t have a back room. Bebington’s now demolished George might have done but there’s no way they’d let you in there with even a single pilchard )
21 March 2022
Chris from Future Doom
What sort of state are the Methodists’ drains in that cleaning them is a full-time job?
22 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
It’s all the blood sacrifices… 😉
22 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Any thoughts on the pockets in shrouds line? Just a reference to not being able to take anything with you, so he’s not that arsed with making it big in this life?
Compare and contrast with his love of an inside pocket, as professed on Mate Of The Bloke…
23 March 2022
Chris from Future Doom
@Janet, yes, just a ‘you can’t take it with you’ sort of thing. It’s a saying innit. John Lydon says it in ‘Warrior’ by PiL: ‘Beggars can’t be choosers / Shrouds they have no pockets / Some of us wake up / Others roll over’
25 March 2022
Second hand hessian sack
Is it too much of a stretch to think that “Oh those Forestry Commission roads, What a tale they could tell” might be a nod towards the sport of rallying? Events such as the legendary and much-missed Lombard RAC Rally have used those roads since the early 1960s and let’s face it, we’ve not had a rallying reference since Hannu Mikkola’s dexterity was lauded in Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice.
26 March 2022
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
I imagine many of you have lived lives of more planning than I have, but as someone whose head was powdered with the snows of fifty winters a few winters ago, the lines
I never thought about the future Or what I would become Didn’t care – still don’t
really hit home.
HMHB haven’t written lines I can relate to as much as those since “I don’t give a fuck about your missing cat.”
28 March 2022
Lux inferior
@FTVPS – Pretty much spot on for me too, including the cat line.
Mind you, if I’d ever bothered to think about the future, or what I would become, maybe I’d have been able to afford to get to a few more ‘away’ gigs over the years. I had an unexpected opportunity to head up to Nottingham last Friday, but that idea was kiboshed when I discovered that I’d have to shell out a ton or so for accommodation. That just left the option of kipping in the car (no late trains back to my neck of the woods), which isn’t really viable when you’re of an age where you need to get up for a piss three or four times a night.
Presumably this is something of a prerelease homage/ tiger trap for web searching goons like me?
28 March 2022
Adam
@EXXO The George in Bebington deffo had a back room before it was knocked thru/redeveloped into a Tut n Shive (remember them?!) in the 90’s. Then back to a normal pub sometime after.
It never was demolished. Was converted into apartments with on site boutique spa. I’d of rather they did take the bulldozer to it.
See comment 254 in this thread https://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/urge-for-offal/ where Terrence Oblong (real name Dave Clark) introduces his project of writing tales based on HMHB titles before the songs are released (which he started 3 albums ago in 2014).
On another blog he tells us
“Cambridge, United Kingdom Introduction So who is Terrence Oblong? Terrence Oblong is an alias used by Dave Clark, an Essex-born writer currently residing in Cambridge. Terrence Oblong first appeared in print in 1991, where he wrote for (and occasionally edited) Swansea Arts Magazine. Terrence also appeared as a DJ on the student radio station C-Air. Terrence disappeared for several years, only to return when Dave discovered abctales.com in October 2009, since when Terrence has been a regular poster of stories on the site. Dave Clark is also responsible for Terrence’s great rival, the Other Terrence Oblong, who also posts stories on the site.
and so no it isn’t suspicious in the way that (I bet) you are hinting.
7 April 2022
Llamafarmer
I think it’s “scaled”. I like scaled more than scale, which might or might not be coincidence.
On the other hand I’m confident that any association between scaling and fish is coincidence.
Did those seafood vendors in pubs sell haddock? I remember only cockles and crabsticks etc as snacks. I first witnessed this in The Highwayman, Skelmersdale, in the mid 80s and then later in pubs in Newcastle upon Tyne, and the vendors always looked uncannily similar – little fellows with a white coat and a thin moustache. Perhaps the happy vans covered wide areas.
As to the use of “The” for Matalan, it needs mentioning that in Merseyside the definite article is used for all supermarkets and the like (The Asda. The Aldi, The Iceland), sometimes archly but more often not.
18 April 2022
Paul f
Not entirely true with respect to the definite article on Merseyside. It is always “Thee Asda” and used to be “The Kwikky” when Kwik Save were around, but most shops do not attract the convention, and certainly not Matalan.
19 April 2022
EXXO
I was going to say the same, Paul. It could only really have happened with the two chains that became veritable local institutions so rapidly in the 60’s/early 70’s (“the Kwikky”) and the 80’s (“thee Asda”). Anyway, those local idiosyncrasies aren’t that weird when you consider that nationally, throughout the UK, everyone still says “the Co-op”, and, that whereas everyone says just “Tesco,” a lot of the same people would say “the Tesco Express.”
As for haddock, once again I would say that nobody is remembering or suggesting selling haddock in a pub as something that has ever happened regularly (though it would be foolish to assert that it has never happened). But that does not mean that this isn’t what’s happening in this song, because surely the surreal unlikeliness of it is what makes it idiosyncratic and funny. The mention of the surreal merchandise in Bunner’s earlier on in this thread is certainly a relevant comparison.
19 April 2022
EXXO
You do hear “I’m going (to) the Aldi,” “the Iceland” and “the Lidl” on Merseyside too, in approximately that order of frequency. There’s more than one factor at play. Not just whether they are seen as a local institution like “the pub,” “the butcher’s” or “the chippie,” but of course simply the fact that the three most common begin with a vowel and Merseyside accents do not readily lend themselves to glottal stops, particularly following the weak form of “to.”
19 April 2022
woodnoggin
The self-service checkouts in (the) Co-Op also say “the Co-Op” after serving you, as in “thank you for shopping at the Co-Op”. That suggests to me it’s official usage rather than local idiosyncrasy.
19 April 2022
EXXO
Yes, that was my point – that apparent local idiosyncracies may ultimately be as logical as what is national standard usage. Originally of course it would be “the Co-op(erative) society/stores/shop/dairy” so natural to use the article before the adjective and then to retain it.
19 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Yeah but it’s “I scaled the Matalan” because it’s a play on “the Matterhorn”, not because of any propensity to use “the” with shops on Merseyside.
19 April 2022
EXXO
Clearly.
19 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
I was replying to Llamafarmer.
19 April 2022
Donny Rovers Fan
Would there have been a group playing the (back rooms of the) pubs around Liverpool at some point with the initals G H? Maybe with members called Martin & Larry?
