The Jazz Butcher - Next Move Sideways

from the album  Fishcotheque


(laughs)

I saw him through a roofspan I was tired enough to faint
Carrying a chessboard like some old Romanian saint.
Said: hey good lucking, whatcha got cooking?
He said: nothing you want to try
Just a bunch rinkey-dinks who like expensive foreign things
And you've got other fish to fry.

Look over there: the men dividing up the countryside.
They got authority, they got a college degree.
They got machinery, they got a pretty big job to do.
They got instructions and they don't want to bother 'bout me.
No I'm standing here in the middle of the country
And trying to figure out about the next move sideways.

I read the papers I know they want to make a new road.
To keep the trucks and the inter-city travellers out.
They take the little towns and Victorian buildings.
That's where the money is and they don't want to spread it about.

I hear the sounds of the work going on the highway.
I smell the diesel in the air; it lets me know I'm alive.
There goes the busstop, guess everybody's got a motorcar.
There goes the mailman, your letters never arrive.
What do you do when "potential" is your favourite word,
And then the bus leaves at the next move sideways?

I have a new home, I'm getting pushed a thousand different ways.
You said you'd never bruise, but you could disappear.
I have the same old dreams: I to walk on down the streets at night.
I think you'd be suprised how many times you appear.

Smoking on the bridge like a tourist by the Houses Of Parliament.
I'm feeling dumb for all the sick in my heart.
They took the floor away and they divided up the countryside.
And we watch the tele while they're pulling everything apart.
They got a blueprint up there in the government,
They calling going forward, it's the next move sideways.
Next move sideways.