Thanks to Karen C, Dr D, Rich P, Sid, Peter T-M, Dave T and Alastair W for their transcription contributions. This page originally published on 10 March 2022.
The album’s epic closer. I know at least one person has already plotted the points of interest on a map. Bit longer than a short stroll, but walkable…
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
I’m pretty confident that Thorstone should be Thor’s Stone.
I’m less confident that ridge should be capitalise, as from Woodchurch he appears to be headed towards Ridgeway high school.
10 March 2022
I, problem chimp
I went Thor’s Stone on the basis that Wirral native Matthew Barnes has a track entitled that on the Forest Swords ‘Engravings’ album…
10 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Yes, sorry about that, my error, don’t blame the contributors, who were pretty unanimous on ‘Thor’s Stone’.
10 March 2022
transit full of keith
Definitely Thor’s Stone, a sandstone outcrop on Thurstaton common. It has 28 named bouldering routes, according to UK Climbing. Wonder if Colin Kirkus used to have a go on it.
I think if “Did you see the match?’ is in quote marks, then so should ‘flat back four’ be.
10 March 2022
transit full of keith
I’m guessing that the photo of what looks like a bit of golf course near a housing estate in the CD inlay is a place in the song? Woodchurch Estate?
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Probably Arrowe Park golf course. From Limbo Lane in Thingwall you get to the back of the golf course and on from there to the roundabout and into Woodchurch. Bradley Dredge gets namechecked at that point but I googled him in connection with that golf course and didn’t find anything.
10 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
What a great song.
I always expected there to be a capital F on Fender, the river (brook) after the M53 but before you go under the railway bridge on to Woodchurch Road.
10 March 2022
SlOw dempsey
I thought the Fender and the Bridge were the names of local estates and merited capitals. Could someone with local knowledge confirm?
10 March 2022
EXXO
Been trying to pinpoint which hole on which golf course that is. Will work it out soon enough.
Yes, plenty of Sundays as little kids were topped off by scrambling up Thor’s Stone, but no, Keith, nothing sufficient to challenge Kirkus, or any reasonably fit adult, and he didn’t live on the Wirral when he was a kid anyway. I took Hamburg HMHB fan Torsten to the stone during the tour I did for him before the last L’pool gig, so he saw a couple of these places even before they were mentioned! I took him there not just ‘cos it’s on the route from Royden Park and Heswall Flower Club, but because it’s yards from the most likely toposcope for ‘Terminus’ and because Torsten’s name is basically the same name Thurstaston was named after (with Thor’s stone then being reverse etymologied).
Leasowe light. No capital needed. Likewise telepudlian is an adjective not a nickname. Loads of people are telepudlians but it’s not their nickname. Likewise dull Adele. She’s just dull.
“Accounts” is more a matter of opinion, but capitalising it gives it way too much respect for me. It’s not an internal memo.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Yes, Fender capitalised as a river, ridge not – the central Wirral sandstone ridge is his personal ridge. No, Fender and bridge are not estates.
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
I’ll gloss over your disdain for my profession…
Bradley Dredge has played at Hoylake, so it could be a hole there. I don’t like it, though, it requires leaping from Thingwall to Hoylake and back to Woodchurch which doesn’t fit the narrative of the walk.
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
I missed the (River) Fender, which should obviously be capitalised, and had Thorstone Drive for Thor’s Stone (ditto), but here’s the updated map. Nice long dog walk, that.
10 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
Nice work, Dr D, not that I’m going to manage 18 miles any time soon.
On imagining the route as I listen to the song I had it using Duck Pond Lane Park as the “fields where she still walks” which takes us on to “the school” assuming it’s St Saviour’s primary school.
10 March 2022
Rob R
“Everythink” I want is here and “everythink” I need is here.
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Any chance of pinpointing where the bonfire burned? Any parks or the like where they might have gone to see fireworks in their younger days?
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
One more for “everythinks”. I’ve only ever seen Paul’s description written out once, on a TRFC White Review Community Forum thread about fans booing the team, and it was capitalised and spelt “Tellypudlian” (as opposed to “Tellytonian”). There is a hint of Teletubbies about the term though, so the spelling above may be more appropriate. It’s obviously a slighting reference to Liverpool (and Everton) fans who only ever see the match on Super Sunday – bet they’re on Sky.
10 March 2022
Natalie at the back
The picture looks like it’s taken from near the top of Duck Pond Lane, where there are daffodils. In the background there’s a low cloud base over the Clwydian Hills
10 March 2022
Sloppy
Ha, my attempt at a walk was one way. Much better!! I thought the route from the Fender would be the bridge & motorway tunnel to Christleton Close on the Holmlands estate? I vaguely remember bonfires on the grassy bit of Holmlands Crescent
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Quick note that Robbo’s Vauxhall Viva would have been made at Ellesmere Port, a few junctions down the M53.
10 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
For what it’s worth, I also think ‘flat back four’ should be in quotation marks, and I’d go as far as suggesting “Every think”.
As I might have mentioned to CtSO, this is nothing short of a masterpiece in my (poetry) books. Yes, Wordsworth, but more so with it’s Wilfred Owen influences. I don’t know the geography at all, so I think my, ahem, ‘emotional’ response is twofold. Firstly, the dear departed dog thing (don’t ask). Secondly, the urgency in the ‘Wake up’ lines, and their association with the poem ‘Futility’. Which brings me onto my next suggestion. Should there be an em dash (long hyphen) after ‘Move him onto his side’ to mirror the first line of Owen’s work ‘Move him into the sun— ’?
10 March 2022
EXXO
Yes, Karen, I’m loving your way of handling the Owen reference. Meanwhile any Wordsworth comparison by us is more, well just a comparison. He mentions clouds, daffodils, and it’s a moment of epiphany.
John – I wouldn’t take football sites as a style guide. Other tele- adjectives and nouns are not capitalised.
@Natalie. Of course it is, of course it is. Duck Pond park disguising itself as a golf course for a minute – they don’t half look like bunkers round a green. The Arno’s behind us, and the daffodils will be just there. It’s about 30 yards further down the lane than the 3rd photo down the page here. http://friendsofthearno.blogspot.com/p/about.html
10 March 2022
featureless steve
What a great word Telepudlian is.
Regarding the debate over everythink/everything, I reckon “everything” is correct for the lyrics, and it’s just that NB pronounces it “everythink”.
See also – and maybe amend if necessary – The Unfortunate Gwatkin, where Bridgedale would become tetchy and feel the need to punch “somethink”
10 March 2022
Gerry gow
Obviously +1 for capital F for the river Fender, but nice Fender/bridge geography/ musical instrument pairing. Also, the diction on “Woodchurch” makes it sound like some sort of El Dorado has been discovered.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Yes Steve, I’ll be surprised if anyone from Merseyside thinks he’s singing “everythink.” That is pretty much how we pronounce “everything.”
(It wouldn’t surprise me if someone contrarian from Merseyside overthought it and ‘heard’ “think” for the first time after seeing this thread though)
10 March 2022
EXXO
Incidentally and somewhat hauntingly, there’s at least one hornbeam not far behind us in the Arno.
10 March 2022
Dagenham dave
I’m not sure why but this one makes me cry. What a song.
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
Yes, @CA, great suggestion about punctuating the Owen reference (from the same poem quoted by NB in TCS, and by BB in ‘War Requiem, Op. 66 / Dies irae – IIi’).
10 March 2022
Gerry gow
@JFA post 16 I seem to remember massive bonfires on the playing field between the M53 J3 and the River Fender. I may be misremembering though. It’s a few decades ago now.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Blimey. Just seen your walk. Bit daft not to get more of the fabulous coastline in. No idea how we get to Moreton, just that there’s a corpse on the way. But go north up Lingham Lane and enjoy the coast road round to Caldy. And get a bike.
10 March 2022
HARRISON ADAMS
Surely spring, not Spring?
10 March 2022
EXXO
A chunk of the first part of your walk is giving me a stitch just thinking about the school cross country course which was largely contained within Noctorum. Evil torture. But better than most of the rest of school life it has to be said. NB had a very lucky escape.
10 March 2022
EXXO
@Harrison. We’re throwing capitals around everywhere in celebration of the new album. Maybe it’s someone’s nickname.
10 March 2022
Sloppy
@Exxo I remember that ‘run’ well!! At least we managed to by pass a chippy 😃
10 March 2022
Gerry gow
Who is Olaf in this? Could it be William Olaf Stapledon, or am I over thinking it?
10 March 2022
I, Problem CHimp
I capitalised spring (and put an exclamation mark after ‘showtime’!) but on reflection probably just a bit caught up in the general euphoria of the track… ‘Everythink’ is surely just a question of pronunciation, though the idea of being lost in thought on the walk appeals… Finally managing to wean myself off having to play this twice in a row – I had a similar compulsion with Umberstone…
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
Chambers has the season lasting approximately from March to May in the northern hemisphere as “often with cap“.
10 March 2022
Spiltdown man
Anyone else hearing a click as if a bit of audio’s been cut immediately before “Thor’s Stone”? Or an error in the digital file?
Anyway…Great song. Great closer. Personally I’d put people who pronounce Everything as Everythink in a Suffolk Ditch and in fact have them hauled in for questioning as part of Operation Less Pricks too.
10 March 2022
Duke of westminster
Quotes around the first verse?
“Jenkin’s” rather than “Jenkins’” (or, indeed, “Jenkins’s”)?
In terms of stating the obvious, Olaf is, I suppose, Olaf Guthrithson on his way to or from the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 said to have taken place by Red Hill Road just to the south of this route.
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
We’ve previously discussed the links between Olaf Stapledon (author of ‘Last and First Men’) and Caldy Hill.
10 March 2022
Featureless Steve
@Spiltdown Man also haul on the executives who named it ‘Operation Less Pricks’ instead of ‘Operation Fewer Pricks’
10 March 2022
EXXO
See also the sleeve notes for ‘Referee’s Alphabet’ (tough shit anyone who hasn’t git a hard copy) … but loving your work there Your Grace.
10 March 2022
Duke of westminster
I can see the Stapledon/Caldy connection but if the reference was only to Stapledon wouldn’t it make more sense to say “Stapledon” than “Olaf”? Doesn’t using “Olaf” bring with it possibilities of other Wirral-lore of particular interest to the local historian? As well as Guthrithson (and Olaf Cenncairech) at Brunanburh there is the possibility of “Olaf” as a kind of synecdoche for the Norsemen who settled in this part of the Wirral in the late 9th and early 10th century. This would also stitch together with the Thor’s Stone/Thorstein’s Ton/Thurstaston reference.
11 March 2022
Kittymcdermott
At Dagenham Dave – ‘I’m not sure why but this one makes me cry’. I know what you mean – it provokes a certain feeling that’s really difficult to put into words, and I’ve been pondering it for 2 weeks now. Like, WHY does this make me fill up every time? My conclusions are: Personally, a sadness and regret that I’ve wasted too much time fretting about the ‘obvious and the asinine’ and not more time outdoors with my little Collins Gem book of wildflowers (purchased on first hearing Tyrolean Knockabout). And concurrent with that sadness, a renewed optimism that life can get sweeter (the more that I understand the flora and the fauna and the hedgerows abound in this land.)
I know that age has a lot to do with it for me. It’s not that a young person couldn’t fully understand this, or be similarly moved by it, but there’s that cold truth that the fewer springs you have ahead of you, the more precious they feel. That feeling just gets keener. This has that implicit urging, to me, to enjoy life’s simple pleasures while we still can (especially following Slipping the Escort, as it does).
I understand this has a very special place in the heart of Wirral natives. That said, I do think it’s got that ‘the more local, the more universal’ thing going on as well. Here’s a warm tribute to home from someone who didn’t get caught up in the ‘getting and spending’ and stayed where he was and found some joy where he was – that’s an achievement, isn’t it? I think that alone brought me to tears.
The word ‘oblong’ is just funny, and there’s joy in that.
The awful scene at the start establishes that that this is the real world where things really are increasingly grim. Food banks. So the narrator isn’t living in some dreamy pastoral seclusion, but is dealing with the real world as best he can. The ‘give him some dignity, give him some warmth’ line echoes in ‘sunbeams on my childhood.’ So there’s all the suffering and loss of the world contrasted with its beauty and our place in it. And a hint of ‘there but for the grace of God…’
At first, it seems like it might be heading National Shite Day way, but then it veers off into a totally different direction, where Janet from accounts is eclipsed and mentioned no more. That’s just … a really big surprise, I think. I did feel a little stunned on first listen. Exhilarated and awed and stunned. It’s just SO beautiful. Funny and bitter-sweet and surprising and beautiful.
As Carrie Anne said, it’s also just beautiful poetry. A celebration of nature and of language. Put me in mind of ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme grows’ and ‘the grass, the thicket and fruit-tree wild.’ There’s such easy delight in the way Nigel celebrates that tradition and adds to it. I do think there’s a bit of Wordsworth in there. The whole ‘knowing that nature never did betray the heart that loved her’ relationship-with-the-natural-world sketch.
I think perhaps that’s another reason it’s prompting such an emotional response, like when you read something that knocks you for six and you’re just moved to tears by the sheer brilliance of it. The thrill of encountering a poem or novel or film or song that you know immediately is just amazing, and the gratitude you feel when you’re reminded that some people are capable of amazing things, and that mankind is alright, really, for all its flaws. It’s just really moving, that someone could write something this good, and that they bothered to record it. Showtime!
Oh, it’s just a bloody great tune, too. And the backing vocals, as others have pointed out, just elevate the whole thing further. Sorry for the epic. I’ll just round off my pretentious and unsolicited analysis with a bit of John Clare: ‘An image to the mind is brought/Where happiness enjoys/An easy thoughtlessness of thought/And meets excess of joys.’
11 March 2022
Pirx the purist
“Here’s a warm tribute to home from someone who didn’t get caught up in the ‘getting and spending’ and stayed where he was and found some joy where he was – that’s an achievement, isn’t it?”
Hear, hear to that!
Apart from Uni, I’ve lived the whole of my nearly 60 years in this village. I’ve never wished to live anywhere else. I am – to sound a bit sentimental – at one with this place.
The song is a joyous celebration of place and of one’s place in it.
11 March 2022
Paul F
If we changed it to “everythink” on the basis of how he pronounces “everything” (in the style of Robbie Fowler’s autobiography, “me mum and me dad” etc) we’d have to reassess every song on this site
11 March 2022
The moth
Lovely. Enjoying the strong botanical content of the album in general and this song in particular. Being an ecological pedant I should point out that it’s Orange-tip butterfly, but he definitely sings ‘tipped’ – which describes how it (or more specifically the male) looks anyway.
11 March 2022
Parsfan
We seem to be teetering on the brink of “Journalists who try to spell an interviewee’s laugh”.
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
That’s a right good Olaf, your grace, especially as Stapledon’s parents apparently chose his middle name after reading Carlyle’s The Early Kings of Norway (1875). There is actually a Claire Jenkins who’s been known to tweet about gin, but I wouldn’t take her as a style guide. https://mobile.twitter.com/clairej49254232/status/1465809161791295495
11 March 2022
chris from future doom
‘Great song’ simply doesn’t do this justice. ‘Career culminating moment’ may be a little closer. I think overall ‘…Hedge…’ was a stronger album but Voltarol contains one, possibly two songs with STE better than anything they’ve done before.
As such – and as someone who has “dabbled in songwriting” (don’t worry, I’m not Lockdown Luke…) – I don’t believe for a second this popped into Nigel’s head fully formed during lockdown. Which makes me wonder just what the gestation period of a song like this must be. Several years, I would hazard.
Alas, a fantasy question for an interview with the great man that will never happen.
Or maybe I’ll just do the walk and camp out on Thurstaton Common til I bump into him…
11 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
Ok, here goes. I know this post is not going to find much support on this forum, especially from those who know Nigel and Neil personally, and I know that what I am about to say has no corroboration and very little foundation. However it does follow to an extreme the writing process mention by Chris at #50 above
On the day of release (the album’s, not mine) I had a long drive home from Heathrow so was able to listen to the whole album from start to finish without interruption. When I reached the final two tracks, they both resonated with me first time and I was especially bowled over at what a great song OoD is; one which subsequently I too seem to have to play twice. But on first listening it also left me with a sense that it was not just the end of the album but was also the band’s swansong; an unashamed, unsentimental review of what makes Nigel happy (as well as some further things that annoy him) and to be proud about where he comes from; forty years of outstanding song writing culminating in a glorious, vernal paean to their four-cornered Elysium. “How do you follow that, Boys?”
“We don’t. Stay, sit. This is it!”
11 March 2022
An Arctic roll
This song for me at least has feeling of almost bittersweet finality. Fitting for the end of the album I suppose. Then again I’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, knowing Nigel it’s probably about a slipper he lost years ago.
11 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Actually, I thought the same, MG. It would be an epic swansong. However, while it’s quite possible that the band (like any other) could always call it a day at any moment, I think it’s fair to surmise that it wouldn’t be in character for them to decide to do so a long way in advance – and they’ve booked gigs into 2023. So if this were to be the last album, I doubt it will have been planned as such.
I should also point out that despite the impression given by some contributors here (perhaps unintentionally), few – if any – know Nigel and Neil other than as passing acquaintances*, so don’t take anything too seriously unless it comes from the band, who as we know pop by from time to time.
*Definitely including me.
11 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
It was a little like when our English teacher used to surprise us with a poem we’d not seen before and ask for our initial response before we’d had time to study it thoroughly (and goodness knows, the songs are thoroughly studied on this site).
11 March 2022
Parsfan
At some point in the build up to the release someone saw some ominous portent in the limited information we had. I was going to add, might have done in the end – can’t remember, that the ominous portent I saw was all the band appearing on the cover. We had Neil on UFO but that’s it until now.
I don’t think they’ll have decided to call it a day, but currently on a four year album cycle they might just think “who knows?”.
11 March 2022
EXXo
What a fantastic sequence of comments, in themselves a wonderful tribute to the song (said an English teacher).
11 March 2022
I, problem chimp
If, as I have said in a previous comment, OoD had ended with another 2 minutes of the ‘cowslips and celandine’ refrain accompanied by swelling strings, I might have been worried – as it is the opening riff returns and we’re back to more familiar territory – maybe even back to the bloke who collapsed in the first verse being used as the inspiration for a further song? I’d love it if this was Awkward Sean – after all, the narrator here doesn’t really know him and no-one seems to know where Sean is or what has happened to him…
11 March 2022
Gerry GOW
Some bits of pedantry:
I hear singular “gin report”.
I’d have “Stay! Sit! This is it.” as the first two words sound like commands to me.
11 March 2022
Janet from accounts
It is the sort of song you could close a career on, though I hope that’s not what it is.
I find the tone of voice fascinating on this song. There is a growling intensity to parts of it, like Nigel is threatening you with how great he thinks the Wirral is, like you’d insulted his wife. “What’s that? It’s not the greatest place to live? Maybe you should come over here and say that.” The understated “Showtime” when the clouds part, like he’s daring you to not be impressed by it all. The utter joy at the daffodils at the end, and the outgoing refrain of “cowslips and celandine”…
It is absolutely beautiful, and yes – it makes me cry as well.
11 March 2022
transit full of keith
One of my favourite lines in Biscuit is “welcome to the daylight at the back of my mind” in Even Men With Steel Hearts: “releasing me from darker rooms” is a lovely echo of that, with added lockdown overtones we can all probably relate to. I wasn’t aware of the nod to Wilfred Owen in “Move him onto his side” – thanks for that Carrie Ann.
I think this is a really good song, and unusual in the Biscuit songbook for its apparent heartfeltness, but it’s not up there with their greatest for me. I won’t go into my reasons as they’re probably a bit picky and boring, but I’m starting to prefer Persian Rug Sale. Seems I’m in a minority though…
11 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
I think the man in the first verse is, sadly, dead and the “warmth” referred to is emotional rather than physical. The narrator’s thoughts then turn to his antidote, Wirral in the spring and all that has to offer to counteract the seamier side of life as well as the promise of new life. And as I write this Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony comes on Radio 3.
