Promenade

Release Date

Mar 1994

Promenade is the third studio album and features: Tonight We Fly and The Summerhouse.

Bath "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away; They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day." Rub-a-dub-dub It's time for a scrub So through clouds of steam To a cracked and faded cream bath-tub Wanders frail Aphrodite, So pale, pink and white She is naked as sin Wearing nothing but a grin And a pin in her hair Will she be drowned? Found with her hair tied behind Shoulders back and head inclined To the sound of music playing above Bathing her in love The darkness and fear will disappear like the soap When she opens her eyes She throws back the dormer windows Morning light shows Ophelia raised from her watery grave In a brave new world

Going Downhill Fast One butterfly spies a glint in his eye The birds sing as he cycles by Oh, why should he feel sad This world ain't so bad and besides Woe betide he who would frown When natural beauty abounds And now, with wheels spinning free He's picking up speed Two butterflies tie knots in his stomach They love it when he goes too fast The wind whistles past Vast oceans of air that will mess up his hair Though he no longer cares anymore For over-indulgence in vanities vacuous vice Just once or twice, thrice Four times in five we forget we're alive And neglect to remind ourselves Wait, wait for me Oh great Mercury! As late as you may be Will you wait for me? Three butterflies realise when it's time to depart They have tickled his ribs They have fluttered his heart But the starting is easy compared to the stop And the bottom is hard when compared to the top

The Booklovers "This book deals with epiphenomenalism, which has to do with consciousness as a mere accessory of physiological processes whose presence or absence... makes no difference... whatever are you doing?" Aphra Benn: Hello Cervantes: Donkey Daniel Defoe: To christen the day! Samuel Richardson: Hello Henry Fielding: Tittle-tattle Tittle-tattle... Lawrence Sterne: Hello Mary Wolstencraft: Vindicated! Jane Austen: Here I am! Sir Walter Scott: We're all doomed! Leo Tolstoy: Yes! Honoré de Balzac: Oui... Edgar Allen Poe: Aaaarrrggghhhh! Charlotte Brontë: Hello... Emily Brontë: Hello... Anne Brontë: Hellooo..? Nikolai Gogol: Vas chi Gustav Flaubert: Oui William Makepeace Thackeray: Call me 'William Makepeace Thackeray' Nathaniel Hawthorne: The letter 'A' Herman Melville: Ahoy there! Charles Dickens: London is so beautiful this time of year... Anthony Trollope: good-good-good-good evening! Fyodor Dostoevsky: Here come the sleepers... Mark Twain: I can't even spell 'Mississippi'! George Eliot: George reads German Emile Zola: J'accuse Henry James: Howdy Miss Wharton! Thomas Hardy: Ooo-arrr! Joseph Conrad: I'm a bloody boring writer... Katherine Mansfield: (cough cough) Edith Wharton: Well hello, Mr James! DH Lawrence: Never heard of it EM Forster: Never heard of it! Happy the man, and happy he alone Who in all honesty can call today his own; He who has life and strength enough to say 'Yesterday's dead and gone - I want to live today' James Joyce: Hello there! Virginia Woolf: I'm losing my mind! Marcel Proust: Je me'en souviens plus F Scott Fitzgerald: baa bababa baa Ernest Hemingway: I forgot the.... Hermann Hesse: Oh es ist alle so häßlich Evelyn Waugh: Whoooaarr! William Faulkner: Tu connait William Faulkner? Anaïs Nin: The strand of pearls Ford Maddox Ford: Any colour, as long as it's black! Jean-Paul Sartre: Let's go to the dome, Simone! Simone de Beauvoir: C'est exact present Albert Camus: The beach... the beach Franz Kafka: WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! Thomas Mann: Mam Graham Greene: Call me 'pinky', lovely Jack Kerouac: Me car's broken down... William S Burroughs: Wowwww! Happy the man, and happy he alone Who in all honesty can call today his own; He who has life and strength enough to say 'Yesterday's dead and gone - I want to live today' Kingsley Amis: (cough) Doris Lessing: I hate men! Vladimir Nabokov: Hello, little girl... William Golding: Achtung Busby! JG Ballard: Instrument binnacle Richard Brautigan: How are you doing? Milan Kundera: I don't do interviews Ivy Compton Burnett: Hello... Paul Theroux: Have a nice day! Günter Grass: I've found snails! Gore Vidal: Oh, it makes me mad! John Updike: Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run... Kazuro Ishiguro: Ah so, old chap! Malcolm Bradbury: stroke John Steinbeck, stroke JD Salinger Iain Banks: Too orangey for crows! AS Byatt: Nine tenths of the law, you know... Martin Amis: (burp) Brett Easton Ellis: Aaaaarrrggghhh! Umberto Eco: I don't understand this either... Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Mi casa es su casa Roddy Doyle: ha ha ha! Salman Rushdie: Names will live forever...