Who set off for a gig in Ludlow and ended up in Chepstow?
This song does seem to fit the Bryan Adams, Jimmy quit, Jodie got married, of ex-band members pastiche.
23 April 2022
Uncle Keith
This is how I see it. The narrator of this song never made any plan for achieving fame and fortune in his youth, and has no regrets about it as he earns enough to get by, albeit in unconventional ways. While other vendors sell seafood snacks for customers to enjoy with their drinks, this fellow tries to sell whole fish. Still he’s content, he’s seen one relative, the one with the crazy business ideas, drive himself into an early grave striving to keep his loft ladder shop afloat. This man doesn’t spend his nine to fives in boardrooms, offices or factory floors. He can decide to visit Ludlow one day and then, on a whim change his mind and head for Chepstow instead. He retains enough youthful exuberance to feel comfortable getting up to such boyish pranks as climbing up onto the roof of Matalan and loudly proclaiming that he has made it and is on top of the world! He’s right to, he worked out long ago that the secret of happiness wasn’t in pursuing great wealth or acclaim, but in achieving a sense of freedom. When he falls asleep at night, he does so as contentedly as the Methodist Centre odd job man, another man who has the secret of life sussed.
24 April 2022
Uncle Keith
A couple of further thoughts. Is the song title a metaphor for how the band earn their crust? Doing occasional small gigs rather than selling their cockles and winkles in the best room by doing full tours in larger venues? I think if this song has siblings then they are Oblong, Mileage Chart and Terminus, the latter being the odd one out as the narrator has plenty of freedom but doesn’t, or doesn’t know how to, enjoy it.
24 April 2022
EXXO
@Uncle Keith. For those inclined to try to make a coherent whole out of the fragments of the more fragmented songs, it’s certainly easier to do so with this one than with ‘Persian Rug Sale,’ and you’ve made a pretty impressive effort there. It is after all, human nature to try to make sense out of stuff (cf the meaningless of the universe, etc). The more I thought about a response, the less I disagreed with you. And then, as I actually wrote this, I disagreed even less.
The song opens with a strong, clear non-metaphorical ‘credo’ stated by a character who could easily not be ‘in character’ at all – i.e. it sounds like NB’s own outlook on life. And yes, this has much in common with ‘Oblong’ and especially ‘Mileage Chart’ in terms of expressing an acceptance, a quiet happiness with where the protagonist finds himself towards the end of his working life. Whether the whole song is meant to be a coherent metaphor, I’ve been less sure since the album came out. But less ‘less sure’ since I started writing this.
The act of “grafting haddock” in the pub can be a metaphor if you want it to be, but where there is metaphor in the autobiographical songs it is towards the much clearer end of the scale. In ‘Terminus’ the place on the bus for the elderly and the young is obvious, and the eponymous metaphor in ‘Mileage Chart’ is also a very practical, obvious one, with even the second layer of metaphor – the mileage chart representing the musical charts and the whole music “business” – being laid on pretty obviously. Those two songs are constructed with an absolute unity of theme and metaphor, which is what makes them so exquisite. Plus – and this is crucial – they aren’t funny. This one (‘Grafting Haddock’) is more in the collage-style, with fragments ranging from folk wisdom to monkey jokes. Plus the tune is funny, with funny brass oompah. If we’re comparing with one of NB’s bus songs, there is at least as much in common with ‘Little in the Way of Sunshine’ as with ‘Terminus’. The former is funny; the latter isn’t particularly; nor are the other autobiographical songs you mention.
The jokes in songs like Grafting Haddock are perhaps important in trying to decide what is intended as a serious metaphor, because if we read the whole thing as a metaphor, then it isn’t quite as funny (for me, the same would apply to trying to make ‘Persian Rug Sale’ make sense). In your interpretation, for example, you’ve taken the marvelous, mysterious non-sequitur humour of “it was loft ladders what killed our Martin” and changed it to a serious metaphor that doesn’t really seem to be there. The “happy as Larry” bit is funniest (for me anyway) when we see it as an absurd ramble about WTF the daft expression “happy as Larry” actually means, with “cleaning out the drains at the methodist centre” the usual piss-taking about the daftness in the details of organised religion and the significance people attach to absurd actions undertaken in the name of finding meaning. A fragment of overheard conversation like those in ‘Little in the Way of Sunshine.’
[However, to those out there – and we have seen there are a few – who think that all such micro-analysis of the lyrics is pulling the wings off the humour, I do think you miss the joy and self-parody with which we do so]
There are occasional HMHB songs which seem like collages of some of the best lines left over from NB’s notebook, that never quite made it into other songs. These can be among the greatest of his achievements, like ‘Surging out of Convalescence,’ or mixed bags of one-liners like ‘This One’s for Now.’ This song has elements of that (with the theme of ‘can’t fit pockets into shrouds’ etc possibly even being a wise rejection from ‘Oblong’?), and yes, it also has a coherent theme which you have rightly identified.
I suppose, to debunk my own argument, we could say that the jokey elements in this song might even be there to debunk the seriousness of the metaphor and ensure that it is so unique in itself and different from the other songs you mention.
Finally, some factual corrections – HMHB nearly always play the most financially-viable venues possible to guarantee a decent return from places they want to play on dates when they are all available, balanced with calculations of trying to play near to where the fans haven’t seen them for a while and calculations of avoiding fatigue and hassle. It’s only Nigel doesn’t have another job, and it’s important that he & his can survive on the fewest possible gigs. His return per gig will be pretty impressive compared with many contemporaries in some very well known outfits. All of which doesn’t mean that “grafting haddock in the back room of the George” isn’t a metaphor for that, but just that if it is, it’s a typically self-deprecating one.
I love Carl’s drums on this. I particularly like the bit where I sing “I drive the happy van” and he hits it really fucking hard. It’s great that, and I love it because he sets it up beautifully for the “Made it Ma, top of the world!” line.
I’m aware that people used to go around pubs selling cockles and mussels but this isn’t about that. I was thinking of a pub in town – in a back street in Birkenhead. The pub – the Vittoria Vaults on Vittoria Street – is known as “The Piggy”. It’s not necessarily that but it’s that type of pub. It’s “The George” in the title, and there is a George and Dragon in Birkenhead which, I suppose, could also be an influence – but really, it could be one of any number of pubs.
