Just so people didn't think I only do comedy songs, here are some ruminations on the psychological perils of meeting up with an ex after 27 years ...
Sitting in a fancy restaurant overlooking the sea,
When a good-looking ghost walks in who’s come to see me
And we hug and we kiss like old friends, sit down, then talk for a while,
Just me and the ghost of a girl I once knew with a snaggle-toothed smile.
And we each have five minutes to recap twenty-seven long years
Takes her seven, takes me less than two, there’s laughter and then some tears
And I wonder if I meant as much to her as she did to me
Then she smiles over the seafood linguine and tells me these memories:
She says, ‘Ploughmans and jazz chords’.
That’s all I was to her:
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
Ploughmans and jazz chords:
Not such a big loss to her.
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
They say the past is a foreign country and they do things differently there,
But I’m talking about a whole continent that went missing somewhere
And this continent’s full of strange young people who I’ve not even met
Wide-eyed with wonder and hope for the future and not one regret.
And the past’s sat right in front of me so I just don’t understand
How I let those years slip through my fingers like grains of sand
And I wonder if I’ve haunted this ghost’s life the way she’s haunted mine
But then her exorcism makes ridiculous what was sublime.
She says, ‘Ploughmans and jazz chords’.
These were her memories:
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
Ploughmans and jazz chords,
With not enough bread or cheese.
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
Though the years lie heavy between us,
They’re so light that they might float away,
Even so it would not take a genius
To see what I mean to you when you say:
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
Not so profound for me:
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
Two lousy nouns for me:
Ploughmans and jazz chords.