11 March 2022
Paul F
If it were to be the last song on the last album, I think they’d be going one better than Merseyside’s other keynote act. Given that Let it Be was recorded before Abbey Road, the latter deserves to be recognised as their final album. And they came up with Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End which included solos from all 4, a melancholic opening line and a transcendent closing line. And then Her Majesty accidentally got left on the end of the master… Thankfully nobody at RM Qualtrough was that incompetent.
11 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
…although Mark Lewisohn has suggested that the two sides of Abbey Road were eventually swapped from what was intended: I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – with its even more abrupt ending – was planned to finish off side two and be the final track on the final Beatles album.
11 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
If there is no pedantry too tedious to address and if the surname were “Jenkins” then I suppose the text ought to be written “Jenkins’s” (since, presumably, there is only one Claire Jenkins producing the gin report(s)). It doesn’t sound, though, as if NB is attempting to articulate all of the “s” sounds involved in “Jenkins’s” which sort of implies it is a “Claire/Clare Jenkin” involved.
11 March 2022
paul f
Interesting – but I’ll have to wait at least another 10 years to read about his views on Abbey Road in Volume 3!
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
The Puritan writer Richard Baxter’s poem ‘Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care’, a “Didn’t care, still don’t” meditation on life and death, contains the verse: “Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than He went through before; He that unto God’s kingdom comes Must enter by this door”.
11 March 2022
Markw
This is like an A level English Literature lesson! By the way, who is Stuart Bell?
11 March 2022
Dagenham dave
I agree with Mr/Mrs/Ms Giraffe at no.61 that the poor chap in the first verse is deceased, hence the ‘he’s out of it now’.
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
There’s obviously some disagreement over the possessive form of names that end in ‘s’, as demonstrated in the title and first line of the Wikipedia entry for the War of Jenkins’ Ear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear
11 March 2022
Bernardo soares
Is “And his flat back four” also spoken by Telepudlian Paul? It’s him talking of the flat back four (defence) in the match rather than the song’s narrator commenting on Telepudlian Paul and therefore it also should be in speech marks. Hope that makes sense!
11 March 2022
transit full of keith
With his ‘Did you see the match?’ And his ‘flat back four’
is more likely I think than
With his ‘Did you see the match and his flat back four?’
11 March 2022
EXXO
Yes. Telepudlian (which needs a capital there, but not in the song) Paul is so clueless that he does not see the never-ending delight of Klopp’s devastating attacking full backs. He thinks all Liverpool’s woes of “the great slump of early 2021” would have been solved by Klopp going for a flat back four.
That’s the most likely explanation, the second being that he lectures fans of other teams that they’ll never get far with a flat back four. But who has a flat back four these days?
11 March 2022
EXXO
MInd you I half expect telepudlian (which would need a capital if it was in a band name) Paul and his Flat Back Four to be on at the Queens up the Road one of these Saturday nights..
11 March 2022
transit full of keith
Can you treat a flat back four with Voltarol? Football’s not really my strong point.
11 March 2022
Murderous Giraffe
Yes, I’d like an Oblong of Dreams tee shirt but don’t tell the privateers. We could also hold an Oblong of Dreams walk now we know the route, especially as it should end close to the aforementioned Queens Arms by my reckoning.
11 March 2022
Mick Macve
Fantastic song. Fantastic discussion. In “Field Of Dreams”, Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham says “You know, we just don’t recognise the most significant moments in our lives while they’re happening”. He also says “This is my most special place in the world. Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it, like it was your child. I can’t leave Chisholm”.
11 March 2022
Paul deller
As always we will probably never know Nigel’s true thoughts and feelings but, to me, this sounds like an ode to his home on the Wirral and an observation of how few of us stop to take a moment to look around and appreciate the beauty of our home. There is a beauty about a sunny day in spring time that we often overlook and take for granted. Especially when we are younger. I hope it isn’t but if this HMHB’s last album then this is a beautiful piece of writing to end on.
11 March 2022
JeFf DREADNOUGHT
Great discussion. Much has been gleaned. Can’t add anything to the lyrical analysis, but what a tune! And that bass riff: J-J Burnel, eat your heart out.
11 March 2022
Mrs Medlicott
Oblong of Dreams is a paean of hope in murky times. I hope you’ll allow me on to your forum as HMHB do more for my mental health than a bucket of Largactil!
(Everyone’s welcome here – CtSO)
11 March 2022
clown in a yaris
So many songs down the years have been hailed as timeless ‘classics’. Oblong of Dreams is surely that. However, even if it had regular radio airplay, in the fullness of time it would be largely forgotten (except by us lot). Where’s the fookin’ joostice!!! Thank you Nigel for a song writing masterclass – genius!! ‘Estate memories all good, sunbeams on my childhood’ possibly my favourite lyric on the entire album. A nailed on LFC winner.
11 March 2022
Third rate les
She In Signal Red and I got into the habit of going on “Awe Walks” in lockdown last year – deliberately enjoying all the little details of what we saw. It was just like this song, including the “Robbo’s Viva” stuff – once you start focusing on the cowslips, all the memories get really vivid too. Wonderful song.
And remembering my mum’s 1973 Viva, the idea of such a big squat car overturning makes me wince.
11 March 2022
julian or Rupert
Possibly I’ve been over thinking this, but this is my take on the route. I agree with Exxo that it you are going to take Dr Desparate’s route, your probably want a bike. In particular, anyone walking along Saughall Massie Road is going to feel lucky not to be mown down by the Big Man Up Front. Assuming a circular walk (if you are parking at Sainsbury’s you probably want to read that notice, since you are going to be more than 2 hours), there are a some questions: How to get up to the coast. I’ve gone for up over Bidston Hill. The alternative would be the path beside the railway past Upton Station and then on to Bidston. I’m assuming the casualty is somewhere up behind Leasowe Castle, and that we drop down on to Leasowe Road to direct the ambulance in the right direction. Hence to Lingham Lane and Leasowe lighthouse. But then how to get to Caldy Hill? I’m with Exxo again, and would stick to the coast at least to Meols, and probably to Hoylake, or all the way round through West Kirby. Caldy to Thurstaston Common and Thor’s Stone is fairly clear. But from there, which way along Limbo Lane? Irby Hill or Irby Village? I’m guessing Arrowe Park to get to Woodchurch, but Landican Lane would be OK too.
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
Better over than under, @JorR – excellent work! The coastal route makes a lot more sense, especially as he mentions turning inland towards Thor’s Stone. As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, mine was based more on Google Maps than non-existent local knowledge. (I’ve been using Street View on that less-than-reliable resource to check out the road in Preston where our mate “Ossie” Osbaldeston overturned his dad’s Escort in 1974, and was pleased to see that there are still temporary traffic lights there.)
12 March 2022
LITtlegrafter
Absolutely wonderful song, which didn’t grab me on first listen, like much of the album to be honest, but it’s now risen to probably my favourite thing they’ve done, which for a band I’ve been following for 36 years is pretty special.
As luck would have it, I’m heading to Liverpool next Saturday to take my daughter to a Uni applicants day, I’ll therefore have half a day to kill and will head over the Mersey and visit many of these locations. A car will be involved but I’ll try to get a few miles in on foot, to analyse on strava later.
12 March 2022
EXXO
Good effort JoR. But the corpse will surely have been encountered closer to home, or the comments from the narrator/bystander(s) make much less sense. Then I think your first instinct is correct that you should follow Nigel’s old school plod up the Fender and across somehow to Moreton. We need to hit the coast only at the light and then turn into the wind. I think we may be running, by the way. And it still pertubs me somewhat not to see the whole coast path used right round past Red Rocks and Hilbre, as far as Morrisons in West Kirby.
After Thurstaston, Thingwall road, Limbo Lane, Arrowe Brook path/lane/road. Woodchurch past the fearsome hollow boom.
12 March 2022
EXXO
When I say ‘coast path’ I mean presuming the tide’s not right in, so the beach at Hoylake and the dunes path past the RL golf course. Glorious stretch.
12 March 2022
Jerome of Prague
MarkW at 67 I suspect not Sir Stuart Bell (16 May 1938 – 13 October 2012) was a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Middlesbrough from the 1983 general election until his death in 2012. He was known as the longest serving Second Church Estates Commissioner, serving in this role during the entire period of Labour government from 1997-2010.
12 March 2022
Uncle Keith
I had no idea about the nod to Wilfred Owen in this song, though I did spot the one in TCS. It actually bought to mind Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which expressed the same sentiments over 200 years ago. Man has obviously always felt the desire to escape from the obvious and the asinine and take some time to smell the flowers.
12 March 2022
gipton teenager
I’m sitting in The Royal Barn (The Kirkby Lonsdale Brewery Tap) , having just been down to “Ruskin’s View and then we went into the church and came out and , well it wasn’t quite Clouds part etc. but it had stopped raining and life is good.
12 March 2022
Pop
Weirdly as of a few hours ago OoD is now greyed out and unplayable on Spotify
12 March 2022
Ultimate pyjamas
Love the theory that Abstract Sean is our man in act I. Off on one final 20km walk in Act II before he ascends…
12 March 2022
Free parker pen
Even though the “Oblong” is “over the water “ for me I still find this song very emotional. I remember family Sunday outings, the ferry then bus to Arrowe Park. Then walking to Thurstaston for a picnic looking over the Dee. Sunbeams on my childhood. Marvellous stuff. I hadn’t considered that this album might be the swan song but to me there’s definitely a sense of having to write this one while he still can. Also there was an interview a while back where Nigel said that when Geoff Davies retired he might pack in too. Obviously that hasn’t happened yet but one never knows…
13 March 2022
Beltane beard
Wonderful stuff, and of course not the first mention of oblong in their songs. Having not previously fully appreciated the geographical shape of the Wirral Peninsula, this has now made me reassess my reading of “Bane of Constance” in that it now seems that Eintracht Oblong are, in Vince’s mind, a local rival to Tranmere Rovers.
13 March 2022
Chemtrail brian
Uplifting. Majestic. HMHB’s ‘Hey Jude’, or at least ‘One Day Like This’.
13 March 2022
Beltane beard
Ah, just realised I obviously didn’t read the “Bane of Constance” discussion page well enough, as the Eintracht Oblong meaning was already confirmed there. Never mind, I got there eventually……
I do like how places and people recur in HMHB songs; for the second album running we have a mention of Caldy, plus also we have the return of Pop Tart Mark elsewhere.
13 March 2022
Alan
Ryder-Jones holds great affection for West Kirby, a picturesque town near the coast, seven miles from Birkenhead. “If you turn left out of my mother’s house you can see the river Dee and North Wales,” he describes. “I love being at the water, I walk the long way to my studio every day so I can be by it. I walk from my house to the studio through a lovely park, then on to the beach and back around, it’s one of my favourite places in the world. It’s funny how I tried to escape it for all of my 20s before I gave in and said ‘this is where I’m meant to be’.
A brilliant song which I’m trying to understand better!
In Oblong of Dreams “Onwards, then, to the Leasowe Light” is the start of the second verse – is that referring to the narrator of the first verse or, more likely the person who the narrator is talking about?
And, when he says “And now I’m in Paradise….everything I want is here and everything I need is here” who is the ‘I’, NB, the narrator or someone else?
13 March 2022
Alan
“The Oblong Of Dreams – Bill Ryder-Jones talks The Wirral, Birkenhead and music on the other side of the Mersey”
First impressions haven’t changed in the slightest. Apogee imo (and hopefully not swansong).
13 March 2022
Phyllis Triggs
@Alan Interesting you should reference Bill Ryder-Jones there – on first listentening to OoD I had to do some googling as the bassline reminded me of something – turned out to be the intro to the Coral’s Dreaming Of You. And then I found out the Coral too were a Wirral band. Coincidence? Probably.
@JRB “Onwards then – ” I think from this point it is NB’s voice. The memories are personal, the statement direct. What is going on in the first verse however is open to different interpretations. Does the song open with the voice of one bystander (who may or may not be NB) making several different comments, who we then accompany on his walk, or is it the voices of several different bystanders heard by our narrator as he passes by the poor unfortunate collapsed on the street? Or are the voices heard by the casualty as he lies gasping his last, his heart stuttering (just listen to that ragged dudu dudu dudu tagged onto the steady pounding bassline)? Is it his soul that we accompany on its journey to its paradise away from earthly concerns “He’s out of it now”? And if that’s the case, given the personal nature of the memories that follow, is NB imagining the scenario if it were him lying there, taken from us way too soon but nevertheless a life complete?
13 March 2022
EXXO
@Lou (Phyllis). That’s all certainly possible, and NB refers in other songs to ghosts and possibly spirits, but this song doesn’t feel “touched by the wings of something dark” and given that the declaration that “everything I want is here and everything I need is here” is in the present tense, and is just a more open declaration of everything he has been saying for 35 years in interviews, we needn’t see it as a declaration from beyond.
As he jogs or cycles past, there’s the dead body of someone he knew by sight but not to talk to. I remember there was a body found in Duck Pond Park not long before the Liverpool gig, ‘cos I was round at that time, so what was that, 2018? Very near where that photo on the album sleeve is. I’m not saying that particular death is relevant at all, but it’s the sort of thing that happens and that you will pass sooner or later if you walk, run and cycle round the paths of our conurbations.
This is the flip side of ‘Mileage Chart,’ that song saying why he won’t go anywhere too far (down the country, up the charts, to a deal, etc) but will stay in Lower Nowhere instead. This one stating more openly what he loves about home, and obviously those things are above all those who are not named in the song, but who are also acknowledged in the previous song (with the reference to the new-found ‘credo’ of Sweet Mystery of Life). NB is writing proper love songs these days, to people as well as places.
13 March 2022
BATWALKER
I wonder whether the fact that “the Leasowe Light along Lingham Lane” echoes the alliterative pattern of William Barnes’s famous “do lean down low in Linden Lea” was a deliberate allusion, or just a happy coincidence.
13 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
I don’t think the subject of the first verse is dead, just unconscious “out of it”. If I ever came across a corpse, I wouldn’t be moving it into the recovery position “onto his side”.
As others have suggested links between songs on this album and previous work, perhaps the person being found was the protagonist from Frequent Electric Trains. Discovered unconscious by the Owen memorial in Hamilton Square (engraved with Futility).
13 March 2022
EXXO
Aargh. I knew someone would make an Elbow comparison sooner or later.
*Shudders and does that crossy thing with two index fingers.*
13 March 2022
EXXO
I like an optimistic interpretation Karen, and for a while I thought the same about the reference to the recovery position – but to me there are multiple bystanders (“give him some room”) and that’s the voice of someone who doesn’t want to accept that he’s definitely deceased – this is before the emergency services arrive – but the past tense used by out narrator seals it for me.
Doesn’t really matter but I can’t get my thoughts in this song to go anywhere near Hamilton Square. I don’t want to have to do a route map of my own though.
13 March 2022
Android, Eyes Rolling
I’d go with Wake Up! Showtime
The singer is exhorting the OoD to be reborn now that spring is here, building upon the signs so far seen (cowslips, celandine etc.).
13 March 2022
Primark FM
Until I read this thread I thought it was ‘gym report’. Yes it’s definitely ‘gin’. I just imagined Claire coming into work and boring everyone with her 2 hour workout the previous evening. What is a gin report anyway?
14 March 2022
duke of westminster
The change from the rolling bass to the soaring parts with backing harmony and, later on, strings seem to suggest something in the narrative changes at these points. You can take your pick as to whether it is intended to be a dead man’s spirit heading off or the narrator beginning a mental exercise of what it would be like if the person had died and his spirit then followed him along his route. There does, though, then seem to be a conversion (one-sided?) then taking place between the narrator and the (imagined) spirit of the dead man as there are a couple of commands from the narrator to someone (“if you will, stand still, wait” and “Stay, sit…”).
The song pointing to a real or imagined spirit of the dead man is encouraged by a series of specific words/constructions: moving onwards to the light and away from worldly concerns (“the obvious and the asinine”), spirit (of Olaf), clouds parting, a sudden breeze, paradise, limbo, the zone, being about a thousand miles away, a field where someone still walks, this is it.
14 March 2022
duke of westminster
conversion = conversation
14 March 2022
EXXO
To save years of argument – as someone mentioned in the album on release weekend, it’s seems pretty sure to those who know the field and park (not exactly the same place) in question that “she” is largely inspired by the beloved family dog who died on the day Tranmere lost to Boreham Wood in 2015 (those details are in a 2015 or 2016 interview somewhere). I’m not saying it’s the only level you can take it at, but that’s the first level. “Stay. Sit.” are commands to a dog, but we can do them too, especially if we are tired and need pause for reflection. “This is it” is more open to interpretation, but anyone who’s had a dog well into double figures of age knows such a moment. I thought it had happened to me (again) five days ago on a very similar field. But it could also be the moment of epiphany. It’s brilliant though that there are so many other ways to take it and that will be debated down the generations to come.
14 March 2022
duke of westminster
Speedwell and Campion as well as being wild flowers are minor characters in Watership Down. Make of it what you will,
14 March 2022
Duke of westminster
As is Cowslip.
As is Buckthorn (from Rogatiom Sunday).
14 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Speedwell and Campion […] are minor characters in Watership Down. Make of it what you will”
A rabbit pie?
15 March 2022
Singer’s painting
I’m in no doubt that the character in the first verse is dead and the remainder of the song is that character’s spirit taking a last journey around their home turf, their stomping ground. One last look around the ol’ place and all its charms and then…well, then off to the great hereafter.
15 March 2022
professor Abelazar woozle
Shades of “You’ve read the book, you’ve seen the film, now eat the cast”…
15 March 2022
dr Desperate
Idly wondering about the ‘XXXX of Dreams’ trope, I was sure that the 1989 film ‘Field…’ (with its ‘Golden Gordon’-like plot) wasn’t the first to make that oneiric connection, as ‘Land…’, my second-favourite Randy Newman album, came out the year before. I then discovered that Bobby Charlton’s vainglorious description of Old Trafford as ‘Theatre…’ (now the name of an MUFC franchise operation in China) first appeared in John Riley’s book ‘Soccer’ in 1987, with the balance being struck in 2008 by Neil Dunkin’s Kopite Odyssey ‘Anfield…’. 1987 also saw the publication of another ‘Land…’, an SF novel by James P Blaylock. I’ve also attended a couple of the gigs organised by Pete Atkin’s fangroup Midnight Voices, which so far include ‘Field…’ (again), ‘Theatre…'(again), ‘Pub…’ and ‘Cinema…’. However, the furthest back I’ve been able to trace the trope (without including a possessive pronoun) is in a short story by Agatha Christie from 1926 entitled ‘House…’
Incidentally, I agree with Kitty McD that ‘Oblong’ is just a funny word, especially when used in this context. Sir Terry Pratchett pulled a similar trick in his Discworld novels when he described the Patrician, Havelock Vetinari, running Ankh-Morpork from the Oblong Office.
16 March 2022
EXXO
@Pirx and Woozle – much emoticonning of belly laughs.
@Singer’s P – I love it then that the first thoughts of the spirit are “ah, sweet release from life’s woes, thank **** I don’t have to listen to that tw*t talking about the match this morning.” There is also the slight contrast between the lifestyle and appearance (even when out exercising) of a person who might be heading for a foodbank or a pharmacy and one who might be escaping from Janet in accounts.
However, I hope many would agree with me that it was a pity if we couldn’t take this wonderful ‘anthem’ both ways, and more besides.
16 March 2022
EXXO
It would be a pity if, I mean. My conditionals these days are collapsing in a heap at the troubled interface between the past, the future and the imaginary.
16 March 2022
EXXO
@Dr D – it’s interesting that during the pre-release period, when I guess we were assuming that this song would be on the kind of subject matter that it did indeed turn out to be, that the ‘Culture Bunker’ podcast (equipped with a certain amount of local knowledge one might have assumed) had the song down, even after hearing, it as “Nigel revisiting his old school footy pitch,” so possessed were they of the “field/theatre of dreams” trope.