I remember walking past Farm Foods in Prenton once, and this lad was just walking out with a load of meat – he was someone who was down on his luck and had just robbed it, and was going down town to sell it, and that’s all it is. For the song, it just happened to be haddock that day. It could have been mince. In fact, I’ve got a feeling, if I went to my lyric book, the song could originally have been Grafting Mince In The George. But it just didn’t scan – it doesn’t work as well.
It’s a very bitty song, with a lot of different elements in – just to get a joke in about a monkey in Knowsley Safari Park!
The bit near the start (“I never thought about the future or what I would become/Didn’t care, still don’t/For as far as I’m aware, they don’t stitch pockets into shrouds”) is not particularly autobiographical, though I can see how it would seem to be that way because I am a little bit like that. But the shrouds bit doesn’t fit too much because I’m not a spendthrift. I’m not a miser, either, but I’m not a spendthrift.
The other bit at the start (“When I was young, and the blood pulsed swiftly through my veins/Before age, trampling upon youth/Powdered my head with the snows of fifty winters”) – that’s too clever for me. I just read that somewhere, I’m not sure where – and then I’ve written it down. And I haven’t got a head with powdered hair – you have, I haven’t!
But not thinking about the future, I suppose that is me. It’s not “wanting” to think about the future to be precise, I suppose, as regards myself. All the old age, pain and illness and loss of loved ones etc. Same as everyone else really.
And yes, it’s “Oh those Forestry Commission roads…”- not rogues, as someone suggested.
“It was loft ladders what killed our Martin” – I was thinking about those old public information films. Nothing more than that.
It’s unusual deaths – I like all that. Like Stupid Deaths from Horrible Histories, perhaps. I had about eight titles for the album, and one was “Loft Ladders Killed Our Norman”. Don’t know why I changed it to “Martin”. But I obviously didn’t think it was as good as The Voltarol Years.
I wrote the “Tuba” riff on the guitar but got Chris Taylor, the engineer, to use a Tuba (an electronic one from a keyboard) over the top of it.
Back on the title, I think I saw a phrase on the internet – probably from one of my mates, actually, cos I read what people around me are writing and I quietly steal. I don’t steal things wholesale; I will use half of it maybe. And my mate could have been the one who said to his mate – and I read it – he’d have said “The next thing you’ll tell us is your ma’s grafting mince in the Dove and Olive.” He’d have written something like that, and I would have taken it and changed it. That’s how it happens.
4 May 2022
mister tubbs
Fascinating reading – The bit where Nigel enthuses about Carl’s drumming on the happy van bit, certainly strikes a chord. Given the dark nature of quite a few of the other songs, I’d wondered if the “happy van” was used to transport victims to their final resting place, perhaps via those Forestry Commission roads, which probably don’t see much traffic, especially after dark, when the narrator becomes as “happy as Larry”. I also thought “Grafting Haddock” might be a euphemism for what the narrator does to his prey, but it seems that it’s just about someone selling knocked off meat down the pub. One of the best songs off the new album for me, and all the better for that brilliant variation of the National Shite Day riff.
7 May 2022
Pirx the purist
The reference to Forestry Commission roads and what tales they might tell is probably because those roads were often the haunts of courting couples in cars. Which may be where the modern U.S. phrase, “putting rubber to the road” originated…
8 May 2022
dr Desperate
Yeah, it’s “I’ve scaled the Matalan”.
12 June 2022
Lux inferior
Whilst idly perusing various threads the other day, I discovered the following comment in Roger’s rollicking review of the 2017 Sheffield Leadmill gig:
“All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit was about setting the satnav for Chepstow and ending up in Ludlow (points towards Neil again).”
Seems quite apt that I should discover this dodgy satnav reference in the same week that I’ve had to put up with endless shots of Henman Hill…I wish these evenings of backswing had been cancelled.
6 July 2022
Our Martin
That man that cleans out the drains at the Methodist church, the one with the permanent smile
I wonder if he is among those referenced in Getting Buried…?
2 November 2022
10 steps start here
A throwback to Gerry Gow’s comment above from back in March – came across a copy of E. Nesbit’s ‘The Story of the Treasure Seekers’ at the library with my kids and there it was at the end of Chapter 15: “Besides, as Dora said, ‘A contented mind is a continual feast,’ so it did not matter about not wanting tea. Only H. O. did not seem to think a continual feast was a contented mind, and Eliza gave him a powder in what was left of the red-currant jelly Father had for the nasty dinner.”
8 November 2022
dr desperate
The Miles Coverdale Bible (1535) translation of Proverbs 15,15 has “a quiet heart” rather than “a contented mind”: “All the dayes of the poore are miserable, but a quyete herte is as a cotynuall feast”.
More recent usages, such as in the 1826 House Book, or Family Chronicle of Useful Knowledge, and Cottage Physician: Combining Medicine, Cookery, Diet, General Economy, Health, Sea-bathing, Gardening, Manufactures, Arts, etc., … Including Upwards of a Thousand Select Recipes and Prescriptions have “perpetual” in place of “continual”.
Chris The Siteowner
A handful of minor deviations in our transcriptions made me dust off some document comparison techniques, but I think we’re just about at a happy medium. Thanks all.
19 March 2022
Borough surveyor
I don’t know where to start with this one. So I won’t.
19 March 2022
woodnoggin
The “fifty winters” bit strikes me as a Beowulf reference.
The growling voice on “I am the godfather…” sounds like the opening of Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’. (The crazy world of Arthur Brownlow…)
19 March 2022
Hendrix-tattoo
Lyrically and musically I think this is one of the best songs they’ve ever done…
19 March 2022
That chiseller, idris
There is, or used to be, a pub in Hull called the Hull Cheese which used to be a favoured haunting ground of celebrated adopted Hullensian and third (or fourth if we’re counting Humphreys and McCluskey separately) greatest Wirralian songwriter, Paul Heaton. Likely a red herring as no one would think themselves a pub and Hull hasn’t been a town since 1897.
I hear “Neymar, top of the world”, although it’d represent quite a leap from references to Gerry Gow or Stuart Boam.
Finally, could this be a sequel to the inside-pocket reliant Mate Of The Bloke?
19 March 2022
BATWALKER
I’m kind of hoping that there isn’t a hidden, intricate explanation for the line about loft ladders. It strikes me as one of those things that’s funnier if left to the imagination, like the noodle incident in Calvin & Hobbes, or the Blackrock incident in Father Ted.
