Pure And Simple, Thank You For The Days

I certainly don't follow the pop charts much these days but up until my mid twenties I did, with a two year break, you can guess when!

Thanks to the magic of radio and a lot of motoring in the late summer of 89, I quickly became re - aquainted. The songs above and below bring tears to my eyes, now, as I write this, some thirty years on from that summer when I left Farnborough Abbey. 

Actually while we're thinking about the late great Kirsty MacColl there's a song she wrote that seems highly appropriate for The Charade Behind The Facade!

There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis

Kirsty MacColl

Oh darling, why'd you talk so fast?
Another evening just flew past tonight
And now the daybreak's coming in
And I can't win and it ain't right

You tell me all you've done and seen
And all the places you have been without me
Well, I don't really want to know
But I'll stay quiet and then I'll go
And you won't have no cause to think about me

There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you

Oh darling, you're so popular
You were the best thing new in Hicksville
With your mohair suits and foreign shoes
News is you changed your pick-up for a Seville

And now I'm lying here alone
'Cause you're out there on the phone
To some star in New York
I can hear you laughing now
And I can't help feeling that somehow
You don't mean anything you say at all

There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you

There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
Just like you swore to me that you'd be true
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you

I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
I said he's a liar and I'm not sure about you
He's a liar and I'm not sure about you

As I was saying earlier, I spent many hours in the driving seat traversing the highways and byways of Great Britain as Cuthbert and I had planned such a holiday together before the brown smelly stuff late encounter with a pressure ventilating device! Still intent on my holiday I set off solo staying with friends old and new, the new being friends of Cuthbert in Tyne & Wear and touring places I'd been wishing to visit, including other monastic ruins Kirkstall and Fountains.

Kirkstall

Fountains

Later in the year I found myself working in an office in Halstead, Essex. Shortly after arrival in the morning the ancient CofE church of St. Andrew clock would strike 9 and the sound brought back to mind processing into choir for the Sunday conventual Mass at Farnborough.