I first heard the epithet OoD it from a big Rovers fan (and major local wit) on Twitter or FB about ten years ago in a jokey thread of epithets about the Wirral, and a thread which was taking the piss out of WBC’s 40/50-years-old self-marketing slogan of Wirral as “the leisure peninsula.” I remember those who knew, knew immediately that in 2014’s The Bane of Constance, “Eintracht Oblong” was referring to the same epithet, and was some sort of imaginary “Wirral United FC” in Vince’s addled mind.
16 March 2022
S
Just listening to ‘Oblong’ and “clouds part, show time” made me think of John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Lights out, sack time” on ’36 Hours’.
Just me, then?
20 March 2022
Christie malry
I listened to this just now on headphones while walking along a fieldpath. Analysing Strava reveals that was my fastest kilometre. Coincidence? It seems to have the perfect tempo for striding along in the sunshine. It also seems to me entirely ambiguous whether the narrator stays the same throughout. A religious take might be that it changed to the spirit of the dead man who is now in paradise of some sort. Or perhaps the two merge, or more simply the same original narrator is inspired by this death to see the positives in the world. Maybe it’s about how lockdown taught us (or me at any rate) to appreciate my immediate surroundings more. Somewhere I have a cassette tape of a radio session from about 2002 which I listened to numerous times, and in the interview Nigel says something like the secret of happiness lies in limiting your aspirations. As a younger person I thought this was a bit sad and defeatist, but now I tend to think consciously trying to enjoy the small everyday things of life is very positive. Except, of course, some of those everyday things – nature, flowers, spring sunshine – are actually the ingredients of the romantic sublime. My hedge, however, remains uncut and straggly, and I don’t care.
20 March 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
S: not just you. I also thought that – a bit tenuous though, could be deliberate or could just be coincidence.
21 March 2022
EXXO
@Christie. Lovely comment. Did you hear the interview on Maconie’s Freak Zone the other week? NB said he gets ideas when out running as well as walking. I remember one interview from ’92 I think – the interview where he said he was getting married – where he said a certain song had been conceived when out cycling, and I’d wager that the rhythms of running, cycling and walking help develop the bouncier, swingier tunes too – I know they’re the ones I like to sing or whistle when I’m cycling! It’s noticeable there’s more space between phrases in the likes of ‘Oblong’ and ‘Persian Rug Sale’ and interesting too that in transcribing the lyrics to this and others on the album, CtSO chooses to break up lines where those pauses occur, reflecting that rhythm.
21 March 2022
Free parkEr pen
I think it’s “ And now I’m in Paradise for that’s how it seems “ which I think would be more positive for the narrator than “ or “ .
22 March 2022
dr desperate
An OoD father and son team were on ‘Pointless’ tonight: the former described himself as coming from “Wirral”, the latter from “The Wirral”. Is a diachronic change going on there?
22 March 2022
Exxo
Atypical examples I’d say and if if there’s a trend it’s more likely to be the other way round in the long run. But the mistake is to think they were expressing the same meaning. One is saying he’s from a (council)area and one from a peninsula, the latter 50% bigger.
@Poopleby I can’t tell whether you’re aware or not that most of us have that letter on our CD shelves?
25 March 2022
Poopleby
Then my life is now complete.
25 March 2022
Janet from accounts
That letter reads like a very rough draft of National Shite Day.
25 March 2022
Stef
Apologies if someone’s already mentioned this here – I’ve not yet had a chance to read all the comments – but I get the impression that the ‘journey’ in this song is actually the dead man’s spirit revisiting familiar places after he’s died. Don’t know why. Perhaps it’s just the change in tone of the song – at a certain point there’s this sense of purpose and absolute clarity that makes itself felt, as though everything extraneous has been discarded. ‘Oblong of Dreams’ referring to the grave as well as the Wirral? No idea if this is meant to be – just my thoughts. Either way, this song is on another level altogether. It’s disconcerting in its sheer brilliance and beauty and the way it pulls emotional strings that I didn’t even know were there. Basically, it left me speechless.
25 March 2022
Stef
… just realised that Christie said the same thing a few comments ago and far more eloquently than me(!)
25 March 2022
Paul f
I am literally a telepudlian Paul these days, having left Liverpool 20 years ago (after 20 years of regular match-going). But I don’t think I’m a Super Sunday Super Bore as I’m Freeview, I’m not with Sky.
27 March 2022
EXXO
I’m similar for last 12 years, but for financial rather than geographical reasons.
I am telepudlian Nige, and if you want a bore I can oblige With my “Did you see the match? The atmosphere sounded shit!” I’m a streaming-six-games-every-Sunday super-git.
27 March 2022
EXXO
Since we’ve gone quiet on lyrics, I’ll revert to my one true vocation of pedantry to stir things up a bit, and I’ll just reiterate my comment about capitalisation in comment #10 with a bit more reasoning.
1. telepudlian Paul – not a nickname, just an adjective. How could it be a nickname? The word is a relative neoligism and would require sufficient people in a sub-group of people who know Paul (within this context – probably the office from which the narrator is escaping) to identify him as that. You would need sufficient people within that office environment to be dismissing him with a snobby and very recent term used by some match-going fans – so for a start you’d need a whole group of people in the office to be snobby match-going fans, and for them all to share the same disdain for spouting off by ‘Sky Super Sunday’ fans. But also anyone with the particular football politics angle to dismiss people as ‘telepudlian’ would know of hundreds and thousands of such people, so it seems highly unlikely they would then use it as a nickname. It’s just an adjective explaining why he’s annoying to a match-going fan, probably but not necessarily a fan of another Merseyside team.
2. dull Adele – not a nickname – just somebody (probably in the same workplace as the narrator, Paul and Janet) who is dull, and a nice piece of assonance for the rhythm. It wouldn’t be a very good nickname, would it? Especially as many people in offices tend to be dull. It may even conceivably allude the dullness of the singer Adele in some way – does she get played on the tannoy at the office/factory/shop/warehouse? But even so it’s not her nickname either.
3. jack-by-the-hedge Yes, most websites and some reference sources about wildflowers make the mistake of capitalising one or more of the words, but this looks daft especially alongside other plant names in this song. You wouldn’t capitalise jack-in-the-box.
4. I have softened about “the Leasowe light” and no longer mind the capitalisation of “Light” so much, but it still looks wrong.
My original reasoning, and still my main reasoning, is that Leasowe Lighthouse is the name of the structure, and what everyone, locally or from anywhere else, calls it. If this was abbreviated to Leasowe Light, then maybe. But it has been poetically rendered for the sake of rhythm and perhaps symbolism, as “the Leasowe light.” Nobody actually calls the place that, though those on the bridge of a vessel approaching Liverpool on a night-time high tide until its decommissioning in 1908 probably would have called the beam that, as they could see the Leasowe light (even for an ill-advised 6 years in the 18th century the Leasowe lights plural), the Bidston light, etc, the Crosby light, etc, but not their physical structures.
To take another example, there’s a folk song (I may get in technical trouble with folk pedants if I call it a shanty) called ‘The Eddystone Light,’ named of course after the most famous of all British lighthouses, Eddystone LIghthouse, and its light. You’ll find most versions of those lyrics get it wrong and write it as “The keeper of the Eddystone Light”, but at least this one has it right as “the keeper of the Eddystone light.” https://songs.2quakers.net/eddystone
However, I said I didn’t mind as much about this one, three weeks on. I guess three weeks ago I was keen to show my local knowledge, but now I do think that by making the mistake of capitalising the “L”, at least you emphasise to those who don’t know that the physical feature being referred to is Leasowe Lighthouse the building, rather than a lighthouse light (there isn’t one any more, except a small decorative LED in the evening and on one recent special celebratory evening there was an actual lighthouse light re-installed). Having said that, I have no doubt that we are also prompted to think about the wonderful light of Leasowe bay that opens up at that point for the next stage of the songs “route” along the coast, and probably also if we choose to we can think about about the whole “bright light” seen at the point of death scenario (as alluded to in Monmore, Hare’s Running).
So better as the Leasowe light, but it doesn’t offend me as much as it did 3 weeks ago.
31 March 2022
EXXO
Of course I always make typoes in my own pedantry to add to the meta-fun: Leasowe Bay (the bay at Leasowe) and the song’s “route.”
31 March 2022
paul f
I believe the frequent tendency of online attempts at pedantry/correction to contain typos themselves is known as Muphry’s Law.
31 March 2022
paul f
BTW I agree with the decapitalisations you propose Exxo (telepudlian, dull, that kind of thing). And personally I’ve always assumed dull Adele is the singer (very much a Moody Chops). I see the list as not just referring to the office/factory where the narrator works, but “everyday life” in all its National Shite Day glory.
31 March 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Top class pedantry, and while we’re on this song, we need to get some quote marks around ‘flat back four’ (see earlier comments on this thread).
31 March 2022
EXXO
Thanks for the support Paul and Keith – and yes I agree there too Keith.
Incidentally, if you’ve got a head for heights, you may enjoy this gyrocopter pilot’s erratically-spliced wanderings over the Oblong, very much in the spirit of this song (the song of the spirit?).
At 4.07 Leasowe Lighthouse is just to the left of his/her helmet, nothing like as prominent as you’d expect, and then is eclipsed by the helmet for a couple of seconds.
S/he doesn’t follow the route of the song but briefly crosses it (and the estate memories) at around 2.08, so that at 2.10 you have where Robbo’s Viva burned on the extreme right of shot.
We then cross central Birkenhed, where you can’t see anyone driving through the park at about 2.13, and at 2.20 there’s the square from ‘Frequent Electric Trains’ (the green square middle right below the river)
The light square roof of Christie’s URC in Heswall, with its regular Persian rug sales, can be seen at 1:27, bisected by the transparent arc of the gyrocopter’s seat-back.
31 March 2022
EXXO
Soz – the Viva “overturned” of course – I guess “burned” wouldn’t rhyme that well with errm, “burned”.
31 March 2022
EXXO
oh and at 5.43 that’s Caldy Hill left of his helmet (or above it as he banks the ‘copter). Just before that, we get Hilbre island where at a lower tide we might be lucky to see dickheads in quicksand. Or sanderling.
31 March 2022
EXXO
Drone this time. Almost soporific by comparison with the gyrocopter, but Thor’s stone being the lump of red sandstone top of screen at about 1:48.
Royden Park of batwalk fame is all the woods at the top at 2:54
Great thread about a great song. I’ve always liked the more sober grown up songs by HMHB, even more so due to the flippant humour in others – darkness and light innit? So I’m already predisposed to your ‘Beyond Tablets’, ‘Terminus’, ‘Old Age Killed’, ‘Humberstone Covert’ etc before I reached the last two tracks on first listen on this album. Not that thematically it’s out of place really – the gallows humour of ‘Volterol Years’ is off the scale, most songs in some way dealing with death or loss in some way. The previous track was a great set up, although less abstract than OOD and has the ‘He had her to hold her steady’ line which always makes me well up, and in comparison I see OOD as being an antidote – a shot of optimism and reflection which despite the subject matter, leaves me invigorated and happy. Weird huh?
So my take on the song (prior to reading the other viewpoints) is that the song is narrated from two perspectives – one being the guy who finds the bloke dead-at-the-scene, and the other being from the view of the dead guy as he makes an out-of-body journey around his locale whilst waiting to pass into whatever afterlife there is (not suggesting ‘limbo lane’ is a clue of course), only to find after the ‘showtime’ starts, that his spirit will forever be in the area he loves, and everything that he took for granted comes flooding back along with finding his beloved (deceased) pet is still running the fields – in memory or not, it doesn’t matter. He has everything he needs right there – he doesn’t need a heaven when he has these memories.
Of course, reading between the line I’d say that the person referred to at both the start and via the journey is Nigel himself, or someone very similar or close to him. Initially I wondered if it could have been about a senior relative, but the rather disparaging description in the first verse makes me think it’s more self-satirising humour on NBs part.
Whatever, the moral of the story is upbeat. Your memories will be everything you need when you die and remember to notice the beauty in the everyday things.
I never viewed it as a career closer for the band, and I hope it isn’t as HMHB have been the constant in my life since a teenager that always walks beside me, aside from when they are appearing on Junior Kickstart that is. To be honest, if they do ever do a planned ‘exit’ song, I suspect it would be something way more barnstorming and rock-driven and humorous. Nigel writes some amazingly poetic, lyrical songs from a raw-emotion perspective, but I can’t see them going out on a weepy or abstract/reflective one. They finish may gigs with songs like ‘Trumpton Riots’ or ‘AOR’ or ‘Bell Rings’ and I expect nothing less when they do decide to call it a day (hopefully several more albums before then though!)
Just my 2p
2 April 2022
COUNTY BASSOON
@Les (Comment #81) It’s amazing how we misremember the size of cars from our youth when we were smaller or where the designs made cars look bigger but I wouldn’t wince too much about the thought of the Viva (being big) overturning, not on the basis of it’s size anyway. In reality the Viva was a smaller car than a modern Ford Fiesta.
A very cool car (I always thought, loved the American styling) but not a big one!
2 April 2022
Third rate les
It’s a fair point, County Bassoon. I was half my current height when my mum had her Viva. As you say, that American styling sticks in the memory!
2 April 2022
dr desperate
My personal views on Capitalisation: (i) telepudlian Paul – yeah, fair enough (though I’m still more inclined to “tellypudlian”, as somebody who watches Liverpool on telly, as opposed to television); (ii) dull Adele – I prefer the slightly Runyonesque quality of Dull Adele, though she’d have to appear more than once before we could tell if it is a nickname, rather than a simple description (cf Stringy Bob); (iii) jack-by-the-hedge – unhelpfully, Chambers has “also with cap“. (Contrariwise, Jack-in-the-box has “also without cap“.) (iv) Leasowe light – as the light itself would have appeared, I’m on-and-off with this one. Currently pro-minuscule, though this might imply heading towards the beam, recalling to mind the Moth Joke; (v) Janet from Accounts – pro-majuscule, on the grounds that the alternative might confuse a stupid person.
4 April 2022
EXXO
1. We agree on the anti-capitalist stance then, but “tellypudlian” definitely isn’t what he says. That would have a long /i:/ sound (and would give the word a sillier feel).
2. As you say we would need further evidence before concluding that it’s a nickname, therefore surely best not capitalised – whereas in its context in NSD ‘stringy’ would serve no function unless it was a nickname, whereas here we do need a one syllable word before Adele for meter. The chances of Adele joining Pop-Tart Mark and Duff-Leg Bryn on a very exclusive list seem more than somewhat nil.
3. It seems to me this sort of thing is one of the slight downsides of the move towards usage-based linguistics. Yes, it’s this or sometimes that, but which of them follow the norms of what’s in line with which well-established rule and what looks best on paper?
4. Glad you see the light.
5. Looks out of place to me, but that’s all, which is why I didn’t nail it on the door this time.
4 April 2022
Incapability brown
Just a thought – there was a Chrysler sunbeam at the same era as the Viva – a truly shocking vehicle which my mum was forever taking to the garage. Which would link estates (cars and houses), and weather (sun breaks through). No need for a capital – it just puns.
5 April 2022
HGANAVAC
Will the bridge be the Commodores bridge just before the entrance to the Woodchurch?
12 April 2022
EXXO
Fairly certain it’s the railway underpass, because of “Over the Fender and …” The Fender bridge is a few yards from the railway, underpass wouldn’t rhyme or scan, and anyway it’s quite a nice brick arch that is more like a bridge than an underpass.
12 April 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Will the bridge be the Commodores bridge…”
You mean it’s “once, twice, three times a footpath”?
12 April 2022
Janet from accounts
@Roof of the Barbican – “Your memories will be everything you need when you die” – is that lifted from anywhere, or are those your own words? I like that.
I’ve just read The Remains of the Day, and I was thinking about how much Stevens regrets how he spent his life, and how he missed out on what might have been, and how he seems to end the book intending to live differently for the remains of his own “day”. As we near death the balance tips from things we hope for in the future to memories of what has happened in the past. It would be nice to be able to convert as many hopes into good memories, before our time runs out.
I’d say there’s worse memories to have than of a good walk somewhere beautiful. Dog optional.
23 April 2022
Janet from accounts
Further to the above, I’ve just listened to this song again and it occurs to me that the singer asks us in the first verse to “give him dignity” which chimes with Stevens’ concerns in The Remains of the Day.
23 April 2022
Ferencváros fan
@Janet from Accounts:
Read The Remains of the Day in the mid-1990s, so not fresh in my mind, but the principal remains of the book in the memory bank are:
1. What a terrible case of missed opportunity between Stevens and Keaton.
2. Stevens putting in a full shift the evening his father died.
3. The aristocratic tw@t at the dinner party who put Stevens on the spot, just to show that his social class meant he was inferior, by asking him a series of complex questions about politics and the economy.
Thanks for reminding me what a damn good book it was.
23 April 2022
EvilGazebo
Probably just me but I’m hearing “I know I’m in Paradise for that’s how it seems”
25 April 2022
ds
Like quite a lot of this album, there’s a slightly downbeat, and if not nostalgic, certainly a “glancing over the shoulder” quality about this song. It does feel like these are the last moments of someone’s life, another person you half know who you might hear about any day of the week.
And yes, the dull stuff is there: the pub bore droning on about the football, and the constant thrum of Adele in the background, but for all the dull bits there’s the good stuff: the air, the light, the freedom, the fun stuff. This is the “life flashing before you” part, before the clouds open, and there’s the sunshine – the light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t the oncoming train this time.
It’s especially poignant coming after Slipping The Escort, which right now has a bit of personal pull for me. In recent years, there’s been a bit about the process of growing older, and the feeling that is fairly common to middle age of, “oh, are we here already?”. The word elegiac keeps getting bandied around, and I don’t think that’s wide of the mark.
27 April 2022
dr Desperate
True dat. “It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.” (Terry Pratchett)
It’s not straightforwardly me banging on about the Wirral, particularly. Although it was perhaps inevitable that I was going to do one purely about walking around the Wirral, so yes and no would be the answer to that – which is not the answer you want! I’d have put more obscure footpaths and fields in if it was purely me, I think. I would have thought about the geographical things more. I didn’t particularly think that much about them.
It starts with a fella, not me particularly – though he might morph into me. There’s a fella going to work every single day, nine to five, he’s on the train, and when he gets to somewhere like, maybe, Moreton, Leasowe, or Birkenhead Park, there’s a fella he’s always seen around, just sitting on a bench on the platform, not going anywhere – a bit of a tramp, really – reading the Metro. And although it’s not in the song, he’s perhaps taking the Metro, or a few Metros, back to his flat for kindling (that’s what I do – take a few Metros from the bus to use for kindling in our fire at home!) Or using the Metro, if he’s living rough, as kindling to build a fire.
Our initial narrator sort of envies this bloke, because although he has had a somewhat desperate time of it recently (and maybe for most of his life), at least he’s not part of any rat race (which the INITIAL narrator is).
Then one morning he sees the fella is not sitting on the bench – he’s collapsed. This commuter, then, who’s on his way to work in an office, gets off the train – and at this point he thinks “Sod it, I’m not doing that again. I’m not going to do that job anymore; I just want to go for walks and do what I want to do”.
The bloke on the platform, then, that’s his part of the song gone – he’s either dead or he’s not, I don’t know. As Karen said on the forum, if he was dead you wouldn’t move him onto his side – but then there’s “he’s out of it now”, so he is dead! I can’t really explain all that! Ah, maybe at the time he was going to be moved onto his side there was a faint hope of reviving him – but then he died. I knew I’d get there in the end! I didn’t think too much about it at the time, if I’m being honest, I’m more with the fella on the train, who gets off the train to go and live his own life. But people are right, the Wilfred Owen thing comes in here with the line “Move him onto his side” because that’s from the opening line of his poem Futility – “Move him into the sun”.
The fella on the train, then, is not me, because I’ve never done the nine to five thing (I know it’s not obvious from the lyrics that there is a nine to five element, but that is what was in my head) – but he morphs into me, because I bring in our old dog, and the estate where I grew up.
