What I Did On My Holidays
You could say she’s artistic in a basic sort of way,
But someone’s got to do the job, that’s what I always say.
Ferocious Fran’s her stage name, but of course that’s just for show,
And she strips down at the Marrakesh for ninety quid a throw.
I know my mates all laugh and mock and say I must be mad.
They call me names and pinch my stuff. They think I’m pretty sad.
But let ’em jeer and let ’em scoff, it’s jealousy I know,
Cos every Friday night they come to hog the second row.
Now, I’ve loved Fran since last July I first saw her perform.
The smoke was thick and the room was full, the beer was getting warm.
She did her Cowgirl Kate routine, which means she cracks this whip,
Then strolls around so we can read the tattoos on her hip.
And when the show is over and the audience is gone
She sometimes has a drink with me if she’s got nothing on.
She sits and idly sips her gin and stares off into space
While I pretend to overlook the wrinkles in her face.
And once she let me take her home on the number forty-nine.
She’s got this cosy basement flat beside the railway line.
The furniture was old and worn, there was woodworm in the bed,
But I became a man that night – at least, that’s what she said.
Fran I love you, Fran be mine, you’re the only one for me.
I tell you every Friday night when you’re sat on my knee.
I couldn’t give you furs or jewels or a diamond set in gold,
But all I’ve got I’ll give to you,
My money and my future too,
And I’ll be just as scared as you now you are growing old.
1975
PS
The title on this one has to do some heavy lifting. It’s meant to be the reminiscence of a lovelorn schoolboy (a sixth former, nothing mucky) though there is nothing specific in the lyric to make that clear. At the time I wrote it, I was young enough to pull off the first-person narrative. No more. And it probably doesn’t matter much anyway. At one point I toyed with changing “I know my mates all laugh and mock” to “I know my schoolmates laugh and mock”, but that just seemed forced. So in the end I left it.
It's one of my ‘in the idiom of’ pieces, which means it tries to restrict itself to the language and manner of the person telling the story. So he doesn’t notice the unintentional pun in the fourth verse, for instance: She sometimes has a drink with me if she’s got nothing on. And for a long time the final three lines were quite different:
But all I’ve got is yours, my dear.
If you want a friend then you know I’m here.
I’ll comfort you and share your fear now you are growing old.
The epithet my dear in the final verse always sounded a bit tinny to my ear, and certainly would probably not have been said by a schoolboy either now or even then, fifty years ago – but frankly I had a real problem finding anything to rhyme there, which is stupid given how common that arrangement of letters is. What’s mine is yours if you keep me near might be a possible, but then the next line If you want a friend immediately fouls it with that repetition of if. Maybe the narrator wouldn’t have noticed that, after all, that’s why the sentiments are so platitudinous, he’s getting them from songs and other people’s lyrics, not his own direct experience. But then he wasn’t trying to be a songwriter. On the other hand I was, but still, decades ago, I took the coward’s way out and just left it, plain, simple and unadorned, like the poor sod stood there singing it… until I started putting this website together and decided I’d better try and bestir myself, given whatever I put on it now is probably going to be out there forever with my name on it. (But even the rewrite currently rhymes you with you, so that’s hardly anything to write home about, is it?) If ever a lyric needed a real humdinger of a tune to lift it up, this was it. But I couldn’t even do that. Ah well. Maybe this chap’s grandson will write one, one day.