19 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
“I am the godfather of nothing whatsoever”
Possibly a (very) oblique reference to the second line of “How Soon Is Now?”?
19 March 2022
Dull Head Del
What does Grafting Haddock mean?
Anyone know?
19 March 2022
John Anderson
Another great track, the riff reminds me of Descent Of The Stiperstones. I love his spoken word interludes and this is another good one, with its crowd pleasing monkey joke. Lyrically it’s excellent throughout, I particularly like “they don’t stitch pockets into shrouds” as an alternative to “you can’t take it with you”.
I see “the godfather of nothing whatsoever” as a nod to the lazy journailstic epithet of calling Lou Reed the godfather of punk or James Brown the godfather of soul.
There were definitely blokes with wicker baskets selling seafood in London pubs in the 1980s, although they seem to have gone the same way as indispensible cobblers. In our case they were grafting crab-sticks in the back room of The Tanners.
19 March 2022
Beltane beard
Ah it’s “made it, ma”, couldn’t work that one out. “I scaled the Matalan” is a brilliant line.
Also the Ludlow/Chepstow bit makes me want to bellow it out loud for some reason when I hear it. Therefore I’m expecting some startled locals around here when I’m out on my travels.
19 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Del – there were a couple of comments about that here. It’ll refer to someone going round selling stuff in pubs (in this case, the George). We get a lot of random door-to-door fish salesfolk where I live, but I haven’t come across them pushing their wares in the pub.
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
“The snows of fifty winters” is probably a misquotation from the American adventure writer William Taylor Adams, who wrote two series of Civil War novels entitled ‘Blue and the Gray Afloat’ and ‘Blue and the Gray on Land’ under the pseudonym Oliver Optic. In one of the former series, ‘Fighting for the Right’ (1892), the hero Lieutenant Christy Passford describes the French detective Gilfleur in disguise as looking “like an elderly gentleman of fifty, with a full beard, grizzled with the snows of many winters”.
NB may have seen the line misquoted in an interview with the American-Canadian SF writer Robert Charles Wilson on the French website ActuSF, in which he described himself as a mature writer, “grizzled, as the 19th century writer Oliver Optic once put it, with the snows of fifty winters”.
19 March 2022
EXXO
“The snows of [number] winters” is quite a common image that came into North American writing from translated Native American figures of speech. Think it was used in The Last of the Mohicans which was massively popular and influential of course, in 1826. I found a speech to the Canadian government by an aged native leader which used it in the 19th century. However, the “powdered my head with…” image, which feels so familiar, I can’t quite put my finger on. A film with a speech by a noble native elder? Western, or historical fantasy? Wherever the image comes from – if there is a single source – I wouldn’t call it call it a “misquotation”. NB tends to borrow such metaphor and play with it for our amusement, as well as his own, often seeming to me to take the piss out of well-used and familiar-sounding literary tropes and clichés. In another song, “your palfrey awaits” would be another of many examples of that, and a source found on google is unlikely to be the particular one.
Incidentally, that part of this song, combined with all the wildflowers and the ‘spring has sprung’ on Oblonghas been making me re-read A Shropshire Lad
(nothing to do with this song really, but reverse the numbers and it’s how I feel about Oblong)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Somewhere among the 700+ comments on the TVY New Album thread someone has already given the source of the “Made it, Ma…” quote: Arthur ‘Cody’ Jarrett, James Cagney’s homicidal psychotic character in ‘White Heat’ (1949), yells it at the end of the film, before the giant gas tank which he’s standing on and has just shot explodes.
“Top of the world!” was the toast he’d earlier shared with his crooked mother, ‘Ma’ Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly).
19 March 2022
Dull Head Del
@CtsO Thanks for that. Been wondering what exactly it meant. We don’t have that term in Scotland. I had guessed it was either that or he was preparing fish.
Great song, probably my favourite on the album.
19 March 2022
EXXO
I get Cagney scenes going through my head twice on this album – this gas tank scene, and the one that made an even more massive impression on me as a kid, the climax to Angels with Dirty Faces where, out of shot, the priest hears Cagney’s character ‘acting yellow’ as he is taken to the electric chair. That’s one of loads of films I think of during I’m Getting Buried
19 March 2022
WOodnoggin
I can attest to the baboons at Knowsley Safari Park being cheeky blighters. The last time I visited, one of them yanked a windscreen wiper off our car. My dad was absolutely livid. If monkeys could talk, I can well imagine this gang insulting visitors while ravaging their vehicles.
19 March 2022
EXXO
Exactly the same happened on our only family visit in about 1974.
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Since the Cagney quote refers to ‘Ma’ Jarrett, I’d be inclined to capitalise her sobriquet.
Also, I can’t really see why the protagonist should shift into the past tense when describing his scaling of the Matalan (a slight mangling of Matterhorn, if anyone’s looking for mountaineering references). Neither can I hear Nigel sing “I scaled“.
19 March 2022
Jeff dreadnought
I thought “the snows of fifty winters” might be a reference to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2: “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow…” etc.
19 March 2022
Jeff Dreadnought
Also, I was puzzling over the “Forestry Commission roads” line, which I’d misheard as “Forestry Commission rogues”
19 March 2022
EXXO
Good point about ‘Ma’ needing a capital, whether he means ‘Mum’ (which he obviously does) or is using her title. As for the /d/, If it was there you probably wouldn’t hear it, for v. similar reasons to how you probably wouldn’t hear a difference between “Urbek Sean” and “Urbex Sean.” So I’m not sure, and that’s when I bring meaning into it – do we imagine him up there regularly?
19 March 2022
EXXO
@Jeff – “fifty winters” could be found in other famous poetry – the Beowulf one already mentioned for example. That Shakespeare sonnet might be the most famous example of “[number] winters” in literature, but I reckon you’d need the “powdered my head with the snows of …” before you could call it a reference or a borrowing.
19 March 2022
Cream CHEESE AND chives
‘It was loft ladders what killed our Martin.’
Thoughts on use of what rather than that?
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Which was my point in the William Taylor Adams misquote (or at least correct quotation of a misquote) above: the detective’s beard being “grizzled by the snows of many winters” so that he looks elderly enough to be fifty is pretty close to the protagonist’s head being powdered ditto.