Neil said to me recently “I didn’t know where you were coming from with his song, musically” – because it was all different bits (but while he was wondering where I was going at first, he was still playing a brilliant bass line from the start!) But I had it constructed and always knew that at the end I wanted strings. I know a bloke who used to be in the Philharmonic (the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, not the pub) – he played the timpani – and his daughter plays in it, so I thought “I could get strings here”, and that’s what I was planning. But then, me being me, once we got into the studio, I thought there’s all this hassle and faff, and Geoff (Davies) wasn’t there to do that sort of thing. I thought I’d just put a load of guitars on it. I was telling Chris the engineer about all this and asked him how much it would cost to get violins and cellos in – and he said “I’ve got a Mellotron!” He said “You give me the chords – what you’re playing at the end”, and so he set it up with the sound of cellos and violins on the Mellotron.
The “strings” come in at the start of the “Clouds part” line.
Telepudlian Paul – no way is it “telly” – is certainly with a capital “T” for me, because it’s his nickname. It also looks better – Telepudlian Paul – and to me a lot of things are about how they look. I even found out who came up with the word “telepudlian” – it was someone’s dad. He drinks in a pub near us – so I owe him a pint!
All the names (Paul, Claire Jenkins, Stuart Bell, Adele and Janet), are all made up. When I sing “dull Adele” – who’s not Adele the singer, and yes, I’ve gone with lower case for “dull” – I know it sounds like I’m singing “Edele”. But it is “Adele”.
I take a while to come up with names because of the way they have to flow with what’s coming next. And when I’m coming up with them I’m also thinking about singing them live – what’s going to be easier for me.
“Escape up onto Caldy Hill/The spirit of Olaf and, if you will…”
I reckon I become the narrator from around Caldy Hill onwards. As for Olaf – it’s not Olaf Guthfrithson, but Olaf Stapledon. He wrote the opening chapter of his book Star Maker on Caldy Hill. He used to go there to look at the night sky – and that’s where his epic masterpiece came from.
Pirx The Purist wrote: “The song is a joyous celebration of place and of one’s place in it.”
Yes, I’d go with that.
Chris From Future Doom wondered aloud about the gestation period of a song like this – “Several years, I would hazard. Also, a fantasy question for an interview with the great man that will never happen.”
Not years, no. Only months. No longer, particularly, than any of the others. And I probably just wanted to get the “Oblong of Dreams” phrase in! I got it from our guitarist Karl Benson in around 2015 I’d guess, but he’s got no memory of that or where he first heard the phrase. Karl – who lives in St Helens these days but comes from Pensby – may have even thought of it himself but not given himself credit.
He has been with us for a while now, and I’m sure everyone who has seen us since he joined will have been impressed by his playing. His backing vocals, allied to Neil’s, are also always welcomed by me – while some of our cover versions have been inspired by the sets played by his band The Band-Its.
Many listeners have feared Oblong Of Dreams, due to the very nature of it, could be your swansong – your epic farewell.
No, no. But, then, I could never answer that kind of question properly – because when you come out of a studio after finishing an album you think “I won’t be writing any more songs now, surely. That’s going to be it”. If I’d fallen off my bike and died, just before I died I would have thought “That’s a nice one to go out on”. I purposely put it as the last song on the album in case things like that happen, so I can say “That is our final song”. But in the last few days – and even on the way here – I’ve been writing. I can understand people saying they think it could be our swansong but I don’t think that.
I think Neil’s backing vocals on the song are really good. And the reaction to the song has been satisfying because I did wonder about that – but I thought “Sod it” anyway, basically because I wanted to document these things. It’s the same with the bat walk one (Renfield’s Afoot, on the previous album) – I know it’s throwaway, but it still needs to be documented.
Batwalker: “I wonder whether the fact ‘the Leasowe Light along Lingham Lane’ echoes the alliterative pattern of William Barnes’s famous ‘do lean down low in Linden Lea’ was a deliberate allusion, or just a happy coincidence.”
It’s a happy coincidence, but, weirdly, I do like William Barnes. No is the answer, but I do like him.
“And as creation thus uncorks/I cross the field where she still walks/Stay, sit, this is it/And up by the school/There will be daffodils”.
The “Stay, sit” does allude to our old dog – but I suppose it could also refer to a person. We used to cut through that bit where the daffodils are – a specific place on Duck Pond Lane by the school. What hasn’t been pointed out is that it’s the school I went to – St Saviour’s (it’s on Holm Lane, but kind of backs onto Duck Pond Lane) – and it was one of my greatest memories, because I loved primary school. We had a great view of the Welsh Hills. The photograph on the inner sleeve of the album is the view taken from the daffodils on that field.
The bit “…this is it” is saying “This is what it’s all about”.
Singer’s Painting wrote: “I’m in no doubt that the character in the first verse is dead and the remainder of the song is that character’s spirit taking a last journey around their home turf, their stomping ground. One last look around the ol’ place and all its charms and then…well, then off to the great hereafter.”
I quite like that idea but I never thought that when I was writing it.
S wrote: “Just listening to ‘Oblong’ and ‘Clouds part, show time’ made me think of John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Lights out, sack time’ on ’36 Hours’. Just me, then?”
If I was inspired by that, it was purely subconsciously. Obviously, John Cooper Clarke is magnificent and I know the song, though I’ve not heard it for years.
By the way, people give me too much credit for my botanical knowledge. Orange-tipped butterflies and all that? I had to research what would be about in early Spring. I do know that Greater Knapweed and Mugwort (which appear in Rogation Sunday) are plants, though, and not trees. I’m not a botanical expert in any way is what I’m saying I suppose.
4 May 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Fitting that Nigel says that if he echoed “Lights out, sack time” from John Cooper Clarke, he did it unconsciously. That’s exactly what JCC said about the much closer resemblence of “Evidently Chickentown” to a WW2 officer’s poem “Bloody Orkney” (there’s also another version, “Fucking Halkirk”.) He claimed he wasnt consciously aware of the original, but conceded he must have heard it as a child and had it stored it away somewhere.
4 May 2022
dr Desperate
I’ve also heard Dr JCC claim that the WW2 poem was “stuck in fuckin’ Aldershot”, which would fit with the scansion of ‘Evidently Chickentown’. (And Dylan couldn’t sue for ‘Obviously 5 Believers’, obvs.)
5 May 2022
toml
I envisage this song as an encounter between different emanations of the songwriter’s musical career- alter egos really, with older versions of the emasculated, downtrodden office worker of ‘Everything’s AOR’ and the lost sheep of, say, ‘Floreat Inertia’, then morphing in an almost dialectical way into the narrator of ‘Tyrolean Knockabout’ finding redemption through communion with his local environment. That’s what seems to give it its satisfying sense of finality, of closing the story arcs in which the writer imagines a number of alternative futures for himself, representing postindustrial working class masculinity unmoored from its anchorings (‘Turned up…’), deferred adulthood (‘Dukla Prague’), purposelessness (‘Surging out of Convalescence’) to finding a reason for existence- it really does seem to be a career summation.
7 May 2022
Paddy Macaroon
I’m just going to say it. This is the best song they’ve ever written. My friend and I had figured out a back story to the opening that turned out, on reading that interview, to be a bit fanciful (involving overdose and possibly recovering, possibly-going-towards-the-light figurative redemption) – but I think that caught the essence of it: a grim event in reality, leading to an extended spiritual journey to and through the places of your childhood spotlit by those eternal sunbeams. This one is pure poetry and should be played as a way of conclusively shutting up anyone who thinks they’re ‘just’ a funny band.
7 May 2022
WINE-MADDENED PENTHEUS
I can definitely pick up an ‘f’ at the start of ‘For that’s how it seems’ rather than ‘Or’.
Superb song.
3 July 2022
Schoon
+1 for ‘For that’s how it seems’.
5 July 2022
dr Desperate
No eff in ‘For’.
5 July 2022
Quality janitor
With the week off work, a desire to get out and about and this song in my head I have just decided I need to walk the Oblong of Dreams.
My knowledge of the area is nil though, so only have the routes and comments above to go on. Looking at Dr D’s route on streetview the way up to the lighthouse seems to be mostly road and whilst I could walk all that I fancy taking in some of the coastal path in JOR’s v2 route too, but think I could be biting off rather more than I can chew here. So I was wondering if there’s a nifty place to park the car somewhere that I can circle back to and still take in all of the sights in the right order.
Of course, if anyone also has the time on their hands and fancies showing me around that would be lovely, and I could try to return the favour somewhat if you are coming to the Birmingham gig next month, though I doubt very much I could conjure up an 8 hour extravaganza (as the Commonwealth Games marathon route planners appeared to agree with, getting out of the city pretty much as fast as possible).
22 August 2022
dr desperate
I wouldn’t go by my Google Maps route, @QJ, JoR’s is far more likely.
22 August 2022
EXXO
As an exile who knows nearly all the field paths but not so many of the car parks, I’ll have a think after work and post some advice later QJ. Maybe you could park up 4 or 5 times and do a circular walk each time to get the highlights? 4 circles of 1 mile or so and one circle of 2 miles?
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Thanks chaps.
Ah, OK Dr D, I’ll look more closely at JOR’s then. Ooh, there’s a 3D flyview button.
And yes, very good idea that Exxo. Would probably be a lot safer too as I don’t do that mobile internet thing so would be relying on old tech to follow the route.
If you’re reading this NSD anniversary commiserations NB.
22 August 2022
EXXO
Think the interview version was in a TRFC fanzine? Or maybe I’ve just remembered it from the gig, or even the gig review.
Anyway, about your walk. You say you use old tech. I can relate. Have you go a printer, if I send you 5 maps of the short walks from 5 parking places (two beauty spot car parks, two easy street parkings, and a supermarket car park (2 hours maximum stay)?
22 August 2022
quality janitor
That would be splendid. I have got a printer but naturally the last time i came to use it the ink had dried up, which I’m afraid is how it remains. I can sort something out, or just make some good old fashioned handwritten notes.
Do you need me to give you my email address? CtSO if you see this feel free to pass it on to Exxo.
22 August 2022
EXXO
In fact I posted a link to a form in the quiz thread last week – 16 August – which has my email address at the end. Can you find it?
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Indeed I can. Email incoming.
Reminds me I’ve never tried the quiz. Must do before Brum.
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Big thanks to Exxo for sending me scanned maps with notes on how to break down this walk into 5 chunks. I was going to plan it out some more and go tomorrow, but yesterday morning I woke up early and just went for it.
It was a long day and boy did I clock up some miles, but that was more down to my slapdash navigation than anything else.
What a lovely part of the world. OK, I’m from Birmingham so am easily pleased, but still, I can see why this song had to be written.
24 August 2022
Mark Embery
Having lived on the Wirral since 1985 I must say how much I love this track. So many local references that make me smile as I listen to it. Let’s hope this not the end of HMHB – we need their wit, humour and incisive observations on life. Far too many anally focussed artists these days – this band tell it as it is with managed rage but most important of all, with a smile. Life is too short to be serious.
24 August 2022
EXXO
Glad you enjoyed the day, QJ and thanks for the detailed report by email, which will I use to make adjustments (and a less scribbly version) if my ‘Wainwright’s Wirral Walks” are ever requested again. Like NB I’m very proud of the Oblong’s charms, though the song would also not be what it is if it didn’t contain quite a lot of urban “could be anywhere” as well as the unique vistas of estuary, islands and hills. I sensed that you were itching to set off to the Oblong at any moment, hence my haste and the scribble. I was particularly pleased that you encountered an edgy teenage gang towards the end of the walk – I had tried to map in that possibility. Sounds like none them had Scalextric or Subbuteo in the loft.
25 August 2022
quality janitor
For me the could be anywhere places increase in interest with their obscurity. The scenery is lovely and I’m certainly glad I’ve seen it, but honestly what generated the biggest smile was at the end of a long day, dead on my legs and fighting the urge to just get in the car and go home finding a footbridge and a railway underpass at the edge of a housing estate that looks just like any other.
The edgy teenagers hanging around I guess scarpered when they saw the look on this greying, hobbling goon’s mush.
25 August 2022
quality janitor
Around 37 minutes in on Gardeners’ World 2022 episode 25 (9th September) they show a Jack-by-the-hedge and an Orange-tip butterfly.
Interesting to see that GW recommend jack-by-the-hedge (Alliaria petiolata) to attract orange-tips, @QJ. This nature blogger agrees (referring to it as hedge garlic), also including red campion (Selene dioica) but not speedwell (Veronica spp). https://www.kiri.uk/nature-photo-blog/planting-for-orange-tip-butterflies
20 September 2022
EXXO
So yes, if you’re wondering after last night’s terrible midnight attempted mass murder, the pub name in question probably does refer to the Leasowe light. New Brighton lighthouse is closer but I suppose it was all about the view down Green Lane.
25 December 2022
Unremarkable mark
The line about “crossing the field where she still walks” absolutely kills me. Hits me where it hurts. My favourite HMHB song.
19 January 2023
dr desperate
Spring has already sprung across the Sea, today being the day that Imbolc is celebrated. We have to wait until 20 March. (Also Groundhog Day today – it seems to come around more quickly every year, doesn’t it?)
2 February 2023
EXXO
There won’t be daffodils yonder on my north-facing, wooded ridge for at least another 4 or 5 weeks. Which, to blur adjacent song themes, makes today’s decision easier, because the days we feared are here and we have to decide where the field that he still walks will be. Or maybe he can still walk in two places at once. Anyway, fetch my spade and don’t come into the garden yet, Maud.
2 February 2023
Ferencváros fan
Condolences @Exxo if I have interpreted your post correctly.
2 February 2023
EXXO
Sorry yes, a self-indulgent, sentimental post and just to be clear, it referred to the decision as to where we will bury the dog tomorrow. And after late votes from the Blackpool jury, the field where he still walks will be the one behind his holiday home in Norbreck, though he will forever walk here on Woodhouse Ridge too.
I’m OK and Maud is in fewer bits than I expected.
2 February 2023
Haeb
R.I.P Exxo’s Doggy…
2 February 2023
Ferencváros fan
@Exxo your last and probably greatest favour to your dog. Been a dog owner since 1997 so it’s an all-too-familiar experience. Hope it helps to share it here with the Biscuit family. Best, G
2 February 2023
Phyllis Triggs
Hear, hear to that, George. Condolences to you Exxo, and especially to Mrs Exxo.
2 February 2023
dr desperate
Sincere condolences. We can see the resting place of our West Highland Terrier (q v) when we switch the kitchen light off.
2 February 2023
Paul F
Sorry to hear that Exxo. We were very late to the joys of dogs, and our first, a retired greyhound, is nearly 13 and showing signs of decline. Not looking forward to that day.
3 February 2023
EXXO
Aw thanks for all the kind words, folks. Proper sense of online community. Likes and hearts all over the shop.
3 February 2023
BOBBY SVARC
Only had one dog, Reg, had him for 13 years until 2002 when cancer finished him off. Without a doubt one of the saddest days of my life.
3 February 2023
BAD LOSER
Commiserations to the Exxo Clan. I have never owned my own dog but welcomed one into the family when I met my wife. She was with us three years after that but lost her without warning. Instead of boarding a plane that Saturday morning, I was taking a distressed dog to the vet for what was to be her last journey.I was shocked at how upset I was and my wife hid away for days. Recently, after 10 years, the dog bed was thrown away. We will own another one day when we have enough time to look after one properly. I will fear that day coming round again.
I am surprised that she holds it together during this lyric. I have found a site that prints t-shirts that resembles a CD display of Artist and song with space for a few lines of lyrics. I racked my brain for which lyric I would choose from all the great options available. This one won.
3 February 2023
Borough surveYor
Gladdened by the softness of these mens steel hearts in these comments.
Cats on the other hand…
3 February 2023
featureless tv producer steve
Many condolences, Exxo. Had a great little friend myself from 1997-2010, and I miss him as much today as I did then. Haven’t been able to pull the trigger on “replacing” him yet. Maybe someday.
3 February 2023
transit full of keith
Very sorry to hear that Exxo. I’ve never been much of a dog person myself, but having met yours once (in a very good pub near Lime Street Station, the name of which escapes me) he seemed a lovely, gentle soul. Also bloody massive, if I remember correctly.
3 February 2023
Lux inferior
Adding my condolences to the many others above, Exxo.
3 February 2023
EXXO
Once again many thanks for the kind words. It was the Ship and Mitre on Dale Street Keith. He was a large medium, but I think he’d put on a bit of weight at my mum & dad’s (rather than in the boozer). I’m sincerely embarrassed to have taken over the thread though so let’s let sleeping dogs lie.
6 February 2023
IRISH NIALL
So I’ve been learning the words of Oblong of Dreams as a bit of a project. It’s the 10 year olds favourite song on TVY and I want to get him back practicing on the drums. Meanwhile I’ve been learning it on guitar* as well as the vocals. I have found this discussion and Paddys interview most helpful as I obviously don’t know the places referred to. But this has all helped construct a mind-map of sorts to quite literally walk me through a wordy enough song with some helpful prompts.
Didn’t realise Claire Jenkins and Stuart Bell were fictional. I’d not heard of them but I kind of assumed they shared an agent with Paul Ross maybe?
I’m making it a mission to do this walk or as close to practically/safely possible next time they play Liverpool-ish.
*My left index finger, which is nowhere near 9 inches long, some time ago was blighted by a ganglion cyst which having been excised (the week the world shut down in 2020), became an non-healing re-opening wound, which in turn became infected, went borderline-gangrenous septic, toss of a coin on whether to amputate or try and save it …yadda yadda. Long story short it’s no show-pony any more on the guitar front -and I wasn’t exactly Hendrix to begin with so didn’t have the margin of capacity to give away. But I thought I was cheating using a capo on the 2nd fret to facilitate playing much easier open Em chords rather than barred F#m but have just realised that’s exactly what Nigel does anyway. https://youtu.be/ThI0Eo7nVNo?t=90 Along with CtSO and others on here I was standing only a few feet behind the person (Phil from Portsmouth) who made this video and didn’t notice the capo going on at the time.
Anyway some of us make a cameo just before I Fought the Law.
1 June 2023
Irish niall
Just did the cliff-top walk up the west end of Kilkee at the peak of which near Dunlicky you can see Kerrys Dingle peninsula to the south and Galways Aran Islands and Connemara to the north. But in field in the nearer distance we noticed someone doing handbrake turns in a van. Creating a perfect proud papa moment the 11 year old was heard quip
“…maybe it’s Robbo”
24 July 2023
Jules
Just popping in to say this song has what I believe the youth of today would call Big Wandering Off Into The Wilderness To Die Energy, or something of the sort. Nearly moved me to tears.
17 August 2023
Problem Chimp
Love this song, just beautiful. Still stuck on the oblong…. Is it the shape of the walk, The Wirral, a football pitch or a grave?
14 September 2023
Transit full of Keith
A nickname for the Wirral (which Nigel mentioned he’d heard from Karl, I think.)
15 September 2023
EXXO
Yes, as Nigel says in comment 161 above, “I probably just wanted to get the “Oblong of Dreams” phrase in! I got it from our guitarist Karl Benson in around 2015 I’d guess, but he’s got no memory of that or where he first heard the phrase. Karl – who lives in St Helens these days but comes from Pensby – may have even thought of it himself but not given himself credit.” I remember another acquaintance of Nigel’s, a local wit, using the phrase in an online thread, FB I suppose, around 2013-14, which was the first time I’d seen it personally, and I seem to remember it was a thread that riffed on real former Borough Council epithets like “The Leisure Peninsula.” I seem to remember that this was before the appearance of “Eintracht Oblong” as a thing on the 2014 album, but I have no proof of that vague recollection.
Chris The Siteowner
The album’s epic closer. I know at least one person has already plotted the points of interest on a map. Bit longer than a short stroll, but walkable…
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
I’m pretty confident that Thorstone should be Thor’s Stone.
I’m less confident that ridge should be capitalise, as from Woodchurch he appears to be headed towards Ridgeway high school.
10 March 2022
I, problem chimp
I went Thor’s Stone on the basis that Wirral native Matthew Barnes has a track entitled that on the Forest Swords ‘Engravings’ album…
10 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Yes, sorry about that, my error, don’t blame the contributors, who were pretty unanimous on ‘Thor’s Stone’.
