If I Just Ask Politely

(album: and everybody else smiled back - 2021)

You tell me you're going to church in the morning
I'm sitting in the bath letting it all sink in
I wake up on a sofa and I walk out to your balcony
And I wonder if East Croydon would ever stop for me

If I just ask politely
If I just asked or fell to my knees
If I just ask politely
Would it stop for me?

I know these walls won't lean in to guide me
To greatness or some greater fixation
I used to glue my sutures in a Sainsbury's basement
Tear drunk on the floor

We felt ageless and endless
You were my drunken salvation
And nothing really changes, just the faces and the spaces
Where our fingers interlock
Breathe it in, we pass it on
As we stare over this grey
Endless perhaps and my heart beats a rhythm
That my lungs cannot match

Someone's crying in the hall (What?)
But I don't really understand (What's going on?)
What turns the night from tragic
To songs about a wedding band

We felt ageless and endless
You were my drunken salvation
And nothing really changes, just the faces and the spaces
Where our fingers interlock
We breathe it in, we pass it on
As we stare over this grey
Endless perhaps and my heart beats a rhythm
That my lungs cannot match

We wax lyrical
In late December
Freezing cold
Crouched around a campfire

But I always wake up on your sofa
And I walk out to your balcony
And I wonder if East Croydon
Would ever stop for me

If I just ask politely
If I just ask politely
If I just ask politely
Would it stop for me?