I would never go so far as to suggest reference or borrowing, but it’s pretty close.
The use of “winters” to denote the passage of time, whether twelve in Beowulf, twenty in Cooper or forty in Shakespeare, is pure synecdoche.
(I’ve been dying to use the word ‘synecdoche’ since I was bouleversé with it by His Grace The Duke over ‘Olaf’. I’ve also been dying to use the word bouleversé.)
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Having said all that, there’s an 1887 biography of Wilkie Collins in the short-lived periodical Men and Women which describes him as being “somewhat below the middle height, with hair and beard whitened with the snows of sixty winters”.
19 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
@ John Anderson #9:
I particularly like “they don’t stitch pockets into shrouds” as an alternative to “you can’t take it with you”.”
It’s an old phrase, though.
@CCAC #24:
“‘It was loft ladders what killed our Martin.’
Thoughts on use of what rather than that?”
Fairly standard demotic English used instead af “that” as a conjunction. Often transcribed as “wot”.
19 March 2022
gipton teenager
‘Twas I Dr D, who referred to ‘WhiteHeat’, but in a personal flight of fancy about Old Joe and Awkward Sean. As regards Grafting Haddock, in the 70’s sellers were commonplace in the pubs in Leeds. In crowded pubs they used to hold the basket over their heads and walk sideways. I’m sure you can guess what everyone called them…
19 March 2022
gipton teenager
…sorry, should have said that they sold all kinds of shellfish, cockles, crabsticks etc.
19 March 2022
EXXO
@ Dr. D – some top vocabulary there.
“The snows of X winters” though can be traced beyond doubt (beyond mine anyway) to native North American sayings as a way of counting age. Cooper was trying to convey the way native Americans spoke.
Love the Wilkie Collins description, and the source reminds me of my days poring over original copies of Men and Women in the UL. The language there absolutely can be traced back to the native American figure of speech via the likes of Fennimore Cooper.
19 March 2022
professor Abelazar woozle
@John Anderson/Pirix – yes, “no pockets in a shroud” has long been thrown at money-grabbers to remind them that there’s ultimately no point in wasting your life hoarding pictures of the Queen. There’s a fine song by Jez Lowe that uses the line too – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6-7eZXGA-U
I’m still racking my brains about the original source of the first four lines – I’ll have to dig out my side-by-side copy of Beowulf for a look and I’m starting to think it might be in another work of Medieval literature I’ve read in the dim and distant past – maybe Chaucer, maybe Piers Plowman, maybe Mallory?
@Dr. D – going off topic, if you want another good obscure word, try “agnomical” which is one I use to baffle managers with.
19 March 2022
Cream CHEESE AND chives
@Pirx The Purist NB57 doesn’t strike me as someone who would use what in place of that. I wondered if he were assuming the character of someone who would…
19 March 2022
dr Desperate
Thanks for that, @Prof. Next time I find myself idly wondering, I’ll use it.
19 March 2022
clown in a yaris
Every time i hear the ‘It was loft ladders what killed our Martin’ i just hear Alan Bennett. Sounds just like classic Bennett humour.
20 March 2022
dr Desperate
The phrase “happy as Larry” seems to come from the land Down Under, with some of the earliest citations being “We would be as happy as Larry if it were not for the rats” (New Zealand writer G. L. Meredith, around 1875) and “Now that the adventure was drawing to an end, I found a peace of mind that all the old fogies on the river couldn’t disturb. I was as happy as Larry” (Australian Tom Collins (Joseph Furphy), 1903).
One theory is that Larry was the Australian boxer Larry Foley (1847 – 1917), who never lost a fight, retired aged 32 and collected a purse of £1,000 for his last bout.
Other theories are available.
20 March 2022
dr Desperate
In the 1939 film adaptation of ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’, Robert Donat as the eponymous schoolmaster says farewell to two of his pupils off to fight in the Great War, Lieutenant Peter Colley and his batman Perkins, whom he greets with, “Why, bless my soul, if it isn’t the town cheese”.
(**SPOILER ALERT** Neither of them comes out of it very well.)
20 March 2022
EXCAVATED RITA
I’m not entirely convinced that the title is linked to the former practice of selling seafood in pubs. As others such as GT have pointed out, the produce was seafood, such as cockles and whelks. In my memory, sold in a paper bag with a wooden pick. I’m not sure therefore how haddock would work. Also, I’m not aware these comestibles were prepared in a pub. They seemed to come from somewhere on the coast and we’re sold by someone going from pub to pub.
Happy to have my doubts allayed.
20 March 2022
Pop-tart mark
Next you’ll be telling us they don’t sell cucifiction nails in Bunners or wolf nipple favour pringles at the amphitheatre 😉
20 March 2022
MUrderous giraffe
@DrD #36. Goodbye Mr Chips became “Good pie, missed the chips” at the hands of Muir or Norden in the aforementioned My Word book.
20 March 2022
Another gobshite
‘Loft Ladders Killed Our Norman’ of course, was the working title of the ‘Creative Hub’ LP.
20 March 2022
Gerry gow
E. Nesbitt wrote ‘a contented mind is a perpetual feast’ in The Story of the Treasure Seekers. Googling around this, some religious analysis has it as a combination of 1 Timothy 6.6 and Proverbs 15.15. Rather nicely 1 Timothy 6.7 is ‘For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.’ Pockets, shrouds etc.
20 March 2022
Willshed
I now get the grafting relevance. To me it’s a word used for working hard but makes sense in the sense of the fishmonger selling his wares in a pub or social club as i well recall even in to the late 90s. “Seafood, crabsticks, whelks” would be the cry , soon appended by the oh so fancy at the time “pepperaaaahhhhmi”
Never saw any haddock in the basket though
20 March 2022
paul f
Whilst I was happy to reminisce earlier about the regular seafood salesmen in pubs “back in the day”, I agree that “grafting haddock” can’t possibly refer to that practice. I think it’s far more likely to refer to the sale of meat and fish obtained from dubious sources in the back rooms of pubs by the northern equivalents of Derek Trotter.
21 March 2022
transit full of keith
The talky bit and the switches of musical pace and theme remind me of ‘Emerging from Gorse’.
Another song about being contented where you are, I guess, like Oblong of Dreams and Mileage Chart. “I scaled the Matalan” is perfect. Speaking of the Matterhorn, I wonder if Nigel takes a view on whether Whymper cut the rope.
