1. |
Six Inches of Water
03:26
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Six Inches of Water
Coming home with a face so dirty,
your mother wouldn’t know you.
All week catching steel in the wind,
with the shipyard below you.
When Friday comes and my bones are sore,
I join the queue down at Templemore -
we get the chance to be as clean
as the day we were born.
‘Cause I live by the sweat of my brow,
like my father did before me.
He said, ‘son – you have to look your best,
or the world will just ignore ye’.
Just when you think you’re going to lose all hope,
you get a towel and a bar of soap,
lay back and let the working week
go down the drain.
CHORUS:
We get the same six inches of water -
the same six inches of water.
All the workers and the kings and queens,
they go in dirty and they come out clean.
We get the same six inches of water.
There’s a girl on McMaster Street -
we’re nearly going steady.
I clean the dirt from my fingernails,
and get my shoes ready.
I hear the hammers ringing in my dreams,
but I let it all go up in steam,
start thinking about the way we’re going to look
on the dancefloor
CHORUS (2)
We get the same six inches of water -
the same six inches of water.
We won’t care if we’re rich or not,
some like it cold, some like it hot.
We get the same six inches of water.
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2. |
Greenway Song
04:59
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Greenway Song
When you lose the things you love too soon,
you can howl like a dog at a backyard moon.
You’ve wished on every star in the zodiac,
And they said they’ll have to call you back.
When you’ve had about enough of that brick and stone,
and you want some time just to be alone;
when you can’t break the ice on anything,
I say: you must believe in spring.
CHORUS:
It guides my feet and it makes me sing.
I’m the Prince of every blooming thing.
On the day my heart’s just a broken bone,
I’ll let the Greenway bring me home…
From the Musgrave Channel up to Orangefield,
these rivers put their shoulders to the wheel.
To make rope and linen, and whiskey too -
and parachutes for World War Two
CHORUS
People come together if you give them room -
these waters join like a bride and groom.
I want to hold on tight to every friend:
You can’t take one river out of the other again.
The heron was in my dreams last night -
a skinny old ghost in grey and white.
This city needs that kind of bird,
who listens and never says a word.
CHORUS
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3. |
1974
04:28
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1974
I broke my arm in a bombscare,
Running from a bang that wasn’t even there.
This big fat woman stopped and looked around,
and I bounced off her and I hit the ground.
I spent that Christmas with my arm in a sling,
- an angry little turkey with a broken wing.
The device turned out to be a cardboard box -
I nearly wished the bloody thing had gone off.
When the Workers Council put out the lights,
we sat in the shadows on a Saturday night,
in the same seats, round the dead TV,
my mother and my father and my little brother and me -
and we cursed Sunningdale, and Stormont too -
for stealing our right to watch Doctor Who.
(when you’re young, you don’t know what it means,
the house full of candles and Heinz Baked Beans)
CHORUS:
Oh this was in 1974,
with the clowns and the crooks
and the Christian Soldiers,
marching as to war -
marching as to war.
My mother saved pennies in a big glass jar,
like a woman getting ready for a Civil War.
We went down to Central and she caught the train,
with two little boys she could barely contain.
In Barry’s Portrush, we forgot about God -
nobody was Catholic and no-one was Prod.
There’s only one religion in amusement halls -
you walk in with dreams, and walk out with damn all.
CHORUS
Fried sugar and diesel smoke,
broken glass and lukewarm Coke.
A big top in a muddy field,
a beautiful girl hangs by her heels.
From a high wire, she watches the crowds
- the city’s closed minds and open mouths,
eating candy floss on the wild frontier
- she can’t wait to be gone from here.
CHORUS
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4. |
Curtain Call
02:43
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A Curtain Call
(i.m. Sam McCready)
Ladies and gentlemen,
let’s hear it for the silence:
everything’s been said.
These are the roles
we were born to play -
we never wanted it to end.
My one true love,
and the audience of my best self -
there are no lines left to learn.
We are such stuff
as dreams are made on,
and to dreams we return.
I wish we were
still arm in arm,
walking down Ridgeway Street.
Foundation stones and old cracks
in familiar pavements:
The Holy Ground beneath our feet.
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5. |
Hillfoot Street
04:23
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Hillfoot Street
I used to work in a call centre,
now I work in a restaurant.
I just bring people menus,
and then they tell me what they want.
And my father said
I would never amount to much.
I barely made it through school -
it wasn’t worth all that attention to me.
And when they read out the names,
I know they’ll barely even mention me.