10 March 2022
transit full of keith
Definitely Thor’s Stone, a sandstone outcrop on Thurstaton common. It has 28 named bouldering routes, according to UK Climbing. Wonder if Colin Kirkus used to have a go on it.
I think if “Did you see the match?’ is in quote marks, then so should ‘flat back four’ be.
10 March 2022
transit full of keith
I’m guessing that the photo of what looks like a bit of golf course near a housing estate in the CD inlay is a place in the song? Woodchurch Estate?
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Probably Arrowe Park golf course. From Limbo Lane in Thingwall you get to the back of the golf course and on from there to the roundabout and into Woodchurch. Bradley Dredge gets namechecked at that point but I googled him in connection with that golf course and didn’t find anything.
10 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
What a great song.
I always expected there to be a capital F on Fender, the river (brook) after the M53 but before you go under the railway bridge on to Woodchurch Road.
10 March 2022
SlOw dempsey
I thought the Fender and the Bridge were the names of local estates and merited capitals. Could someone with local knowledge confirm?
10 March 2022
EXXO
Been trying to pinpoint which hole on which golf course that is. Will work it out soon enough.
Yes, plenty of Sundays as little kids were topped off by scrambling up Thor’s Stone, but no, Keith, nothing sufficient to challenge Kirkus, or any reasonably fit adult, and he didn’t live on the Wirral when he was a kid anyway. I took Hamburg HMHB fan Torsten to the stone during the tour I did for him before the last L’pool gig, so he saw a couple of these places even before they were mentioned! I took him there not just ‘cos it’s on the route from Royden Park and Heswall Flower Club, but because it’s yards from the most likely toposcope for ‘Terminus’ and because Torsten’s name is basically the same name Thurstaston was named after (with Thor’s stone then being reverse etymologied).
Leasowe light. No capital needed. Likewise telepudlian is an adjective not a nickname. Loads of people are telepudlians but it’s not their nickname. Likewise dull Adele. She’s just dull.
“Accounts” is more a matter of opinion, but capitalising it gives it way too much respect for me. It’s not an internal memo.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Yes, Fender capitalised as a river, ridge not – the central Wirral sandstone ridge is his personal ridge. No, Fender and bridge are not estates.
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
I’ll gloss over your disdain for my profession…
Bradley Dredge has played at Hoylake, so it could be a hole there. I don’t like it, though, it requires leaping from Thingwall to Hoylake and back to Woodchurch which doesn’t fit the narrative of the walk.
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
I missed the (River) Fender, which should obviously be capitalised, and had Thorstone Drive for Thor’s Stone (ditto), but here’s the updated map. Nice long dog walk, that.
10 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
Nice work, Dr D, not that I’m going to manage 18 miles any time soon.
On imagining the route as I listen to the song I had it using Duck Pond Lane Park as the “fields where she still walks” which takes us on to “the school” assuming it’s St Saviour’s primary school.
10 March 2022
Rob R
“Everythink” I want is here and “everythink” I need is here.
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Any chance of pinpointing where the bonfire burned? Any parks or the like where they might have gone to see fireworks in their younger days?
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
One more for “everythinks”.
I’ve only ever seen Paul’s description written out once, on a TRFC White Review Community Forum thread about fans booing the team, and it was capitalised and spelt “Tellypudlian” (as opposed to “Tellytonian”). There is a hint of Teletubbies about the term though, so the spelling above may be more appropriate.
It’s obviously a slighting reference to Liverpool (and Everton) fans who only ever see the match on Super Sunday – bet they’re on Sky.
10 March 2022
Natalie at the back
The picture looks like it’s taken from near the top of Duck Pond Lane, where there are daffodils. In the background there’s a low cloud base over the Clwydian Hills
10 March 2022
Sloppy
Ha, my attempt at a walk was one way. Much better!!
I thought the route from the Fender would be the bridge & motorway tunnel to Christleton Close on the Holmlands estate?
I vaguely remember bonfires on the grassy bit of Holmlands Crescent
10 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Quick note that Robbo’s Vauxhall Viva would have been made at Ellesmere Port, a few junctions down the M53.
10 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
For what it’s worth, I also think ‘flat back four’ should be in quotation marks, and I’d go as far as suggesting “Every think”.
As I might have mentioned to CtSO, this is nothing short of a masterpiece in my (poetry) books. Yes, Wordsworth, but more so with it’s Wilfred Owen influences. I don’t know the geography at all, so I think my, ahem, ‘emotional’ response is twofold. Firstly, the dear departed dog thing (don’t ask). Secondly, the urgency in the ‘Wake up’ lines, and their association with the poem ‘Futility’. Which brings me onto my next suggestion. Should there be an em dash (long hyphen) after ‘Move him onto his side’ to mirror the first line of Owen’s work ‘Move him into the sun— ’?
10 March 2022
EXXO
Yes, Karen, I’m loving your way of handling the Owen reference. Meanwhile any Wordsworth comparison by us is more, well just a comparison. He mentions clouds, daffodils, and it’s a moment of epiphany.
John – I wouldn’t take football sites as a style guide. Other tele- adjectives and nouns are not capitalised.
@Natalie. Of course it is, of course it is. Duck Pond park disguising itself as a golf course for a minute – they don’t half look like bunkers round a green. The Arno’s behind us, and the daffodils will be just there. It’s about 30 yards further down the lane than the 3rd photo down the page here.
http://friendsofthearno.blogspot.com/p/about.html
10 March 2022
featureless steve
What a great word Telepudlian is.
Regarding the debate over everythink/everything, I reckon “everything” is correct for the lyrics, and it’s just that NB pronounces it “everythink”.
See also – and maybe amend if necessary – The Unfortunate Gwatkin, where Bridgedale would become tetchy and feel the need to punch “somethink”
10 March 2022
Gerry gow
Obviously +1 for capital F for the river Fender, but nice Fender/bridge geography/ musical instrument pairing. Also, the diction on “Woodchurch” makes it sound like some sort of El Dorado has been discovered.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Yes Steve, I’ll be surprised if anyone from Merseyside thinks he’s singing “everythink.” That is pretty much how we pronounce “everything.”
(It wouldn’t surprise me if someone contrarian from Merseyside overthought it and ‘heard’ “think” for the first time after seeing this thread though)
10 March 2022
EXXO
Incidentally and somewhat hauntingly, there’s at least one hornbeam not far behind us in the Arno.
10 March 2022
Dagenham dave
I’m not sure why but this one makes me cry. What a song.
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
Yes, @CA, great suggestion about punctuating the Owen reference (from the same poem quoted by NB in TCS, and by BB in ‘War Requiem, Op. 66 / Dies irae – IIi’).
10 March 2022
Gerry gow
@JFA post 16 I seem to remember massive bonfires on the playing field between the M53 J3 and the River Fender. I may be misremembering though. It’s a few decades ago now.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Blimey. Just seen your walk. Bit daft not to get more of the fabulous coastline in. No idea how we get to Moreton, just that there’s a corpse on the way. But go north up Lingham Lane and enjoy the coast road round to Caldy. And get a bike.
10 March 2022
HARRISON ADAMS
Surely spring, not Spring?
10 March 2022
EXXO
A chunk of the first part of your walk is giving me a stitch just thinking about the school cross country course which was largely contained within Noctorum. Evil torture. But better than most of the rest of school life it has to be said. NB had a very lucky escape.
10 March 2022
EXXO
@Harrison. We’re throwing capitals around everywhere in celebration of the new album. Maybe it’s someone’s nickname.
10 March 2022
Sloppy
@Exxo I remember that ‘run’ well!!
At least we managed to by pass a chippy 😃
10 March 2022
Gerry gow
Who is Olaf in this? Could it be William Olaf Stapledon, or am I over thinking it?
10 March 2022
I, Problem CHimp
I capitalised spring (and put an exclamation mark after ‘showtime’!) but on reflection probably just a bit caught up in the general euphoria of the track… ‘Everythink’ is surely just a question of pronunciation, though the idea of being lost in thought on the walk appeals… Finally managing to wean myself off having to play this twice in a row – I had a similar compulsion with Umberstone…
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
Chambers has the season lasting approximately from March to May in the northern hemisphere as “often with cap“.
10 March 2022
Spiltdown man
Anyone else hearing a click as if a bit of audio’s been cut immediately before “Thor’s Stone”? Or an error in the digital file?
Anyway…Great song. Great closer. Personally I’d put people who pronounce Everything as Everythink in a Suffolk Ditch and in fact have them hauled in for questioning as part of Operation Less Pricks too.
10 March 2022
Duke of westminster
Quotes around the first verse?
“Jenkin’s” rather than “Jenkins’” (or, indeed, “Jenkins’s”)?
In terms of stating the obvious, Olaf is, I suppose, Olaf Guthrithson on his way to or from the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 said to have taken place by Red Hill Road just to the south of this route.
10 March 2022
dr Desperate
We’ve previously discussed the links between Olaf Stapledon (author of ‘Last and First Men’) and Caldy Hill.
10 March 2022
Featureless Steve
@Spiltdown Man
also haul on the executives who named it ‘Operation Less Pricks’ instead of ‘Operation Fewer Pricks’
10 March 2022
EXXO
See also the sleeve notes for ‘Referee’s Alphabet’ (tough shit anyone who hasn’t git a hard copy) … but loving your work there Your Grace.
10 March 2022
Duke of westminster
I can see the Stapledon/Caldy connection but if the reference was only to Stapledon wouldn’t it make more sense to say “Stapledon” than “Olaf”? Doesn’t using “Olaf” bring with it possibilities of other Wirral-lore of particular interest to the local historian? As well as Guthrithson (and Olaf Cenncairech) at Brunanburh there is the possibility of “Olaf” as a kind of synecdoche for the Norsemen who settled in this part of the Wirral in the late 9th and early 10th century. This would also stitch together with the Thor’s Stone/Thorstein’s Ton/Thurstaston reference.
11 March 2022
Kittymcdermott
At Dagenham Dave – ‘I’m not sure why but this one makes me cry’.
I know what you mean – it provokes a certain feeling that’s really difficult to put into words, and I’ve been pondering it for 2 weeks now. Like, WHY does this make me fill up every time? My conclusions are:
Personally, a sadness and regret that I’ve wasted too much time fretting about the ‘obvious and the asinine’ and not more time outdoors with my little Collins Gem book of wildflowers (purchased on first hearing Tyrolean Knockabout). And concurrent with that sadness, a renewed optimism that life can get sweeter (the more that I understand the flora and the fauna and the hedgerows abound in this land.)
I know that age has a lot to do with it for me. It’s not that a young person couldn’t fully understand this, or be similarly moved by it, but there’s that cold truth that the fewer springs you have ahead of you, the more precious they feel. That feeling just gets keener. This has that implicit urging, to me, to enjoy life’s simple pleasures while we still can (especially following Slipping the Escort, as it does).
I understand this has a very special place in the heart of Wirral natives. That said, I do think it’s got that ‘the more local, the more universal’ thing going on as well. Here’s a warm tribute to home from someone who didn’t get caught up in the ‘getting and spending’ and stayed where he was and found some joy where he was – that’s an achievement, isn’t it? I think that alone brought me to tears.
The word ‘oblong’ is just funny, and there’s joy in that.
The awful scene at the start establishes that that this is the real world where things really are increasingly grim. Food banks. So the narrator isn’t living in some dreamy pastoral seclusion, but is dealing with the real world as best he can. The ‘give him some dignity, give him some warmth’ line echoes in ‘sunbeams on my childhood.’ So there’s all the suffering and loss of the world contrasted with its beauty and our place in it. And a hint of ‘there but for the grace of God…’
At first, it seems like it might be heading National Shite Day way, but then it veers off into a totally different direction, where Janet from accounts is eclipsed and mentioned no more. That’s just … a really big surprise, I think. I did feel a little stunned on first listen. Exhilarated and awed and stunned. It’s just SO beautiful. Funny and bitter-sweet and surprising and beautiful.
As Carrie Anne said, it’s also just beautiful poetry. A celebration of nature and of language. Put me in mind of ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme grows’ and ‘the grass, the thicket and fruit-tree wild.’ There’s such easy delight in the way Nigel celebrates that tradition and adds to it. I do think there’s a bit of Wordsworth in there. The whole ‘knowing that nature never did betray the heart that loved her’ relationship-with-the-natural-world sketch.
I think perhaps that’s another reason it’s prompting such an emotional response, like when you read something that knocks you for six and you’re just moved to tears by the sheer brilliance of it. The thrill of encountering a poem or novel or film or song that you know immediately is just amazing, and the gratitude you feel when you’re reminded that some people are capable of amazing things, and that mankind is alright, really, for all its flaws. It’s just really moving, that someone could write something this good, and that they bothered to record it. Showtime!
Oh, it’s just a bloody great tune, too. And the backing vocals, as others have pointed out, just elevate the whole thing further. Sorry for the epic. I’ll just round off my pretentious and unsolicited analysis with a bit of John Clare: ‘An image to the mind is brought/Where happiness enjoys/An easy thoughtlessness of thought/And meets excess of joys.’
11 March 2022
Pirx the purist
“Here’s a warm tribute to home from someone who didn’t get caught up in the ‘getting and spending’ and stayed where he was and found some joy where he was – that’s an achievement, isn’t it?”
Hear, hear to that!
Apart from Uni, I’ve lived the whole of my nearly 60 years in this village. I’ve never wished to live anywhere else. I am – to sound a bit sentimental – at one with this place.
The song is a joyous celebration of place and of one’s place in it.
11 March 2022
Paul F
If we changed it to “everythink” on the basis of how he pronounces “everything” (in the style of Robbie Fowler’s autobiography, “me mum and me dad” etc) we’d have to reassess every song on this site
11 March 2022
The moth
Lovely. Enjoying the strong botanical content of the album in general and this song in particular. Being an ecological pedant I should point out that it’s Orange-tip butterfly, but he definitely sings ‘tipped’ – which describes how it (or more specifically the male) looks anyway.
11 March 2022
Parsfan
We seem to be teetering on the brink of “Journalists who try to spell an interviewee’s laugh”.
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
That’s a right good Olaf, your grace, especially as Stapledon’s parents apparently chose his middle name after reading Carlyle’s The Early Kings of Norway (1875).
There is actually a Claire Jenkins who’s been known to tweet about gin, but I wouldn’t take her as a style guide.
https://mobile.twitter.com/clairej49254232/status/1465809161791295495
11 March 2022
chris from future doom
‘Great song’ simply doesn’t do this justice. ‘Career culminating moment’ may be a little closer. I think overall ‘…Hedge…’ was a stronger album but Voltarol contains one, possibly two songs with STE better than anything they’ve done before.
As such – and as someone who has “dabbled in songwriting” (don’t worry, I’m not Lockdown Luke…) – I don’t believe for a second this popped into Nigel’s head fully formed during lockdown. Which makes me wonder just what the gestation period of a song like this must be. Several years, I would hazard.
Alas, a fantasy question for an interview with the great man that will never happen.
Or maybe I’ll just do the walk and camp out on Thurstaton Common til I bump into him…
11 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
Ok, here goes. I know this post is not going to find much support on this forum, especially from those who know Nigel and Neil personally, and I know that what I am about to say has no corroboration and very little foundation. However it does follow to an extreme the writing process mention by Chris at #50 above
On the day of release (the album’s, not mine) I had a long drive home from Heathrow so was able to listen to the whole album from start to finish without interruption. When I reached the final two tracks, they both resonated with me first time and I was especially bowled over at what a great song OoD is; one which subsequently I too seem to have to play twice. But on first listening it also left me with a sense that it was not just the end of the album but was also the band’s swansong; an unashamed, unsentimental review of what makes Nigel happy (as well as some further things that annoy him) and to be proud about where he comes from; forty years of outstanding song writing culminating in a glorious, vernal paean to their four-cornered Elysium. “How do you follow that, Boys?”
“We don’t. Stay, sit. This is it!”
11 March 2022
An Arctic roll
This song for me at least has feeling of almost bittersweet finality. Fitting for the end of the album I suppose. Then again I’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, knowing Nigel it’s probably about a slipper he lost years ago.
11 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Actually, I thought the same, MG. It would be an epic swansong. However, while it’s quite possible that the band (like any other) could always call it a day at any moment, I think it’s fair to surmise that it wouldn’t be in character for them to decide to do so a long way in advance – and they’ve booked gigs into 2023. So if this were to be the last album, I doubt it will have been planned as such.
I should also point out that despite the impression given by some contributors here (perhaps unintentionally), few – if any – know Nigel and Neil other than as passing acquaintances*, so don’t take anything too seriously unless it comes from the band, who as we know pop by from time to time.
*Definitely including me.
11 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
It was a little like when our English teacher used to surprise us with a poem we’d not seen before and ask for our initial response before we’d had time to study it thoroughly (and goodness knows, the songs are thoroughly studied on this site).
11 March 2022
Parsfan
At some point in the build up to the release someone saw some ominous portent in the limited information we had. I was going to add, might have done in the end – can’t remember, that the ominous portent I saw was all the band appearing on the cover. We had Neil on UFO but that’s it until now.
I don’t think they’ll have decided to call it a day, but currently on a four year album cycle they might just think “who knows?”.
11 March 2022
EXXo
What a fantastic sequence of comments, in themselves a wonderful tribute to the song (said an English teacher).
11 March 2022
I, problem chimp
If, as I have said in a previous comment, OoD had ended with another 2 minutes of the ‘cowslips and celandine’ refrain accompanied by swelling strings, I might have been worried – as it is the opening riff returns and we’re back to more familiar territory – maybe even back to the bloke who collapsed in the first verse being used as the inspiration for a further song? I’d love it if this was Awkward Sean – after all, the narrator here doesn’t really know him and no-one seems to know where Sean is or what has happened to him…
11 March 2022
Gerry GOW
Some bits of pedantry:
I hear singular “gin report”.
I’d have “Stay! Sit! This is it.” as the first two words sound like commands to me.
11 March 2022
Janet from accounts
It is the sort of song you could close a career on, though I hope that’s not what it is.
I find the tone of voice fascinating on this song. There is a growling intensity to parts of it, like Nigel is threatening you with how great he thinks the Wirral is, like you’d insulted his wife. “What’s that? It’s not the greatest place to live? Maybe you should come over here and say that.” The understated “Showtime” when the clouds part, like he’s daring you to not be impressed by it all. The utter joy at the daffodils at the end, and the outgoing refrain of “cowslips and celandine”…
It is absolutely beautiful, and yes – it makes me cry as well.
11 March 2022
transit full of keith
One of my favourite lines in Biscuit is “welcome to the daylight at the back of my mind” in Even Men With Steel Hearts: “releasing me from darker rooms” is a lovely echo of that, with added lockdown overtones we can all probably relate to. I wasn’t aware of the nod to Wilfred Owen in “Move him onto his side” – thanks for that Carrie Ann.
I think this is a really good song, and unusual in the Biscuit songbook for its apparent heartfeltness, but it’s not up there with their greatest for me. I won’t go into my reasons as they’re probably a bit picky and boring, but I’m starting to prefer Persian Rug Sale. Seems I’m in a minority though…
11 March 2022
Murderous giraffe
I think the man in the first verse is, sadly, dead and the “warmth” referred to is emotional rather than physical. The narrator’s thoughts then turn to his antidote, Wirral in the spring and all that has to offer to counteract the seamier side of life as well as the promise of new life. And as I write this Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony comes on Radio 3.
11 March 2022
Paul F
If it were to be the last song on the last album, I think they’d be going one better than Merseyside’s other keynote act. Given that Let it Be was recorded before Abbey Road, the latter deserves to be recognised as their final album. And they came up with Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End which included solos from all 4, a melancholic opening line and a transcendent closing line. And then Her Majesty accidentally got left on the end of the master… Thankfully nobody at RM Qualtrough was that incompetent.
11 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
…although Mark Lewisohn has suggested that the two sides of Abbey Road were eventually swapped from what was intended: I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – with its even more abrupt ending – was planned to finish off side two and be the final track on the final Beatles album.