21 March 2022
EXXO
Speaking for myself, when I illustrated the probable meaning of “grafting” [ + something in a pub] with the obvious example of the seafood sellers, I was merely illustrating the meaning of the verb which had been enquired about. Surely nobody is suggesting that selling haddock in a pub is or was in any way a serious proposition?
(PS – Birkenhead’s George & Dragon doesn’t have a back room. Bebington’s now demolished George might have done but there’s no way they’d let you in there with even a single pilchard )
21 March 2022
Chris from Future Doom
What sort of state are the Methodists’ drains in that cleaning them is a full-time job?
22 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
It’s all the blood sacrifices… 😉
22 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Any thoughts on the pockets in shrouds line? Just a reference to not being able to take anything with you, so he’s not that arsed with making it big in this life?
Compare and contrast with his love of an inside pocket, as professed on Mate Of The Bloke…
23 March 2022
Chris from Future Doom
@Janet, yes, just a ‘you can’t take it with you’ sort of thing. It’s a saying innit. John Lydon says it in ‘Warrior’ by PiL: ‘Beggars can’t be choosers / Shrouds they have no pockets / Some of us wake up / Others roll over’
25 March 2022
Second hand hessian sack
Is it too much of a stretch to think that “Oh those Forestry Commission roads, What a tale they could tell” might be a nod towards the sport of rallying? Events such as the legendary and much-missed Lombard RAC Rally have used those roads since the early 1960s and let’s face it, we’ve not had a rallying reference since Hannu Mikkola’s dexterity was lauded in Architecture and Morality Ted and Alice.
26 March 2022
FEATURELESS TV PRODUCER STEVE
I imagine many of you have lived lives of more planning than I have, but as someone whose head was powdered with the snows of fifty winters a few winters ago, the lines
I never thought about the future
Or what I would become
Didn’t care – still don’t
really hit home.
HMHB haven’t written lines I can relate to as much as those since “I don’t give a fuck about your missing cat.”
28 March 2022
Lux inferior
@FTVPS – Pretty much spot on for me too, including the cat line.
Mind you, if I’d ever bothered to think about the future, or what I would become, maybe I’d have been able to afford to get to a few more ‘away’ gigs over the years. I had an unexpected opportunity to head up to Nottingham last Friday, but that idea was kiboshed when I discovered that I’d have to shell out a ton or so for accommodation. That just left the option of kipping in the car (no late trains back to my neck of the woods), which isn’t really viable when you’re of an age where you need to get up for a piss three or four times a night.
I’m still hearing ‘forestry commission rogues’.
28 March 2022
MILLICHIP
https://www.abctales.com/story/terrence-oblong/grafting-haddock-george
Presumably this is something of a prerelease homage/ tiger trap for web searching goons like me?
28 March 2022
Adam
@EXXO The George in Bebington deffo had a back room before it was knocked thru/redeveloped into a Tut n Shive (remember them?!) in the 90’s. Then back to a normal pub sometime after.
It never was demolished. Was converted into apartments with on site boutique spa. I’d of rather they did take the bulldozer to it.
30 March 2022
BarahirNZ
@MILLICHIP The Author being Terrence Oblong is a tad suspiscious. Big HMHB fan writing stories based on the track listing explanation here: https://www.abctales.com/collection/voltarol-years
6 April 2022
EXXO
@Barahirnz
See comment 254 in this thread https://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/urge-for-offal/
where Terrence Oblong (real name Dave Clark) introduces his project of writing tales based on HMHB titles before the songs are released (which he started 3 albums ago in 2014).
On another blog he tells us
“Cambridge, United Kingdom
Introduction So who is Terrence Oblong? Terrence Oblong is an alias used by Dave Clark, an Essex-born writer currently residing in Cambridge. Terrence Oblong first appeared in print in 1991, where he wrote for (and occasionally edited) Swansea Arts Magazine. Terrence also appeared as a DJ on the student radio station C-Air. Terrence disappeared for several years, only to return when Dave discovered abctales.com in October 2009, since when Terrence has been a regular poster of stories on the site. Dave Clark is also responsible for Terrence’s great rival, the Other Terrence Oblong, who also posts stories on the site.
To find out more about Dave Clark visit the Q&A he did for Word Hut:
http://thewordhut.com/meet-the-writer-2/dave-clark”
Only that link does not seem to work.
The ‘Oblong’ in his name seems to come from a TV thing
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098874/characters/nm0254590
and so no it isn’t suspicious in the way that (I bet) you are hinting.
7 April 2022
Llamafarmer
I think it’s “scaled”. I like scaled more than scale, which might or might not be coincidence.
On the other hand I’m confident that any association between scaling and fish is coincidence.
Did those seafood vendors in pubs sell haddock? I remember only cockles and crabsticks etc as snacks. I first witnessed this in The Highwayman, Skelmersdale, in the mid 80s and then later in pubs in Newcastle upon Tyne, and the vendors always looked uncannily similar – little fellows with a white coat and a thin moustache. Perhaps the happy vans covered wide areas.
As to the use of “The” for Matalan, it needs mentioning that in Merseyside the definite article is used for all supermarkets and the like (The Asda. The Aldi, The Iceland), sometimes archly but more often not.
18 April 2022
Paul f
Not entirely true with respect to the definite article on Merseyside. It is always “Thee Asda” and used to be “The Kwikky” when Kwik Save were around, but most shops do not attract the convention, and certainly not Matalan.
19 April 2022
EXXO
I was going to say the same, Paul. It could only really have happened with the two chains that became veritable local institutions so rapidly in the 60’s/early 70’s (“the Kwikky”) and the 80’s (“thee Asda”). Anyway, those local idiosyncrasies aren’t that weird when you consider that nationally, throughout the UK, everyone still says “the Co-op”, and, that whereas everyone says just “Tesco,” a lot of the same people would say “the Tesco Express.”
As for haddock, once again I would say that nobody is remembering or suggesting selling haddock in a pub as something that has ever happened regularly (though it would be foolish to assert that it has never happened). But that does not mean that this isn’t what’s happening in this song, because surely the surreal unlikeliness of it is what makes it idiosyncratic and funny. The mention of the surreal merchandise in Bunner’s earlier on in this thread is certainly a relevant comparison.
