On The Mainland

(album: Graffiti Tongue - 1996)

I was over on the Mainland
Doing me act in some old civic hall
It was the night before we stormed the hackney empire
My adrenaline got pumping when the crowd demanded more
I couldn't sleep a wink
So I turned on to the BBC World Service
Coming at me from New Delhi
Or some other long lost Colonial shore
When a lovely English man came on the wireless
With a gorgeous, sweet dulcet Portland placed clipped tone
He announced that the winner
Of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature
Was a British poet
"Séamus Heaney from Londonderry", sez he
As cool as cool could be
So I roared out for tea and toasted muffins
And a pair of hard-boiled eggs to calm my nerves
You never claimed George Best nor Alex Higgins
Nor you never claimed Bellaghy's other boys
But that's the way things are upon the Mainland
Where the Quarehawks are still sucking
The wee small birds' eggs dry

I was over on the mainland
Doing me act in some old civic hall