11 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
If there is no pedantry too tedious to address and if the surname were “Jenkins” then I suppose the text ought to be written “Jenkins’s” (since, presumably, there is only one Claire Jenkins producing the gin report(s)). It doesn’t sound, though, as if NB is attempting to articulate all of the “s” sounds involved in “Jenkins’s” which sort of implies it is a “Claire/Clare Jenkin” involved.
11 March 2022
paul f
Interesting – but I’ll have to wait at least another 10 years to read about his views on Abbey Road in Volume 3!
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
The Puritan writer Richard Baxter’s poem ‘Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care’, a “Didn’t care, still don’t” meditation on life and death, contains the verse:
“Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than He went through before;
He that unto God’s kingdom comes
Must enter by this door”.
11 March 2022
Markw
This is like an A level English Literature lesson! By the way, who is Stuart Bell?
11 March 2022
Dagenham dave
I agree with Mr/Mrs/Ms Giraffe at no.61 that the poor chap in the first verse is deceased, hence the ‘he’s out of it now’.
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
There’s obviously some disagreement over the possessive form of names that end in ‘s’, as demonstrated in the title and first line of the Wikipedia entry for the War of Jenkins’ Ear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear
11 March 2022
Bernardo soares
Is “And his flat back four” also spoken by Telepudlian Paul? It’s him talking of the flat back four (defence) in the match rather than the song’s narrator commenting on Telepudlian Paul and therefore it also should be in speech marks.
Hope that makes sense!
11 March 2022
transit full of keith
With his ‘Did you see the match?’
And his ‘flat back four’
is more likely I think than
With his ‘Did you see the match
and his flat back four?’
11 March 2022
EXXO
Yes. Telepudlian (which needs a capital there, but not in the song) Paul is so clueless that he does not see the never-ending delight of Klopp’s devastating attacking full backs. He thinks all Liverpool’s woes of “the great slump of early 2021” would have been solved by Klopp going for a flat back four.
That’s the most likely explanation, the second being that he lectures fans of other teams that they’ll never get far with a flat back four. But who has a flat back four these days?
11 March 2022
EXXO
MInd you I half expect telepudlian (which would need a capital if it was in a band name) Paul and his Flat Back Four to be on at the Queens up the Road one of these Saturday nights..
11 March 2022
transit full of keith
Can you treat a flat back four with Voltarol? Football’s not really my strong point.
11 March 2022
Murderous Giraffe
Yes, I’d like an Oblong of Dreams tee shirt but don’t tell the privateers. We could also hold an Oblong of Dreams walk now we know the route, especially as it should end close to the aforementioned Queens Arms by my reckoning.
11 March 2022
Mick Macve
Fantastic song. Fantastic discussion. In “Field Of Dreams”, Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham says “You know, we just don’t recognise the most significant moments in our lives while they’re happening”. He also says “This is my most special place in the world. Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it, like it was your child. I can’t leave Chisholm”.
11 March 2022
Paul deller
As always we will probably never know Nigel’s true thoughts and feelings but, to me, this sounds like an ode to his home on the Wirral and an observation of how few of us stop to take a moment to look around and appreciate the beauty of our home. There is a beauty about a sunny day in spring time that we often overlook and take for granted. Especially when we are younger. I hope it isn’t but if this HMHB’s last album then this is a beautiful piece of writing to end on.
11 March 2022
JeFf DREADNOUGHT
Great discussion. Much has been gleaned. Can’t add anything to the lyrical analysis, but what a tune! And that bass riff: J-J Burnel, eat your heart out.
11 March 2022
Mrs Medlicott
Oblong of Dreams is a paean of hope in murky times. I hope you’ll allow me on to your forum as HMHB do more for my mental health than a bucket of Largactil!
(Everyone’s welcome here – CtSO)
11 March 2022
clown in a yaris
So many songs down the years have been hailed as timeless ‘classics’. Oblong of Dreams is surely that. However, even if it had regular radio airplay, in the fullness of time it would be largely forgotten (except by us lot).
Where’s the fookin’ joostice!!!
Thank you Nigel for a song writing masterclass – genius!!
‘Estate memories all good, sunbeams on my childhood’ possibly my favourite lyric on the entire album. A nailed on LFC winner.
11 March 2022
Third rate les
She In Signal Red and I got into the habit of going on “Awe Walks” in lockdown last year – deliberately enjoying all the little details of what we saw.
It was just like this song, including the “Robbo’s Viva” stuff – once you start focusing on the cowslips, all the memories get really vivid too.
Wonderful song.
And remembering my mum’s 1973 Viva, the idea of such a big squat car overturning makes me wince.
11 March 2022
julian or Rupert
Possibly I’ve been over thinking this, but this is my take on the route.
I agree with Exxo that it you are going to take Dr Desparate’s route, your probably want a bike. In particular, anyone walking along Saughall Massie Road is going to feel lucky not to be mown down by the Big Man Up Front.
Assuming a circular walk (if you are parking at Sainsbury’s you probably want to read that notice, since you are going to be more than 2 hours), there are a some questions:
How to get up to the coast. I’ve gone for up over Bidston Hill. The alternative would be the path beside the railway past Upton Station and then on to Bidston.
I’m assuming the casualty is somewhere up behind Leasowe Castle, and that we drop down on to Leasowe Road to direct the ambulance in the right direction.
Hence to Lingham Lane and Leasowe lighthouse.
But then how to get to Caldy Hill? I’m with Exxo again, and would stick to the coast at least to Meols, and probably to Hoylake, or all the way round through West Kirby.
Caldy to Thurstaston Common and Thor’s Stone is fairly clear.
But from there, which way along Limbo Lane? Irby Hill or Irby Village?
I’m guessing Arrowe Park to get to Woodchurch, but Landican Lane would be OK too.
11 March 2022
dr Desperate
Better over than under, @JorR – excellent work! The coastal route makes a lot more sense, especially as he mentions turning inland towards Thor’s Stone. As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, mine was based more on Google Maps than non-existent local knowledge.
(I’ve been using Street View on that less-than-reliable resource to check out the road in Preston where our mate “Ossie” Osbaldeston overturned his dad’s Escort in 1974, and was pleased to see that there are still temporary traffic lights there.)
12 March 2022
LITtlegrafter
Absolutely wonderful song, which didn’t grab me on first listen, like much of the album to be honest, but it’s now risen to probably my favourite thing they’ve done, which for a band I’ve been following for 36 years is pretty special.
As luck would have it, I’m heading to Liverpool next Saturday to take my daughter to a Uni applicants day, I’ll therefore have half a day to kill and will head over the Mersey and visit many of these locations. A car will be involved but I’ll try to get a few miles in on foot, to analyse on strava later.
12 March 2022
EXXO
Good effort JoR. But the corpse will surely have been encountered closer to home, or the comments from the narrator/bystander(s) make much less sense. Then I think your first instinct is correct that you should follow Nigel’s old school plod up the Fender and across somehow to Moreton. We need to hit the coast only at the light and then turn into the wind. I think we may be running, by the way.
And it still pertubs me somewhat not to see the whole coast path used right round past Red Rocks and Hilbre, as far as Morrisons in West Kirby.
After Thurstaston, Thingwall road, Limbo Lane, Arrowe Brook path/lane/road. Woodchurch past the fearsome hollow boom.
12 March 2022
EXXO
When I say ‘coast path’ I mean presuming the tide’s not right in, so the beach at Hoylake and the dunes path past the RL golf course. Glorious stretch.
12 March 2022
Jerome of Prague
MarkW at 67 I suspect not Sir Stuart Bell (16 May 1938 – 13 October 2012) was a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Middlesbrough from the 1983 general election until his death in 2012. He was known as the longest serving Second Church Estates Commissioner, serving in this role during the entire period of Labour government from 1997-2010.
12 March 2022
Uncle Keith
I had no idea about the nod to Wilfred Owen in this song, though I did spot the one in TCS. It actually bought to mind Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which expressed the same sentiments over 200 years ago. Man has obviously always felt the desire to escape from the obvious and the asinine and take some time to smell the flowers.
12 March 2022
gipton teenager
I’m sitting in The Royal Barn (The Kirkby Lonsdale Brewery Tap) , having just been down to “Ruskin’s View and then we went into the church and came out and , well it wasn’t quite Clouds part etc. but it had stopped raining and life is good.
12 March 2022
Pop
Weirdly as of a few hours ago OoD is now greyed out and unplayable on Spotify
12 March 2022
Ultimate pyjamas
Love the theory that Abstract Sean is our man in act I. Off on one final 20km walk in Act II before he ascends…
12 March 2022
Free parker pen
Even though the “Oblong” is “over the water “ for me I still find this song very emotional. I remember family Sunday outings, the ferry then bus to Arrowe Park. Then walking to Thurstaston for a picnic looking over the Dee.
Sunbeams on my childhood. Marvellous stuff.
I hadn’t considered that this album might be the swan song but to me there’s definitely a sense of having to write this one while he still can.
Also there was an interview a while back where Nigel said that when Geoff Davies retired he might pack in too. Obviously that hasn’t happened yet but one never knows…
13 March 2022
Beltane beard
Wonderful stuff, and of course not the first mention of oblong in their songs. Having not previously fully appreciated the geographical shape of the Wirral Peninsula, this has now made me reassess my reading of “Bane of Constance” in that it now seems that Eintracht Oblong are, in Vince’s mind, a local rival to Tranmere Rovers.
13 March 2022
Chemtrail brian
Uplifting. Majestic. HMHB’s ‘Hey Jude’, or at least ‘One Day Like This’.
13 March 2022
Beltane beard
Ah, just realised I obviously didn’t read the “Bane of Constance” discussion page well enough, as the Eintracht Oblong meaning was already confirmed there. Never mind, I got there eventually……
I do like how places and people recur in HMHB songs; for the second album running we have a mention of Caldy, plus also we have the return of Pop Tart Mark elsewhere.
13 March 2022
Alan
Ryder-Jones holds great affection for West Kirby, a picturesque town near the coast, seven miles from Birkenhead. “If you turn left out of my mother’s house you can see the river Dee and North Wales,” he describes. “I love being at the water, I walk the long way to my studio every day so I can be by it. I walk from my house to the studio through a lovely park, then on to the beach and back around, it’s one of my favourite places in the world. It’s funny how I tried to escape it for all of my 20s before I gave in and said ‘this is where I’m meant to be’.
https://thequietus.com/articles/26949-bill-ryder-jones-future-yard-2019-interview
13 March 2022
JRB
A brilliant song which I’m trying to understand better!
In Oblong of Dreams “Onwards, then, to the Leasowe Light” is the start of the second verse – is that referring to the narrator of the first verse or, more likely the person who the narrator is talking about?
And, when he says “And now I’m in Paradise….everything I want is here and everything I need is here” who is the ‘I’, NB, the narrator or someone else?
13 March 2022
Alan
“The Oblong Of Dreams – Bill Ryder-Jones talks The Wirral, Birkenhead and music on the other side of the Mersey”
https://twitter.com/thequietus/status/1161910396455981056
there’s nothing new under the sun
13 March 2022
FERENCVáROS FAN
First impressions haven’t changed in the slightest. Apogee imo (and hopefully not swansong).
13 March 2022
Phyllis Triggs
@Alan Interesting you should reference Bill Ryder-Jones there – on first listentening to OoD I had to do some googling as the bassline reminded me of something – turned out to be the intro to the Coral’s Dreaming Of You. And then I found out the Coral too were a Wirral band. Coincidence? Probably.
@JRB “Onwards then – ” I think from this point it is NB’s voice. The memories are personal, the statement direct. What is going on in the first verse however is open to different interpretations. Does the song open with the voice of one bystander (who may or may not be NB) making several different comments, who we then accompany on his walk, or is it the voices of several different bystanders heard by our narrator as he passes by the poor unfortunate collapsed on the street? Or are the voices heard by the casualty as he lies gasping his last, his heart stuttering (just listen to that ragged dudu dudu dudu tagged onto the steady pounding bassline)? Is it his soul that we accompany on its journey to its paradise away from earthly concerns “He’s out of it now”? And if that’s the case, given the personal nature of the memories that follow, is NB imagining the scenario if it were him lying there, taken from us way too soon but nevertheless a life complete?
13 March 2022
EXXO
@Lou (Phyllis). That’s all certainly possible, and NB refers in other songs to ghosts and possibly spirits, but this song doesn’t feel “touched by the wings of something dark” and given that the declaration that “everything I want is here and everything I need is here” is in the present tense, and is just a more open declaration of everything he has been saying for 35 years in interviews, we needn’t see it as a declaration from beyond.
As he jogs or cycles past, there’s the dead body of someone he knew by sight but not to talk to. I remember there was a body found in Duck Pond Park not long before the Liverpool gig, ‘cos I was round at that time, so what was that, 2018? Very near where that photo on the album sleeve is. I’m not saying that particular death is relevant at all, but it’s the sort of thing that happens and that you will pass sooner or later if you walk, run and cycle round the paths of our conurbations.
This is the flip side of ‘Mileage Chart,’ that song saying why he won’t go anywhere too far (down the country, up the charts, to a deal, etc) but will stay in Lower Nowhere instead. This one stating more openly what he loves about home, and obviously those things are above all those who are not named in the song, but who are also acknowledged in the previous song (with the reference to the new-found ‘credo’ of Sweet Mystery of Life). NB is writing proper love songs these days, to people as well as places.
13 March 2022
BATWALKER
I wonder whether the fact that “the Leasowe Light along Lingham Lane” echoes the alliterative pattern of William Barnes’s famous “do lean down low in Linden Lea” was a deliberate allusion, or just a happy coincidence.
13 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
I don’t think the subject of the first verse is dead, just unconscious “out of it”. If I ever came across a corpse, I wouldn’t be moving it into the recovery position “onto his side”.
As others have suggested links between songs on this album and previous work, perhaps the person being found was the protagonist from Frequent Electric Trains. Discovered unconscious by the Owen memorial in Hamilton Square (engraved with Futility).
13 March 2022
EXXO
Aargh. I knew someone would make an Elbow comparison sooner or later.
*Shudders and does that crossy thing with two index fingers.*
13 March 2022
EXXO
I like an optimistic interpretation Karen, and for a while I thought the same about the reference to the recovery position – but to me there are multiple bystanders (“give him some room”) and that’s the voice of someone who doesn’t want to accept that he’s definitely deceased – this is before the emergency services arrive – but the past tense used by out narrator seals it for me.
Doesn’t really matter but I can’t get my thoughts in this song to go anywhere near Hamilton Square. I don’t want to have to do a route map of my own though.
13 March 2022
Android, Eyes Rolling
I’d go with
Wake Up! Showtime
The singer is exhorting the OoD to be reborn now that spring is here, building upon the signs so far seen (cowslips, celandine etc.).
13 March 2022
Primark FM
Until I read this thread I thought it was ‘gym report’. Yes it’s definitely ‘gin’. I just imagined Claire coming into work and boring everyone with her 2 hour workout the previous evening. What is a gin report anyway?
14 March 2022
duke of westminster
The change from the rolling bass to the soaring parts with backing harmony and, later on, strings seem to suggest something in the narrative changes at these points. You can take your pick as to whether it is intended to be a dead man’s spirit heading off or the narrator beginning a mental exercise of what it would be like if the person had died and his spirit then followed him along his route. There does, though, then seem to be a conversion (one-sided?) then taking place between the narrator and the (imagined) spirit of the dead man as there are a couple of commands from the narrator to someone (“if you will, stand still, wait” and “Stay, sit…”).
The song pointing to a real or imagined spirit of the dead man is encouraged by a series of specific words/constructions: moving onwards to the light and away from worldly concerns (“the obvious and the asinine”), spirit (of Olaf), clouds parting, a sudden breeze, paradise, limbo, the zone, being about a thousand miles away, a field where someone still walks, this is it.
14 March 2022
duke of westminster
conversion = conversation
14 March 2022
EXXO
To save years of argument – as someone mentioned in the album on release weekend, it’s seems pretty sure to those who know the field and park (not exactly the same place) in question that “she” is largely inspired by the beloved family dog who died on the day Tranmere lost to Boreham Wood in 2015 (those details are in a 2015 or 2016 interview somewhere). I’m not saying it’s the only level you can take it at, but that’s the first level. “Stay. Sit.” are commands to a dog, but we can do them too, especially if we are tired and need pause for reflection. “This is it” is more open to interpretation, but anyone who’s had a dog well into double figures of age knows such a moment. I thought it had happened to me (again) five days ago on a very similar field. But it could also be the moment of epiphany. It’s brilliant though that there are so many other ways to take it and that will be debated down the generations to come.
14 March 2022
duke of westminster
Speedwell and Campion as well as being wild flowers are minor characters in Watership Down. Make of it what you will,
14 March 2022
Duke of westminster
As is Cowslip.
As is Buckthorn (from Rogatiom Sunday).
14 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Speedwell and Campion […] are minor characters in Watership Down. Make of it what you will”
A rabbit pie?
15 March 2022
Singer’s painting
I’m in no doubt that the character in the first verse is dead and the remainder of the song is that character’s spirit taking a last journey around their home turf, their stomping ground. One last look around the ol’ place and all its charms and then…well, then off to the great hereafter.
15 March 2022
professor Abelazar woozle
Shades of “You’ve read the book, you’ve seen the film, now eat the cast”…
15 March 2022
dr Desperate
Idly wondering about the ‘XXXX of Dreams’ trope, I was sure that the 1989 film ‘Field…’ (with its ‘Golden Gordon’-like plot) wasn’t the first to make that oneiric connection, as ‘Land…’, my second-favourite Randy Newman album, came out the year before.
I then discovered that Bobby Charlton’s vainglorious description of Old Trafford as ‘Theatre…’ (now the name of an MUFC franchise operation in China) first appeared in John Riley’s book ‘Soccer’ in 1987, with the balance being struck in 2008 by Neil Dunkin’s Kopite Odyssey ‘Anfield…’. 1987 also saw the publication of another ‘Land…’, an SF novel by James P Blaylock.
I’ve also attended a couple of the gigs organised by Pete Atkin’s fangroup Midnight Voices, which so far include ‘Field…’ (again), ‘Theatre…'(again), ‘Pub…’ and ‘Cinema…’.
However, the furthest back I’ve been able to trace the trope (without including a possessive pronoun) is in a short story by Agatha Christie from 1926 entitled ‘House…’
Incidentally, I agree with Kitty McD that ‘Oblong’ is just a funny word, especially when used in this context. Sir Terry Pratchett pulled a similar trick in his Discworld novels when he described the Patrician, Havelock Vetinari, running Ankh-Morpork from the Oblong Office.
16 March 2022
EXXO
@Pirx and Woozle – much emoticonning of belly laughs.
@Singer’s P – I love it then that the first thoughts of the spirit are “ah, sweet release from life’s woes, thank **** I don’t have to listen to that tw*t talking about the match this morning.” There is also the slight contrast between the lifestyle and appearance (even when out exercising) of a person who might be heading for a foodbank or a pharmacy and one who might be escaping from Janet in accounts.
However, I hope many would agree with me that it was a pity if we couldn’t take this wonderful ‘anthem’ both ways, and more besides.
16 March 2022
EXXO
It would be a pity if, I mean. My conditionals these days are collapsing in a heap at the troubled interface between the past, the future and the imaginary.
16 March 2022
EXXO
@Dr D – it’s interesting that during the pre-release period, when I guess we were assuming that this song would be on the kind of subject matter that it did indeed turn out to be, that the ‘Culture Bunker’ podcast (equipped with a certain amount of local knowledge one might have assumed) had the song down, even after hearing, it as “Nigel revisiting his old school footy pitch,” so possessed were they of the “field/theatre of dreams” trope.
I first heard the epithet OoD it from a big Rovers fan (and major local wit) on Twitter or FB about ten years ago in a jokey thread of epithets about the Wirral, and a thread which was taking the piss out of WBC’s 40/50-years-old self-marketing slogan of Wirral as “the leisure peninsula.” I remember those who knew, knew immediately that in 2014’s The Bane of Constance, “Eintracht Oblong” was referring to the same epithet, and was some sort of imaginary “Wirral United FC” in Vince’s addled mind.
16 March 2022
S
Just listening to ‘Oblong’ and “clouds part, show time” made me think of John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Lights out, sack time” on ’36 Hours’.