19 April 2022
EXXO
You do hear “I’m going (to) the Aldi,” “the Iceland” and “the Lidl” on Merseyside too, in approximately that order of frequency. There’s more than one factor at play. Not just whether they are seen as a local institution like “the pub,” “the butcher’s” or “the chippie,” but of course simply the fact that the three most common begin with a vowel and Merseyside accents do not readily lend themselves to glottal stops, particularly following the weak form of “to.”
19 April 2022
woodnoggin
The self-service checkouts in (the) Co-Op also say “the Co-Op” after serving you, as in “thank you for shopping at the Co-Op”. That suggests to me it’s official usage rather than local idiosyncrasy.
19 April 2022
EXXO
Yes, that was my point – that apparent local idiosyncracies may ultimately be as logical as what is national standard usage. Originally of course it would be “the Co-op(erative) society/stores/shop/dairy” so natural to use the article before the adjective and then to retain it.
19 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Yeah but it’s “I scaled the Matalan” because it’s a play on “the Matterhorn”, not because of any propensity to use “the” with shops on Merseyside.
19 April 2022
EXXO
Clearly.
19 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
I was replying to Llamafarmer.
19 April 2022
Donny Rovers Fan
Would there have been a group playing the (back rooms of the) pubs around Liverpool at some point with the initals G H? Maybe with members called Martin & Larry?
Who set off for a gig in Ludlow and ended up in Chepstow?
This song does seem to fit the Bryan Adams, Jimmy quit, Jodie got married, of ex-band members pastiche.
23 April 2022
Uncle Keith
This is how I see it. The narrator of this song never made any plan for achieving fame and fortune in his youth, and has no regrets about it as he earns enough to get by, albeit in unconventional ways. While other vendors sell seafood snacks for customers to enjoy with their drinks, this fellow tries to sell whole fish. Still he’s content, he’s seen one relative, the one with the crazy business ideas, drive himself into an early grave striving to keep his loft ladder shop afloat. This man doesn’t spend his nine to fives in boardrooms, offices or factory floors. He can decide to visit Ludlow one day and then, on a whim change his mind and head for Chepstow instead. He retains enough youthful exuberance to feel comfortable getting up to such boyish pranks as climbing up onto the roof of Matalan and loudly proclaiming that he has made it and is on top of the world! He’s right to, he worked out long ago that the secret of happiness wasn’t in pursuing great wealth or acclaim, but in achieving a sense of freedom. When he falls asleep at night, he does so as contentedly as the Methodist Centre odd job man, another man who has the secret of life sussed.
24 April 2022
Uncle Keith
A couple of further thoughts. Is the song title a metaphor for how the band earn their crust? Doing occasional small gigs rather than selling their cockles and winkles in the best room by doing full tours in larger venues? I think if this song has siblings then they are Oblong, Mileage Chart and Terminus, the latter being the odd one out as the narrator has plenty of freedom but doesn’t, or doesn’t know how to, enjoy it.
24 April 2022
EXXO
@Uncle Keith. For those inclined to try to make a coherent whole out of the fragments of the more fragmented songs, it’s certainly easier to do so with this one than with ‘Persian Rug Sale,’ and you’ve made a pretty impressive effort there. It is after all, human nature to try to make sense out of stuff (cf the meaningless of the universe, etc). The more I thought about a response, the less I disagreed with you. And then, as I actually wrote this, I disagreed even less.
The song opens with a strong, clear non-metaphorical ‘credo’ stated by a character who could easily not be ‘in character’ at all – i.e. it sounds like NB’s own outlook on life. And yes, this has much in common with ‘Oblong’ and especially ‘Mileage Chart’ in terms of expressing an acceptance, a quiet happiness with where the protagonist finds himself towards the end of his working life. Whether the whole song is meant to be a coherent metaphor, I’ve been less sure since the album came out. But less ‘less sure’ since I started writing this.
The act of “grafting haddock” in the pub can be a metaphor if you want it to be, but where there is metaphor in the autobiographical songs it is towards the much clearer end of the scale. In ‘Terminus’ the place on the bus for the elderly and the young is obvious, and the eponymous metaphor in ‘Mileage Chart’ is also a very practical, obvious one, with even the second layer of metaphor – the mileage chart representing the musical charts and the whole music “business” – being laid on pretty obviously. Those two songs are constructed with an absolute unity of theme and metaphor, which is what makes them so exquisite. Plus – and this is crucial – they aren’t funny. This one (‘Grafting Haddock’) is more in the collage-style, with fragments ranging from folk wisdom to monkey jokes. Plus the tune is funny, with funny brass oompah. If we’re comparing with one of NB’s bus songs, there is at least as much in common with ‘Little in the Way of Sunshine’ as with ‘Terminus’. The former is funny; the latter isn’t particularly; nor are the other autobiographical songs you mention.
The jokes in songs like Grafting Haddock are perhaps important in trying to decide what is intended as a serious metaphor, because if we read the whole thing as a metaphor, then it isn’t quite as funny (for me, the same would apply to trying to make ‘Persian Rug Sale’ make sense). In your interpretation, for example, you’ve taken the marvelous, mysterious non-sequitur humour of “it was loft ladders what killed our Martin” and changed it to a serious metaphor that doesn’t really seem to be there. The “happy as Larry” bit is funniest (for me anyway) when we see it as an absurd ramble about WTF the daft expression “happy as Larry” actually means, with “cleaning out the drains at the methodist centre” the usual piss-taking about the daftness in the details of organised religion and the significance people attach to absurd actions undertaken in the name of finding meaning. A fragment of overheard conversation like those in ‘Little in the Way of Sunshine.’
[However, to those out there – and we have seen there are a few – who think that all such micro-analysis of the lyrics is pulling the wings off the humour, I do think you miss the joy and self-parody with which we do so]
There are occasional HMHB songs which seem like collages of some of the best lines left over from NB’s notebook, that never quite made it into other songs. These can be among the greatest of his achievements, like ‘Surging out of Convalescence,’ or mixed bags of one-liners like ‘This One’s for Now.’ This song has elements of that (with the theme of ‘can’t fit pockets into shrouds’ etc possibly even being a wise rejection from ‘Oblong’?), and yes, it also has a coherent theme which you have rightly identified.
I suppose, to debunk my own argument, we could say that the jokey elements in this song might even be there to debunk the seriousness of the metaphor and ensure that it is so unique in itself and different from the other songs you mention.