I never wanted that much,
I just want it to belong to me.
CHORUS:
On the late night buses all going home,
the faces lit white by mobile phones -
little broken hearts and broken bones…
But there’s a little brown door on Hillfoot Street
I call my own, call my own.
Me and my brothers and sisters,
we had to grow up so close.
We belonged to each other,
down to the ends of our fingers and toes.
And now we’re all scattered out
into lives of our own, I suppose.
CHORUS
Now I wash my clothes and I
hang them in my own back yard.
I don’t share that line with anyone else,
I don’t share that line with anyone else.
And people ask me -
is that not hard?
And when I think about love,
I wonder: who would look twice at me?
They say there’s someone for everyone.
Yeah… well, maybe I’m the only one for me.
Most nights I’m just happy
being my own company.
CHORUS
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6. |
Recognised Codeword
04:15
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Recognised Codeword
There are places in this city
where the taxis never go,
but she knows when she calls my number
that I’m always going to show.
From the day I got my license
she was one of my first fares,
and I’ve carried a torch for all these years
and never had a prayer.
I used to drop her off on Hill Street
every Friday without fail,
or the Opera House with her mother,
or the January sales.
But now she only goes to this blinded house
at the back of some estate,
and there’s always a guy who stands outside
and reads my number plate.
CHORUS:
She’s a recognised codeword,
she’s a ten minute warning.
She says ‘pick me up back here again
half seven in the morning’.
One night I gave her back her change
and I got this unexpected kiss
and she says ‘whatever else is coming, man
it can’t be worse than this,
no, it can’t be worse than this.’
I’ve been driving round this city
like a goldfish in a bowl,
and they keep standing it up and tearing it down,
and filling in the holes.
They say if you look down from the Motorway
(where you’re not supposed to be)
you can see the shadows on the ground,
where the old houses used to be.
CHORUS
From the drop-off to the pick-up,
I’m a spring that won’t unwind.
I know she’s with a bad crowd
and she’s always on my mind.
But I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut,
and my hands upon the wheel -
and I can talk all day to strangers,
and never mention what I feel.
CHORUS
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7. |
Orangefield
03:57
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8. |
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God Look Down to Mrs. Boyd
God look down to Mrs. Boyd:
She came home and found it all destroyed.
Easter 1941,
the air defences overrun.
The Germans on successive nights,
come looking for the shipyard lights.
God look down to Mrs. Boyd:
Her front door now a gaping void.
The shelter down the street gave way,
eleven souls were swept away.
Her neighbours nearly broke her heart,
all wondering where to make a start.
Good look down to Mrs. Boyd,
and the wee front room she so enjoyed.
It lay in pieces round her feet,
like everything on Thorndyke Street.
Her husband, gassed in the Great War,
he coughed his way
through heaven’s door
one winter night
six years before.
God look down to Mrs. Boyd,
and the fate she managed to avoid.
A widow with her children grown,
she faced the future on her own.
At least she had a place to stay,
her sister lived in Castlereagh.
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9. |
The Less it Matters
03:23
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The Less it Matters
All of the ones I used to know from Bryson Street are gone;
some of them to old folks’ homes, just like me.
And some went out on lorries in the bad old days,
carrying all they owned across their knees.
I was a cleaning woman at Sirocco,
my wee friend Ella from Sydenham worked with me.
For thirteen years, we worked the same shift every night -
and one never asked the other home for tea.
In the home they teach us gardening, but I haven’t got the heart.
The tiny seeds fall from my shaking hands.
And I never owned a blade of grass in my life -
I’d trade every leaf to be back in Short Strand.
I dreamed the other night about wee Ella -
she was standing in the weeds where the factory used to be.
When the order book got low,
she always said we’d be the first to go.
Her eldest was eleven and mine was only nine -
I suppose her life ran parallel to mine.
My nephew comes to see me every other week -
he’s young and fast and has no gift for chatter.
He says, ‘You can’t tell where anybody’s from in here.’
And I say, ‘the closer you get to the end the less it matters.’
The closer you get to the end, the less it matters.
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10. |
Nearer
05:32
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Anthony Toner Belfast, UK
An independent singer songwriter and guitarist, based in Belfast.
Anthony Toner recommends:
Superb songs - always arresting and haunting work, recent album 'Plz stay bb' is his best work yet - and there's more to come.
go to album
A gifted writer, player and producer, Matt's 'Lessons of War' is a fascinating collection of collaborations - but he has a great back catalogue, too - and new songs due soon...
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