A Seafood Song "Who'll have the fishy on the little dishy? Who will have the fishy when the boat comes..." And then he says... "With our glasses both raised in a toast Let's sing for those in peril on the sea Who cater ceaselessly to my every wish With every fish as fresh as fish can be you see I'm into my oysters, my king prawns and caviar And no matter how far away they are I'll be there!" And then she says... "Now with our glasses both raised in this toast Let's sing for those in peril on the sea Who labour tirelessly in their tiny boats off John O' Groats Their socks soaked for me, you see I do like my lobster, my hake, skate and rainbow trout And if there's a fishy smell about I'll be there!" And then, and then we'll sing For those in peril on the sea Don't be frightened, don't be scared Chop off their heads and little legs Then peel away the shell and open up your senses to the smell The sound and colour, touch and taste Of crab, cod, clams and kippers Scampi, squid, sole, shark and scallop Winkles, whelks, whale and whiting Seaweed, swordfish, sardines and sea urchin Haddock, halibut, herrings and eel Cockles, mussels, mackerel and veal Pilchard, plankton, St Peter's fish and plaice Octopuss, jellyfish and dolphin's an aquired taste "Who will have the fishy on the little dishy? I will have the fishy when the boat comes in"

Geronimo While they have been eating the rain has started falling Gradually gathering in strength What began a drizzle has now become torrential And doesn't look like coming to an end The two bedraggled figures that huddle in the doorway With nothing vaguely waterproof to wear Are now secretly wishing they'd listened to their mothers When being told to always be prepared Screaming 'Geronimo!', they run for it down the road With an arm around her waist, he leads her to a place he knows Soaked through but happy, they squelch up to the landing The room before them makes a welcome sight The coal fire is throwing strange shapes upon the hearthrug And crying out to be knelt down beside She pulls off her jumper and flings it in the corner He picks it up and hangs it on a chair She puts on a record and sings into her coffee He puts a blanket round her, sits her down and dries her beautiful hair

Don't Look Down Birds and planes go through the rainbow everyday Though you simply refuse Old-fashioned Ferris Wheels are no big deal They're just big wheels with chairs So don't be scared, set yourself free She tells me it's all right to open up my eyes She holds onto my hand and the clouds float by The couple in the car below, they wave to us and say hello I think they understand the way we're feeling I don't need to say 'I love you' When we're floating so far up above Everyone else's lives are intertwined with yours and mine I hope they find the joy that we have found She tells me it's alright to open up my eyes She holds onto my hand and the clouds race by The couple in the car above, well I suppose they think that we're in love I think they might be right And without warning when we're almost at the top The wheel that turns us all comes to a sudden stop The wind that's blown us dies a quick and painless death The air gets clammy and we hold each other's breath We get the feeling that we're not alone in this And then a God who really ought not to exist Sticks out a great big hand and grabs me by the wrist And asks me "why?" and I say "Well God, it's like this It may be arrogance or just appalling taste But I'd rather use my pain than let it all go to waste On some old god who tells me what I want to hear As if I cannot tell obedience from fear I want to take my pleasures where and how I will Be they disgraceful or distasteful or distilled And to be frank I find that life has more appeal Without a driver who's asleep behind the wheel" Then God decides that he has taken quite enough Of all this atheistic tosh I'm spouting off And so he calls upon his favourite angel choir To sing of times when men were filled with christian fire But over-zealous angels flap their wings too fast And cause the wind to blow and turn the wheel at last And soon my feet are safely back on solid ground And then I hear a voice say "Don't look down!"

