Other Phil McWalter
Granny's House - Part I

Part I
Rick Medlock @Rick-4-1 : Drums
Phil McWalter : The Other Stuff
Part II is here: soundcloud.com/phil-mcwalter/g...-house-the-drop

Granny's House

The shiny brass crocodile
Sitting on the tiled hearth
It’s Sunday and we ‘re at Granny’s
Full of warmth, cake and tea
Archie the lodger is in the back room asleep in the chair
Mother is looking like a film star, father’s looking bored
I am in the best room
Untouched for a week
Everything is polished
Everything is neat
The garden is long and narrow but I don’t get to play outside
There’s a single tap in the kitchen sink which I can’t reach
From the front of the house you can see a cemetery
White stones upon a hill

Why do they go? Why do they go at all?
These places of refuge, these persons of peace?

Uncle Archie gave me model ‘planes
From the man up the road
Mother said she remembered the men standing on the corner
Sharing a newspaper when there was no work
We had a big shiny car with leather seats
I sat in the back every Sunday when we went for a drive
I went to watch the cricket my father led the team
I tasted their salty beer and enjoyed the picnics
We always laughed and people picked me up
The living was slow, the crises not mine
They flew over my head like the clouds and the night
I wriggled in bed like the dog’s rabbit dreams
Then my father came to see me and told me she’d gone

Why do they go? Why do they go at all?
These places of refuge, these persons of peace?

I could keep the crocodile my father said
And although I could reach the tap now
We never went to that house again...

© Jan 2017 Phil McWalter
100 BPM C Major