Just me, then?
20 March 2022
Christie malry
I listened to this just now on headphones while walking along a fieldpath. Analysing Strava reveals that was my fastest kilometre. Coincidence? It seems to have the perfect tempo for striding along in the sunshine. It also seems to me entirely ambiguous whether the narrator stays the same throughout. A religious take might be that it changed to the spirit of the dead man who is now in paradise of some sort. Or perhaps the two merge, or more simply the same original narrator is inspired by this death to see the positives in the world. Maybe it’s about how lockdown taught us (or me at any rate) to appreciate my immediate surroundings more. Somewhere I have a cassette tape of a radio session from about 2002 which I listened to numerous times, and in the interview Nigel says something like the secret of happiness lies in limiting your aspirations. As a younger person I thought this was a bit sad and defeatist, but now I tend to think consciously trying to enjoy the small everyday things of life is very positive. Except, of course, some of those everyday things – nature, flowers, spring sunshine – are actually the ingredients of the romantic sublime. My hedge, however, remains uncut and straggly, and I don’t care.
20 March 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
S: not just you. I also thought that – a bit tenuous though, could be deliberate or could just be coincidence.
21 March 2022
EXXO
@Christie. Lovely comment. Did you hear the interview on Maconie’s Freak Zone the other week? NB said he gets ideas when out running as well as walking. I remember one interview from ’92 I think – the interview where he said he was getting married – where he said a certain song had been conceived when out cycling, and I’d wager that the rhythms of running, cycling and walking help develop the bouncier, swingier tunes too – I know they’re the ones I like to sing or whistle when I’m cycling! It’s noticeable there’s more space between phrases in the likes of ‘Oblong’ and ‘Persian Rug Sale’ and interesting too that in transcribing the lyrics to this and others on the album, CtSO chooses to break up lines where those pauses occur, reflecting that rhythm.
21 March 2022
Free parkEr pen
I think it’s “ And now I’m in Paradise for that’s how it seems “ which I think would be more positive for the narrator than “ or “ .
22 March 2022
dr desperate
An OoD father and son team were on ‘Pointless’ tonight: the former described himself as coming from “Wirral”, the latter from “The Wirral”. Is a diachronic change going on there?
22 March 2022
Exxo
Atypical examples I’d say and if if there’s a trend it’s more likely to be the other way round in the long run. But the mistake is to think they were expressing the same meaning. One is saying he’s from a (council)area and one from a peninsula, the latter 50% bigger.
22 March 2022
EXXO
Woodchurch ain’t no Chatteris that’s for sure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-60846542
24 March 2022
PooplEby
Not, it seems, does everyone consider Wirral the Oblong of Dreams.
https://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/7429794.people-have-no-morals/
24 March 2022
EXXO
@Poopleby I can’t tell whether you’re aware or not that most of us have that letter on our CD shelves?
25 March 2022
Poopleby
Then my life is now complete.
25 March 2022
Janet from accounts
That letter reads like a very rough draft of National Shite Day.
25 March 2022
Stef
Apologies if someone’s already mentioned this here – I’ve not yet had a chance to read all the comments – but I get the impression that the ‘journey’ in this song is actually the dead man’s spirit revisiting familiar places after he’s died. Don’t know why. Perhaps it’s just the change in tone of the song – at a certain point there’s this sense of purpose and absolute clarity that makes itself felt, as though everything extraneous has been discarded. ‘Oblong of Dreams’ referring to the grave as well as the Wirral? No idea if this is meant to be – just my thoughts. Either way, this song is on another level altogether. It’s disconcerting in its sheer brilliance and beauty and the way it pulls emotional strings that I didn’t even know were there. Basically, it left me speechless.
25 March 2022
Stef
… just realised that Christie said the same thing a few comments ago and far more eloquently than me(!)
25 March 2022
Paul f
I am literally a telepudlian Paul these days, having left Liverpool 20 years ago (after 20 years of regular match-going). But I don’t think I’m a Super Sunday Super Bore as I’m Freeview, I’m not with Sky.
27 March 2022
EXXO
I’m similar for last 12 years, but for financial rather than geographical reasons.
I am telepudlian Nige, and if you want a bore I can oblige
With my “Did you see the match? The atmosphere sounded shit!”
I’m a streaming-six-games-every-Sunday super-git.
27 March 2022
EXXO
Since we’ve gone quiet on lyrics, I’ll revert to my one true vocation of pedantry to stir things up a bit, and I’ll just reiterate my comment about capitalisation in comment #10 with a bit more reasoning.
1. telepudlian Paul – not a nickname, just an adjective. How could it be a nickname? The word is a relative neoligism and would require sufficient people in a sub-group of people who know Paul (within this context – probably the office from which the narrator is escaping) to identify him as that. You would need sufficient people within that office environment to be dismissing him with a snobby and very recent term used by some match-going fans – so for a start you’d need a whole group of people in the office to be snobby match-going fans, and for them all to share the same disdain for spouting off by ‘Sky Super Sunday’ fans. But also anyone with the particular football politics angle to dismiss people as ‘telepudlian’ would know of hundreds and thousands of such people, so it seems highly unlikely they would then use it as a nickname. It’s just an adjective explaining why he’s annoying to a match-going fan, probably but not necessarily a fan of another Merseyside team.
2. dull Adele – not a nickname – just somebody (probably in the same workplace as the narrator, Paul and Janet) who is dull, and a nice piece of assonance for the rhythm. It wouldn’t be a very good nickname, would it? Especially as many people in offices tend to be dull. It may even conceivably allude the dullness of the singer Adele in some way – does she get played on the tannoy at the office/factory/shop/warehouse? But even so it’s not her nickname either.
3. jack-by-the-hedge Yes, most websites and some reference sources about wildflowers make the mistake of capitalising one or more of the words, but this looks daft especially alongside other plant names in this song. You wouldn’t capitalise jack-in-the-box.
4. I have softened about “the Leasowe light” and no longer mind the capitalisation of “Light” so much, but it still looks wrong.
My original reasoning, and still my main reasoning, is that Leasowe Lighthouse is the name of the structure, and what everyone, locally or from anywhere else, calls it. If this was abbreviated to Leasowe Light, then maybe. But it has been poetically rendered for the sake of rhythm and perhaps symbolism, as “the Leasowe light.” Nobody actually calls the place that, though those on the bridge of a vessel approaching Liverpool on a night-time high tide until its decommissioning in 1908 probably would have called the beam that, as they could see the Leasowe light (even for an ill-advised 6 years in the 18th century the Leasowe lights plural), the Bidston light, etc, the Crosby light, etc, but not their physical structures.
To take another example, there’s a folk song (I may get in technical trouble with folk pedants if I call it a shanty) called ‘The Eddystone Light,’ named of course after the most famous of all British lighthouses, Eddystone LIghthouse, and its light. You’ll find most versions of those lyrics get it wrong and write it as “The keeper of the Eddystone Light”, but at least this one has it right as “the keeper of the Eddystone light.” https://songs.2quakers.net/eddystone
However, I said I didn’t mind as much about this one, three weeks on. I guess three weeks ago I was keen to show my local knowledge, but now I do think that by making the mistake of capitalising the “L”, at least you emphasise to those who don’t know that the physical feature being referred to is Leasowe Lighthouse the building, rather than a lighthouse light (there isn’t one any more, except a small decorative LED in the evening and on one recent special celebratory evening there was an actual lighthouse light re-installed). Having said that, I have no doubt that we are also prompted to think about the wonderful light of Leasowe bay that opens up at that point for the next stage of the songs “route” along the coast, and probably also if we choose to we can think about about the whole “bright light” seen at the point of death scenario (as alluded to in Monmore, Hare’s Running).
So better as the Leasowe light, but it doesn’t offend me as much as it did 3 weeks ago.
31 March 2022
EXXO
Of course I always make typoes in my own pedantry to add to the meta-fun: Leasowe Bay (the bay at Leasowe) and the song’s “route.”
31 March 2022
paul f
I believe the frequent tendency of online attempts at pedantry/correction to contain typos themselves is known as Muphry’s Law.
31 March 2022
paul f
BTW I agree with the decapitalisations you propose Exxo (telepudlian, dull, that kind of thing). And personally I’ve always assumed dull Adele is the singer (very much a Moody Chops). I see the list as not just referring to the office/factory where the narrator works, but “everyday life” in all its National Shite Day glory.
31 March 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Top class pedantry, and while we’re on this song, we need to get some quote marks around ‘flat back four’ (see earlier comments on this thread).
31 March 2022
EXXO
Thanks for the support Paul and Keith – and yes I agree there too Keith.
Incidentally, if you’ve got a head for heights, you may enjoy this gyrocopter pilot’s erratically-spliced wanderings over the Oblong, very much in the spirit of this song (the song of the spirit?).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDCFT7tGQ6E
At 4.07 Leasowe Lighthouse is just to the left of his/her helmet, nothing like as prominent as you’d expect, and then is eclipsed by the helmet for a couple of seconds.
S/he doesn’t follow the route of the song but briefly crosses it (and the estate memories) at around 2.08, so that at 2.10 you have where Robbo’s Viva burned on the extreme right of shot.
We then cross central Birkenhed, where you can’t see anyone driving through the park at about 2.13, and at 2.20 there’s the square from ‘Frequent Electric Trains’ (the green square middle right below the river)
The light square roof of Christie’s URC in Heswall, with its regular Persian rug sales, can be seen at 1:27, bisected by the transparent arc of the gyrocopter’s seat-back.
31 March 2022
EXXO
Soz – the Viva “overturned” of course – I guess “burned” wouldn’t rhyme that well with errm, “burned”.
31 March 2022
EXXO
oh and at 5.43 that’s Caldy Hill left of his helmet (or above it as he banks the ‘copter). Just before that, we get Hilbre island where at a lower tide we might be lucky to see dickheads in quicksand. Or sanderling.
31 March 2022
EXXO
Drone this time. Almost soporific by comparison with the gyrocopter, but Thor’s stone being the lump of red sandstone top of screen at about 1:48.
Royden Park of batwalk fame is all the woods at the top at 2:54
31 March 2022
EXXO
Soz link for that comment is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv5FRNwmTis
31 March 2022
Roof of the barbican
Great thread about a great song. I’ve always liked the more sober grown up songs by HMHB, even more so due to the flippant humour in others – darkness and light innit? So I’m already predisposed to your ‘Beyond Tablets’, ‘Terminus’, ‘Old Age Killed’, ‘Humberstone Covert’ etc before I reached the last two tracks on first listen on this album. Not that thematically it’s out of place really – the gallows humour of ‘Volterol Years’ is off the scale, most songs in some way dealing with death or loss in some way. The previous track was a great set up, although less abstract than OOD and has the ‘He had her to hold her steady’ line which always makes me well up, and in comparison I see OOD as being an antidote – a shot of optimism and reflection which despite the subject matter, leaves me invigorated and happy. Weird huh?
So my take on the song (prior to reading the other viewpoints) is that the song is narrated from two perspectives – one being the guy who finds the bloke dead-at-the-scene, and the other being from the view of the dead guy as he makes an out-of-body journey around his locale whilst waiting to pass into whatever afterlife there is (not suggesting ‘limbo lane’ is a clue of course), only to find after the ‘showtime’ starts, that his spirit will forever be in the area he loves, and everything that he took for granted comes flooding back along with finding his beloved (deceased) pet is still running the fields – in memory or not, it doesn’t matter. He has everything he needs right there – he doesn’t need a heaven when he has these memories.
Of course, reading between the line I’d say that the person referred to at both the start and via the journey is Nigel himself, or someone very similar or close to him. Initially I wondered if it could have been about a senior relative, but the rather disparaging description in the first verse makes me think it’s more self-satirising humour on NBs part.
Whatever, the moral of the story is upbeat. Your memories will be everything you need when you die and remember to notice the beauty in the everyday things.
I never viewed it as a career closer for the band, and I hope it isn’t as HMHB have been the constant in my life since a teenager that always walks beside me, aside from when they are appearing on Junior Kickstart that is. To be honest, if they do ever do a planned ‘exit’ song, I suspect it would be something way more barnstorming and rock-driven and humorous. Nigel writes some amazingly poetic, lyrical songs from a raw-emotion perspective, but I can’t see them going out on a weepy or abstract/reflective one. They finish may gigs with songs like ‘Trumpton Riots’ or ‘AOR’ or ‘Bell Rings’ and I expect nothing less when they do decide to call it a day (hopefully several more albums before then though!)
Just my 2p
2 April 2022
COUNTY BASSOON
@Les (Comment #81) It’s amazing how we misremember the size of cars from our youth when we were smaller or where the designs made cars look bigger but I wouldn’t wince too much about the thought of the Viva (being big) overturning, not on the basis of it’s size anyway. In reality the Viva was a smaller car than a modern Ford Fiesta.
A very cool car (I always thought, loved the American styling) but not a big one!
2 April 2022
Third rate les
It’s a fair point, County Bassoon. I was half my current height when my mum had her Viva.
As you say, that American styling sticks in the memory!
2 April 2022
dr desperate
My personal views on Capitalisation:
(i) telepudlian Paul – yeah, fair enough (though I’m still more inclined to “tellypudlian”, as somebody who watches Liverpool on telly, as opposed to television);
(ii) dull Adele – I prefer the slightly Runyonesque quality of Dull Adele, though she’d have to appear more than once before we could tell if it is a nickname, rather than a simple description (cf Stringy Bob);
(iii) jack-by-the-hedge – unhelpfully, Chambers has “also with cap“. (Contrariwise, Jack-in-the-box has “also without cap“.)
(iv) Leasowe light – as the light itself would have appeared, I’m on-and-off with this one. Currently pro-minuscule, though this might imply heading towards the beam, recalling to mind the Moth Joke;
(v) Janet from Accounts – pro-majuscule, on the grounds that the alternative might confuse a stupid person.
4 April 2022
EXXO
1. We agree on the anti-capitalist stance then, but “tellypudlian” definitely isn’t what he says. That would have a long /i:/ sound (and would give the word a sillier feel).
2. As you say we would need further evidence before concluding that it’s a nickname, therefore surely best not capitalised – whereas in its context in NSD ‘stringy’ would serve no function unless it was a nickname, whereas here we do need a one syllable word before Adele for meter. The chances of Adele joining Pop-Tart Mark and Duff-Leg Bryn on a very exclusive list seem more than somewhat nil.
3. It seems to me this sort of thing is one of the slight downsides of the move towards usage-based linguistics. Yes, it’s this or sometimes that, but which of them follow the norms of what’s in line with which well-established rule and what looks best on paper?
4. Glad you see the light.
5. Looks out of place to me, but that’s all, which is why I didn’t nail it on the door this time.
4 April 2022
Incapability brown
Just a thought – there was a Chrysler sunbeam at the same era as the Viva – a truly shocking vehicle which my mum was forever taking to the garage. Which would link estates (cars and houses), and weather (sun breaks through). No need for a capital – it just puns.
5 April 2022
HGANAVAC
Will the bridge be the Commodores bridge just before the entrance to the Woodchurch?
12 April 2022
EXXO
Fairly certain it’s the railway underpass, because of “Over the Fender and …”
The Fender bridge is a few yards from the railway, underpass wouldn’t rhyme or scan, and anyway it’s quite a nice brick arch that is more like a bridge than an underpass.
12 April 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Will the bridge be the Commodores bridge…”
You mean it’s “once, twice, three times a footpath”?
12 April 2022
Janet from accounts
@Roof of the Barbican – “Your memories will be everything you need when you die” – is that lifted from anywhere, or are those your own words? I like that.
I’ve just read The Remains of the Day, and I was thinking about how much Stevens regrets how he spent his life, and how he missed out on what might have been, and how he seems to end the book intending to live differently for the remains of his own “day”. As we near death the balance tips from things we hope for in the future to memories of what has happened in the past. It would be nice to be able to convert as many hopes into good memories, before our time runs out.
I’d say there’s worse memories to have than of a good walk somewhere beautiful. Dog optional.
23 April 2022
Janet from accounts
Further to the above, I’ve just listened to this song again and it occurs to me that the singer asks us in the first verse to “give him dignity” which chimes with Stevens’ concerns in The Remains of the Day.
23 April 2022
Ferencváros fan
@Janet from Accounts:
Read The Remains of the Day in the mid-1990s, so not fresh in my mind, but the principal remains of the book in the memory bank are:
1. What a terrible case of missed opportunity between Stevens and Keaton.
2. Stevens putting in a full shift the evening his father died.
3. The aristocratic tw@t at the dinner party who put Stevens on the spot, just to show that his social class meant he was inferior, by asking him a series of complex questions about politics and the economy.
Thanks for reminding me what a damn good book it was.
23 April 2022
EvilGazebo
Probably just me but I’m hearing “I know I’m in Paradise for that’s how it seems”
25 April 2022
ds
Like quite a lot of this album, there’s a slightly downbeat, and if not nostalgic, certainly a “glancing over the shoulder” quality about this song. It does feel like these are the last moments of someone’s life, another person you half know who you might hear about any day of the week.
And yes, the dull stuff is there: the pub bore droning on about the football, and the constant thrum of Adele in the background, but for all the dull bits there’s the good stuff: the air, the light, the freedom, the fun stuff. This is the “life flashing before you” part, before the clouds open, and there’s the sunshine – the light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t the oncoming train this time.
It’s especially poignant coming after Slipping The Escort, which right now has a bit of personal pull for me. In recent years, there’s been a bit about the process of growing older, and the feeling that is fairly common to middle age of, “oh, are we here already?”. The word elegiac keeps getting bandied around, and I don’t think that’s wide of the mark.
27 April 2022
dr Desperate
True dat.
“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.” (Terry Pratchett)
27 April 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Notes from Paddy Shennan’s interview with NB10:
It’s not straightforwardly me banging on about the Wirral, particularly. Although it was perhaps inevitable that I was going to do one purely about walking around the Wirral, so yes and no would be the answer to that – which is not the answer you want! I’d have put more obscure footpaths and fields in if it was purely me, I think. I would have thought about the geographical things more. I didn’t particularly think that much about them.
It starts with a fella, not me particularly – though he might morph into me. There’s a fella going to work every single day, nine to five, he’s on the train, and when he gets to somewhere like, maybe, Moreton, Leasowe, or Birkenhead Park, there’s a fella he’s always seen around, just sitting on a bench on the platform, not going anywhere – a bit of a tramp, really – reading the Metro. And although it’s not in the song, he’s perhaps taking the Metro, or a few Metros, back to his flat for kindling (that’s what I do – take a few Metros from the bus to use for kindling in our fire at home!) Or using the Metro, if he’s living rough, as kindling to build a fire.
Our initial narrator sort of envies this bloke, because although he has had a somewhat desperate time of it recently (and maybe for most of his life), at least he’s not part of any rat race (which the INITIAL narrator is).
Then one morning he sees the fella is not sitting on the bench – he’s collapsed. This commuter, then, who’s on his way to work in an office, gets off the train – and at this point he thinks “Sod it, I’m not doing that again. I’m not going to do that job anymore; I just want to go for walks and do what I want to do”.
The bloke on the platform, then, that’s his part of the song gone – he’s either dead or he’s not, I don’t know. As Karen said on the forum, if he was dead you wouldn’t move him onto his side – but then there’s “he’s out of it now”, so he is dead! I can’t really explain all that! Ah, maybe at the time he was going to be moved onto his side there was a faint hope of reviving him – but then he died. I knew I’d get there in the end! I didn’t think too much about it at the time, if I’m being honest, I’m more with the fella on the train, who gets off the train to go and live his own life. But people are right, the Wilfred Owen thing comes in here with the line “Move him onto his side” because that’s from the opening line of his poem Futility – “Move him into the sun”.
The fella on the train, then, is not me, because I’ve never done the nine to five thing (I know it’s not obvious from the lyrics that there is a nine to five element, but that is what was in my head) – but he morphs into me, because I bring in our old dog, and the estate where I grew up.