Finally, some factual corrections – HMHB nearly always play the most financially-viable venues possible to guarantee a decent return from places they want to play on dates when they are all available, balanced with calculations of trying to play near to where the fans haven’t seen them for a while and calculations of avoiding fatigue and hassle. It’s only Nigel doesn’t have another job, and it’s important that he & his can survive on the fewest possible gigs. His return per gig will be pretty impressive compared with many contemporaries in some very well known outfits. All of which doesn’t mean that “grafting haddock in the back room of the George” isn’t a metaphor for that, but just that if it is, it’s a typically self-deprecating one.
26 April 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Notes from Paddy Shennan’s interview with NB10:
I love Carl’s drums on this. I particularly like the bit where I sing “I drive the happy van” and he hits it really fucking hard. It’s great that, and I love it because he sets it up beautifully for the “Made it Ma, top of the world!” line.
I’m aware that people used to go around pubs selling cockles and mussels but this isn’t about that. I was thinking of a pub in town – in a back street in Birkenhead. The pub – the Vittoria Vaults on Vittoria Street – is known as “The Piggy”. It’s not necessarily that but it’s that type of pub. It’s “The George” in the title, and there is a George and Dragon in Birkenhead which, I suppose, could also be an influence – but really, it could be one of any number of pubs.
I remember walking past Farm Foods in Prenton once, and this lad was just walking out with a load of meat – he was someone who was down on his luck and had just robbed it, and was going down town to sell it, and that’s all it is. For the song, it just happened to be haddock that day. It could have been mince. In fact, I’ve got a feeling, if I went to my lyric book, the song could originally have been Grafting Mince In The George. But it just didn’t scan – it doesn’t work as well.
It’s a very bitty song, with a lot of different elements in – just to get a joke in about a monkey in Knowsley Safari Park!
The bit near the start (“I never thought about the future or what I would become/Didn’t care, still don’t/For as far as I’m aware, they don’t stitch pockets into shrouds”) is not particularly autobiographical, though I can see how it would seem to be that way because I am a little bit like that. But the shrouds bit doesn’t fit too much because I’m not a spendthrift. I’m not a miser, either, but I’m not a spendthrift.
The other bit at the start (“When I was young, and the blood pulsed swiftly through my veins/Before age, trampling upon youth/Powdered my head with the snows of fifty winters”) – that’s too clever for me. I just read that somewhere, I’m not sure where – and then I’ve written it down. And I haven’t got a head with powdered hair – you have, I haven’t!
But not thinking about the future, I suppose that is me. It’s not “wanting” to think about the future to be precise, I suppose, as regards myself. All the old age, pain and illness and loss of loved ones etc. Same as everyone else really.
And yes, it’s “Oh those Forestry Commission roads…”- not rogues, as someone suggested.
“It was loft ladders what killed our Martin” – I was thinking about those old public information films. Nothing more than that.
It’s unusual deaths – I like all that. Like Stupid Deaths from Horrible Histories, perhaps. I had about eight titles for the album, and one was “Loft Ladders Killed Our Norman”. Don’t know why I changed it to “Martin”. But I obviously didn’t think it was as good as The Voltarol Years.
I wrote the “Tuba” riff on the guitar but got Chris Taylor, the engineer, to use a Tuba (an electronic one from a keyboard) over the top of it.
Back on the title, I think I saw a phrase on the internet – probably from one of my mates, actually, cos I read what people around me are writing and I quietly steal. I don’t steal things wholesale; I will use half of it maybe. And my mate could have been the one who said to his mate – and I read it – he’d have said “The next thing you’ll tell us is your ma’s grafting mince in the Dove and Olive.” He’d have written something like that, and I would have taken it and changed it. That’s how it happens.
4 May 2022
mister tubbs
Fascinating reading – The bit where Nigel enthuses about Carl’s drumming on the happy van bit, certainly strikes a chord. Given the dark nature of quite a few of the other songs, I’d wondered if the “happy van” was used to transport victims to their final resting place, perhaps via those Forestry Commission roads, which probably don’t see much traffic, especially after dark, when the narrator becomes as “happy as Larry”. I also thought “Grafting Haddock” might be a euphemism for what the narrator does to his prey, but it seems that it’s just about someone selling knocked off meat down the pub. One of the best songs off the new album for me, and all the better for that brilliant variation of the National Shite Day riff.
7 May 2022
Pirx the purist
The reference to Forestry Commission roads and what tales they might tell is probably because those roads were often the haunts of courting couples in cars. Which may be where the modern U.S. phrase, “putting rubber to the road” originated…
8 May 2022
dr Desperate
Yeah, it’s “I’ve scaled the Matalan”.
12 June 2022
Lux inferior
Whilst idly perusing various threads the other day, I discovered the following comment in Roger’s rollicking review of the 2017 Sheffield Leadmill gig:
“All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit was about setting the satnav for Chepstow and ending up in Ludlow (points towards Neil again).”
Seems quite apt that I should discover this dodgy satnav reference in the same week that I’ve had to put up with endless shots of Henman Hill…I wish these evenings of backswing had been cancelled.
6 July 2022
Our Martin
That man that cleans out the drains at the Methodist church, the one with the permanent smile
I wonder if he is among those referenced in Getting Buried…?
2 November 2022
10 steps start here
A throwback to Gerry Gow’s comment above from back in March – came across a copy of E. Nesbit’s ‘The Story of the Treasure Seekers’ at the library with my kids and there it was at the end of Chapter 15:
“Besides, as Dora said, ‘A contented mind is a continual feast,’ so it did not matter about not wanting tea. Only H. O. did not seem to think a continual feast was a contented mind, and Eliza gave him a powder in what was left of the red-currant jelly Father had for the nasty dinner.”
8 November 2022
dr desperate
The Miles Coverdale Bible (1535) translation of Proverbs 15,15 has “a quiet heart” rather than “a contented mind”:
“All the dayes of the poore are miserable, but a quyete herte is as a cotynuall feast”.
More recent usages, such as in the 1826 House Book, or Family Chronicle of Useful Knowledge, and Cottage Physician: Combining Medicine, Cookery, Diet, General Economy, Health, Sea-bathing, Gardening, Manufactures, Arts, etc., … Including Upwards of a Thousand Select Recipes and Prescriptions have “perpetual” in place of “continual”.
8 November 2022