When The Lights Go Out All Over Europe Twilight turns from amethyst to deep and deeper blue We've got an hour or two before it's time to go Let's go see a movie show Jeanne can't choose between the two 'Cos Jules is hip and Jim is cool And so they live together With the trees and birds And little girls Who play upon poor Jean-Claude's nerves Till finally he strokes Claire's knee And when she asks of his ambition, Jean-Pierre replies "My mission is to become eternal and to die..." Heaven knows the reason why When the lights go out all over Europe I forget about old Hollywood, 'Cause Doris Day could never make me cheer up Quite the way those French girls always could Jean Seberg: Et puisque je suis mechante avec toi c'est la preuve que je ne suis pas amoureuse de toi Jean Paul Belmondo: On dit qu'il n'y a pas d'amour heureux Jean Seberg: Si je t'aimais... oh c'est trop complicé Jean Paul Belmondo: Au contraire, il n'y a pas d'amour malheureux Jean Seberg: Je veux que les gens s'occupant pas de moi et puis je suis independente... Peut etre que tu m'aimes? Jean Paul Belmondo: C'est ce que lu crois, mais tu ne l'ai pas Jean Seberg: C'est pour ca que je t'ai denonce Jean Paul Belmondo: Je te suis superieur Jean Seberg: Maintenant tu es force de partir Jean Paul Belmondo: Tu es single, c'est lamentable comme raisonnment... When the lights go out all over Europe I forget about old MGM 'Cause Paramount was never Universal And Warners went out way back When those lights go out all over Europe I forget about old Hollywood 'Cause Doris Day could never make me cheer up Quite the way those French girls always could

The Summerhouse Do you remember the way it used to be June to September in a cottage by the sea Distant cousins, local kids We climbed every tree together And it never ever rained Till we climbed back on the train That would take us so far away From the village and the bay And the summerhouse Where we found new games to play Do you remember Sunday lunch on the lawn Daring escapes at midnight And costumeless bathes at dawn You were only nine years old And I was barely ten It's kind of weird to be back here again Do you remember The summerhouse...?

Neptune's Daughter When the last course has been consumed They withdraw to the drawing room Where the Schubert she plays with style Keeps her friends happy for the while But the memories are a burden, So she draws back both the curtains Stepping out into the night As the glow from the house recedes And their voices blend with the breeze She is free to be who she will Free to skip barefoot down the hill Maybe she is Neptune's daughter For she's drawn towards the water Stepping out into the night The water cold against her skin Conceals a multitude of sins And laughing like a little girl She enters an enchanted world Where seaweed girls with silver tails Play games upon the backs of whales They want her to come home with them They grab her legs and drag her Down again, down again Into the sea he strides and takes her in his arms And he carries her back to shore

A Drinking Song Back at the house a bottle is found And opened in honour of those who have drowned While we who have not are stricken with guilt And dutifully see that not one drop is spilt We're drinking to life, we're drinking to death We're drinking till none of our livers are left We're wending our way down to the spirit store We'll drink till we just can't drink anymore Raise your glasses high Drink the cellar dry Well, bloody my nose and blacken my eye If it ain't some young Turk in search of a fight And chanticleer's chest is sagging with pride For honour has yet to be satisfied Well, heaven be thanked we live in an age When no man need bother except on the stage With 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' And definitely not tonight I can still remember when I was just a kid I was free to do what I wanted to but I never, ever did So now with years of discretion reached May we not forget - Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité For there's life in the Old World yet! There'll always be an England An Ireland and a France A Liechtenstein and Finland And we have only one chance Earnest young man with an unhealthy tan Puts a drink in my hand and says, "I understand You're in search of the place to continue the chase Of the heavenly taste, I suggest in that case You all come with me to my place by the sea Where the glasses shall be overflowing with free Alcoholic delights (and free love if you like) For what point has this life if you can't realise your dreams?" Oh, raise your glasses high And drink the town dry We'll drink beyond the boundaries of sense We'll drink till we start to see lovely pink elephants Inside our heads, inside our beds Inside the threads of our pyjama legs So don't shoot til you see the reds of our eyes And an army of elephants marching behind From the day I was born till the night I will die All my lovers will be pink and elephantine

Ten Seconds To Midnight 10 Apes turn into men And grapes turn into wine How we made it to 9 I'll never know 8 Man looks for a mate But fate plays cruel tricks And 7 turns to 6 Still he's alone Along comes number 5 Eureka, I'm alive I think, there 4, I am a lucky man 3 From this balcony The 2 of us can see The house where we first met 1 wet Sunday

Tonight We Fly Tonight we fly Over the houses the streets and the trees Over the dogs down below They'll bark at our shadows As we float by on the breeze Tonight we fly Over the chimney tops, skylights and slates Looking into all your lives And wondering why happiness is so hard to find Over the doctor, over the soldier Over the farmer, over the poacher Over the preacher, over the gambler Over the teacher Over the rambler, over the lawyer Over the dancer, over the voyeur Over the builder and the destroyer Over the hills and far away Tonight we fly Over the mountains, the beach and the sea Over the friends that we've known And those that we now know And those who we've yet to meet And when we die Oh, will we be that disappointed or sad? If heaven doesn't exist what will we have missed? This life is the best we've ever had

Ode To The Man (Unlisted) "Happy the man, and happy he alone He, who can call today his own He who, secure within, can say Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today."