Neil said to me recently “I didn’t know where you were coming from with his song, musically” – because it was all different bits (but while he was wondering where I was going at first, he was still playing a brilliant bass line from the start!) But I had it constructed and always knew that at the end I wanted strings. I know a bloke who used to be in the Philharmonic (the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, not the pub) – he played the timpani – and his daughter plays in it, so I thought “I could get strings here”, and that’s what I was planning. But then, me being me, once we got into the studio, I thought there’s all this hassle and faff, and Geoff (Davies) wasn’t there to do that sort of thing. I thought I’d just put a load of guitars on it. I was telling Chris the engineer about all this and asked him how much it would cost to get violins and cellos in – and he said “I’ve got a Mellotron!” He said “You give me the chords – what you’re playing at the end”, and so he set it up with the sound of cellos and violins on the Mellotron.
The “strings” come in at the start of the “Clouds part” line.
Telepudlian Paul – no way is it “telly” – is certainly with a capital “T” for me, because it’s his nickname. It also looks better – Telepudlian Paul – and to me a lot of things are about how they look. I even found out who came up with the word “telepudlian” – it was someone’s dad. He drinks in a pub near us – so I owe him a pint!
All the names (Paul, Claire Jenkins, Stuart Bell, Adele and Janet), are all made up. When I sing “dull Adele” – who’s not Adele the singer, and yes, I’ve gone with lower case for “dull” – I know it sounds like I’m singing “Edele”. But it is “Adele”.
I take a while to come up with names because of the way they have to flow with what’s coming next. And when I’m coming up with them I’m also thinking about singing them live – what’s going to be easier for me.
“Escape up onto Caldy Hill/The spirit of Olaf and, if you will…”
I reckon I become the narrator from around Caldy Hill onwards. As for Olaf – it’s not Olaf Guthfrithson, but Olaf Stapledon. He wrote the opening chapter of his book Star Maker on Caldy Hill. He used to go there to look at the night sky – and that’s where his epic masterpiece came from.
Pirx The Purist wrote: “The song is a joyous celebration of place and of one’s place in it.”
Yes, I’d go with that.
Chris From Future Doom wondered aloud about the gestation period of a song like this – “Several years, I would hazard. Also, a fantasy question for an interview with the great man that will never happen.”
Not years, no. Only months. No longer, particularly, than any of the others. And I probably just wanted to get the “Oblong of Dreams” phrase in! I got it from our guitarist Karl Benson in around 2015 I’d guess, but he’s got no memory of that or where he first heard the phrase. Karl – who lives in St Helens these days but comes from Pensby – may have even thought of it himself but not given himself credit.
He has been with us for a while now, and I’m sure everyone who has seen us since he joined will have been impressed by his playing. His backing vocals, allied to Neil’s, are also always welcomed by me – while some of our cover versions have been inspired by the sets played by his band The Band-Its.
Many listeners have feared Oblong Of Dreams, due to the very nature of it, could be your swansong – your epic farewell.
No, no. But, then, I could never answer that kind of question properly – because when you come out of a studio after finishing an album you think “I won’t be writing any more songs now, surely. That’s going to be it”. If I’d fallen off my bike and died, just before I died I would have thought “That’s a nice one to go out on”. I purposely put it as the last song on the album in case things like that happen, so I can say “That is our final song”. But in the last few days – and even on the way here – I’ve been writing. I can understand people saying they think it could be our swansong but I don’t think that.
I think Neil’s backing vocals on the song are really good. And the reaction to the song has been satisfying because I did wonder about that – but I thought “Sod it” anyway, basically because I wanted to document these things. It’s the same with the bat walk one (Renfield’s Afoot, on the previous album) – I know it’s throwaway, but it still needs to be documented.
Batwalker: “I wonder whether the fact ‘the Leasowe Light along Lingham Lane’ echoes the alliterative pattern of William Barnes’s famous ‘do lean down low in Linden Lea’ was a deliberate allusion, or just a happy coincidence.”
It’s a happy coincidence, but, weirdly, I do like William Barnes. No is the answer, but I do like him.
“And as creation thus uncorks/I cross the field where she still walks/Stay, sit, this is it/And up by the school/There will be daffodils”.
The “Stay, sit” does allude to our old dog – but I suppose it could also refer to a person. We used to cut through that bit where the daffodils are – a specific place on Duck Pond Lane by the school. What hasn’t been pointed out is that it’s the school I went to – St Saviour’s (it’s on Holm Lane, but kind of backs onto Duck Pond Lane) – and it was one of my greatest memories, because I loved primary school. We had a great view of the Welsh Hills. The photograph on the inner sleeve of the album is the view taken from the daffodils on that field.
The bit “…this is it” is saying “This is what it’s all about”.
Singer’s Painting wrote: “I’m in no doubt that the character in the first verse is dead and the remainder of the song is that character’s spirit taking a last journey around their home turf, their stomping ground. One last look around the ol’ place and all its charms and then…well, then off to the great hereafter.”
I quite like that idea but I never thought that when I was writing it.
S wrote: “Just listening to ‘Oblong’ and ‘Clouds part, show time’ made me think of John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Lights out, sack time’ on ’36 Hours’. Just me, then?”
If I was inspired by that, it was purely subconsciously. Obviously, John Cooper Clarke is magnificent and I know the song, though I’ve not heard it for years.
By the way, people give me too much credit for my botanical knowledge. Orange-tipped butterflies and all that? I had to research what would be about in early Spring. I do know that Greater Knapweed and Mugwort (which appear in Rogation Sunday) are plants, though, and not trees. I’m not a botanical expert in any way is what I’m saying I suppose.
4 May 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Fitting that Nigel says that if he echoed “Lights out, sack time” from John Cooper Clarke, he did it unconsciously. That’s exactly what JCC said about the much closer resemblence of “Evidently Chickentown” to a WW2 officer’s poem “Bloody Orkney” (there’s also another version, “Fucking Halkirk”.) He claimed he wasnt consciously aware of the original, but conceded he must have heard it as a child and had it stored it away somewhere.
4 May 2022
dr Desperate
I’ve also heard Dr JCC claim that the WW2 poem was “stuck in fuckin’ Aldershot”, which would fit with the scansion of ‘Evidently Chickentown’. (And Dylan couldn’t sue for ‘Obviously 5 Believers’, obvs.)
5 May 2022
toml
I envisage this song as an encounter between different emanations of the songwriter’s musical career- alter egos really, with older versions of the emasculated, downtrodden office worker of ‘Everything’s AOR’ and the lost sheep of, say, ‘Floreat Inertia’, then morphing in an almost dialectical way into the narrator of ‘Tyrolean Knockabout’ finding redemption through communion with his local environment. That’s what seems to give it its satisfying sense of finality, of closing the story arcs in which the writer imagines a number of alternative futures for himself, representing postindustrial working class masculinity unmoored from its anchorings (‘Turned up…’), deferred adulthood (‘Dukla Prague’), purposelessness (‘Surging out of Convalescence’) to finding a reason for existence- it really does seem to be a career summation.
7 May 2022
Paddy Macaroon
I’m just going to say it. This is the best song they’ve ever written. My friend and I had figured out a back story to the opening that turned out, on reading that interview, to be a bit fanciful (involving overdose and possibly recovering, possibly-going-towards-the-light figurative redemption) – but I think that caught the essence of it: a grim event in reality, leading to an extended spiritual journey to and through the places of your childhood spotlit by those eternal sunbeams. This one is pure poetry and should be played as a way of conclusively shutting up anyone who thinks they’re ‘just’ a funny band.
7 May 2022
WINE-MADDENED PENTHEUS
I can definitely pick up an ‘f’ at the start of ‘For that’s how it seems’ rather than ‘Or’.
Superb song.
3 July 2022
Schoon
+1 for ‘For that’s how it seems’.
5 July 2022
dr Desperate
No eff in ‘For’.
5 July 2022
Quality janitor
With the week off work, a desire to get out and about and this song in my head I have just decided I need to walk the Oblong of Dreams.
My knowledge of the area is nil though, so only have the routes and comments above to go on. Looking at Dr D’s route on streetview the way up to the lighthouse seems to be mostly road and whilst I could walk all that I fancy taking in some of the coastal path in JOR’s v2 route too, but think I could be biting off rather more than I can chew here. So I was wondering if there’s a nifty place to park the car somewhere that I can circle back to and still take in all of the sights in the right order.
Of course, if anyone also has the time on their hands and fancies showing me around that would be lovely, and I could try to return the favour somewhat if you are coming to the Birmingham gig next month, though I doubt very much I could conjure up an 8 hour extravaganza (as the Commonwealth Games marathon route planners appeared to agree with, getting out of the city pretty much as fast as possible).
22 August 2022
dr desperate
I wouldn’t go by my Google Maps route, @QJ, JoR’s is far more likely.
22 August 2022
EXXO
As an exile who knows nearly all the field paths but not so many of the car parks, I’ll have a think after work and post some advice later QJ. Maybe you could park up 4 or 5 times and do a circular walk each time to get the highlights? 4 circles of 1 mile or so and one circle of 2 miles?
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Thanks chaps.
Ah, OK Dr D, I’ll look more closely at JOR’s then. Ooh, there’s a 3D flyview button.
And yes, very good idea that Exxo. Would probably be a lot safer too as I don’t do that mobile internet thing so would be relying on old tech to follow the route.
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Pah, no free 3d flyview though.
Was just browsing through the comments and I thought I’d look for the interview where NB mentions his dog (Exxo’s post 100 above). Couldn’t find it but a search here gave https://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/theyre-gonna-be-unveiling-some-new-material/cambridge-junction-cambridge-gig-9th-june-2016/ and post 22, which says it was 22nd August 2015. 7 years ago today.
If you’re reading this NSD anniversary commiserations NB.
22 August 2022
EXXO
Think the interview version was in a TRFC fanzine? Or maybe I’ve just remembered it from the gig, or even the gig review.
Anyway, about your walk. You say you use old tech. I can relate. Have you go a printer, if I send you 5 maps of the short walks from 5 parking places (two beauty spot car parks, two easy street parkings, and a supermarket car park (2 hours maximum stay)?
22 August 2022
quality janitor
That would be splendid. I have got a printer but naturally the last time i came to use it the ink had dried up, which I’m afraid is how it remains. I can sort something out, or just make some good old fashioned handwritten notes.
Do you need me to give you my email address? CtSO if you see this feel free to pass it on to Exxo.
22 August 2022
EXXO
In fact I posted a link to a form in the quiz thread last week – 16 August – which has my email address at the end. Can you find it?
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Indeed I can. Email incoming.
Reminds me I’ve never tried the quiz. Must do before Brum.
22 August 2022
quality janitor
Big thanks to Exxo for sending me scanned maps with notes on how to break down this walk into 5 chunks. I was going to plan it out some more and go tomorrow, but yesterday morning I woke up early and just went for it.
It was a long day and boy did I clock up some miles, but that was more down to my slapdash navigation than anything else.
What a lovely part of the world. OK, I’m from Birmingham so am easily pleased, but still, I can see why this song had to be written.
24 August 2022
Mark Embery
Having lived on the Wirral since 1985 I must say how much I love this track.
So many local references that make me smile as I listen to it.
Let’s hope this not the end of HMHB – we need their wit, humour and incisive observations on life. Far too many anally focussed artists these days – this band tell it as it is with managed rage but most important of all, with a smile. Life is too short to be serious.
24 August 2022
EXXO
Glad you enjoyed the day, QJ and thanks for the detailed report by email, which will I use to make adjustments (and a less scribbly version) if my ‘Wainwright’s Wirral Walks” are ever requested again. Like NB I’m very proud of the Oblong’s charms, though the song would also not be what it is if it didn’t contain quite a lot of urban “could be anywhere” as well as the unique vistas of estuary, islands and hills. I sensed that you were itching to set off to the Oblong at any moment, hence my haste and the scribble. I was particularly pleased that you encountered an edgy teenage gang towards the end of the walk – I had tried to map in that possibility. Sounds like none them had Scalextric or Subbuteo in the loft.
25 August 2022
quality janitor
For me the could be anywhere places increase in interest with their obscurity. The scenery is lovely and I’m certainly glad I’ve seen it, but honestly what generated the biggest smile was at the end of a long day, dead on my legs and fighting the urge to just get in the car and go home finding a footbridge and a railway underpass at the edge of a housing estate that looks just like any other.
The edgy teenagers hanging around I guess scarpered when they saw the look on this greying, hobbling goon’s mush.
25 August 2022
quality janitor
Around 37 minutes in on Gardeners’ World 2022 episode 25 (9th September) they show a Jack-by-the-hedge and an Orange-tip butterfly.
Screenshot here.
19 September 2022
dr desperate
Interesting to see that GW recommend jack-by-the-hedge (Alliaria petiolata) to attract orange-tips, @QJ. This nature blogger agrees (referring to it as hedge garlic), also including red campion (Selene dioica) but not speedwell (Veronica spp).
https://www.kiri.uk/nature-photo-blog/planting-for-orange-tip-butterflies
20 September 2022
EXXO
So yes, if you’re wondering after last night’s terrible midnight attempted mass murder, the pub name in question probably does refer to the Leasowe light. New Brighton lighthouse is closer but I suppose it was all about the view down Green Lane.
25 December 2022
Unremarkable mark
The line about “crossing the field where she still walks” absolutely kills me. Hits me where it hurts. My favourite HMHB song.
19 January 2023
dr desperate
Spring has already sprung across the Sea, today being the day that Imbolc is celebrated. We have to wait until 20 March.
(Also Groundhog Day today – it seems to come around more quickly every year, doesn’t it?)
2 February 2023
EXXO
There won’t be daffodils yonder on my north-facing, wooded ridge for at least another 4 or 5 weeks. Which, to blur adjacent song themes, makes today’s decision easier, because the days we feared are here and we have to decide where the field that he still walks will be. Or maybe he can still walk in two places at once. Anyway, fetch my spade and don’t come into the garden yet, Maud.
2 February 2023
Ferencváros fan
Condolences @Exxo if I have interpreted your post correctly.
2 February 2023
EXXO
Sorry yes, a self-indulgent, sentimental post and just to be clear, it referred to the decision as to where we will bury the dog tomorrow. And after late votes from the Blackpool jury, the field where he still walks will be the one behind his holiday home in Norbreck, though he will forever walk here on Woodhouse Ridge too.
I’m OK and Maud is in fewer bits than I expected.
2 February 2023
Haeb
R.I.P Exxo’s Doggy…
2 February 2023
Ferencváros fan
@Exxo your last and probably greatest favour to your dog. Been a dog owner since 1997 so it’s an all-too-familiar experience. Hope it helps to share it here with the Biscuit family. Best, G
2 February 2023
Phyllis Triggs
Hear, hear to that, George. Condolences to you Exxo, and especially to Mrs Exxo.
2 February 2023
dr desperate
Sincere condolences. We can see the resting place of our West Highland Terrier (q v) when we switch the kitchen light off.
2 February 2023
Paul F
Sorry to hear that Exxo. We were very late to the joys of dogs, and our first, a retired greyhound, is nearly 13 and showing signs of decline. Not looking forward to that day.
3 February 2023
EXXO
Aw thanks for all the kind words, folks. Proper sense of online community. Likes and hearts all over the shop.
3 February 2023
BOBBY SVARC
Only had one dog, Reg, had him for 13 years until 2002 when cancer finished him off. Without a doubt one of the saddest days of my life.
3 February 2023
BAD LOSER
Commiserations to the Exxo Clan. I have never owned my own dog but welcomed one into the family when I met my wife. She was with us three years after that but lost her without warning. Instead of boarding a plane that Saturday morning, I was taking a distressed dog to the vet for what was to be her last journey.I was shocked at how upset I was and my wife hid away for days. Recently, after 10 years, the dog bed was thrown away. We will own another one day when we have enough time to look after one properly. I will fear that day coming round again.
I am surprised that she holds it together during this lyric. I have found a site that prints t-shirts that resembles a CD display of Artist and song with space for a few lines of lyrics. I racked my brain for which lyric I would choose from all the great options available. This one won.
3 February 2023
Borough surveYor
Gladdened by the softness of these mens steel hearts in these comments.
Cats on the other hand…
3 February 2023
featureless tv producer steve
Many condolences, Exxo. Had a great little friend myself from 1997-2010, and I miss him as much today as I did then. Haven’t been able to pull the trigger on “replacing” him yet. Maybe someday.
3 February 2023
transit full of keith
Very sorry to hear that Exxo. I’ve never been much of a dog person myself, but having met yours once (in a very good pub near Lime Street Station, the name of which escapes me) he seemed a lovely, gentle soul. Also bloody massive, if I remember correctly.
3 February 2023
Lux inferior
Adding my condolences to the many others above, Exxo.
3 February 2023
EXXO
Once again many thanks for the kind words. It was the Ship and Mitre on Dale Street Keith. He was a large medium, but I think he’d put on a bit of weight at my mum & dad’s (rather than in the boozer). I’m sincerely embarrassed to have taken over the thread though so let’s let sleeping dogs lie.
6 February 2023
IRISH NIALL
So I’ve been learning the words of Oblong of Dreams as a bit of a project. It’s the 10 year olds favourite song on TVY and I want to get him back practicing on the drums. Meanwhile I’ve been learning it on guitar* as well as the vocals. I have found this discussion and Paddys interview most helpful as I obviously don’t know the places referred to. But this has all helped construct a mind-map of sorts to quite literally walk me through a wordy enough song with some helpful prompts.
Didn’t realise Claire Jenkins and Stuart Bell were fictional. I’d not heard of them but I kind of assumed they shared an agent with Paul Ross maybe?
I’m making it a mission to do this walk or as close to practically/safely possible next time they play Liverpool-ish.
*My left index finger, which is nowhere near 9 inches long, some time ago was blighted by a ganglion cyst which having been excised (the week the world shut down in 2020), became an non-healing re-opening wound, which in turn became infected, went borderline-gangrenous septic, toss of a coin on whether to amputate or try and save it …yadda yadda.
Long story short it’s no show-pony any more on the guitar front -and I wasn’t exactly Hendrix to begin with so didn’t have the margin of capacity to give away. But I thought I was cheating using a capo on the 2nd fret to facilitate playing much easier open Em chords rather than barred F#m but have just realised that’s exactly what Nigel does anyway. https://youtu.be/ThI0Eo7nVNo?t=90
Along with CtSO and others on here I was standing only a few feet behind the person (Phil from Portsmouth) who made this video and didn’t notice the capo going on at the time.
Anyway some of us make a cameo just before I Fought the Law.
1 June 2023
Irish niall
Just did the cliff-top walk up the west end of Kilkee at the peak of which near Dunlicky you can see Kerrys Dingle peninsula to the south and Galways Aran Islands and Connemara to the north. But in field in the nearer distance we noticed someone doing handbrake turns in a van. Creating a perfect proud papa moment the 11 year old was heard quip
“…maybe it’s Robbo”
24 July 2023
Jules
Just popping in to say this song has what I believe the youth of today would call Big Wandering Off Into The Wilderness To Die Energy, or something of the sort. Nearly moved me to tears.
17 August 2023
Problem Chimp
Love this song, just beautiful.
Still stuck on the oblong…. Is it the shape of the walk, The Wirral, a football pitch or a grave?
14 September 2023
Transit full of Keith
A nickname for the Wirral (which Nigel mentioned he’d heard from Karl, I think.)
15 September 2023
EXXO
Yes, as Nigel says in comment 161 above,
“I probably just wanted to get the “Oblong of Dreams” phrase in! I got it from our guitarist Karl Benson in around 2015 I’d guess, but he’s got no memory of that or where he first heard the phrase. Karl – who lives in St Helens these days but comes from Pensby – may have even thought of it himself but not given himself credit.”
I remember another acquaintance of Nigel’s, a local wit, using the phrase in an online thread, FB I suppose, around 2013-14, which was the first time I’d seen it personally, and I seem to remember it was a thread that riffed on real former Borough Council epithets like “The Leisure Peninsula.” I seem to remember that this was before the appearance of “Eintracht Oblong” as a thing on the 2014 album, but I have no proof of that vague recollection.
15 September 2023
Fred titmus
Limbo lane is a curious one, it has been used as a trap road on maps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwjRbKvObns
20 October 2023