The Light at the End of the Tunnel [Cammel Laird Social Club]

She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill
She said it was the place she needs to be
Where the cocaine is fair-trade and frequently displayed
Is the Buena Vista Social Club CD

I thought you'd be back in three weeks and we'd go wandering in the peaks
Sojourn in my uncle Joe's ashram
And when you're in Matlock Bath you dont need Sylvia Plath
Not while we've got Mrs. Gibsons’ jam

Alas I'm brooding along by the runnel
While she’s in Capri with her swain
And the light at the end of the tunnel
Is the light of an oncoming train

Well we both grew up in Eyam and strange as it may seem
Neither of us thought we'd ever leave
But the beak in Leek is weak
And she's moved it so to speak
With featureless TV producer Steve

And now it's all Eva Cassidy and aphids in Picardy
And so I can only ascertain
That the light at the end of the tunnel
Is the light of an oncoming train

No frills handy for the hills that's the way you spell New Mills
Brooding along by the runnel
While she’s in Capri with her swain
And the light at the end of the tunnel
Is the light of an oncoming train
Is the light of an oncoming train
Is the light of an oncoming

Gimme that old time religion [x3]

It's good enough for me.

And now the notes taken from www.hmhb.co.uk:

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel supposedly appears when crossing the threshold from life to death.
Notting Hill is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, between Shepherd's Bush and Paddington, famous for the Carnival and the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts film. Dwellings are a bit out of my price range.
Buena Vista Social Club see above.
Peaks Peak District, roughly between Manchester and Sheffield.
Ashram A religious/spiritual retreat, derived from the Sanskrit word 'asrama'.
Matlock Bath on the south edge of the Peak District, where HMHB played a gig in 2000 and again the following year.
Sylvia Plath American writer born of German immigrant parents in 1932, whose best-known poems are noted for their personal imagery and intense focus. Tried to kill herself with sleeping pills after a mental breakdown in 1953, and later documented this period of her life in The Bell Jar. After recovery, she won a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge (England) in 1955; the following year she married Ted Hughes, with whom she had two children. Her first book of poems, The Colossus (1960), demonstrated her precocious talent, but was far more conventional than the work that followed. Her marriage to Ted Hughes fell apart, and by 1963, she was living in a London flat, ill with flu and low on money. The hardness of her life seemed to increase her need to write, sometimes finishing a poem a day, the theme of death and psychic pain prevalent. On February 11, she killed herself with cooking gas. Only after her death was her reputation as a major poet formed, on the publishing of these last works (Ariel, Crossing the Water, and Winter Trees).
Runnel A small stream.
Capri The Blue Island, to the South of the Bay of Naples in Italy. Hotels not cheap.
Swain literally a country lad, these days more the male lover.
Eyam is the famous 'plague village', which went into voluntary quarantine when the plague was imported from London in 1665.
Beak cocaine.
Leek busy little market town in Staffordshire.
Eva Cassidy American singer who died of skin cancer in 1996, and has since found posthumous international fame, initially from her rendition of Over The Rainbow.
Aphids in Picardy is merely a dig at middle-class liberal food snobs, rather than anything to do with Justine/Ruth Picardie. "Picardy is a vista of peaceful open spaces, reaching to the Belgian border in the north, the Paris basin in the south, turning west towards England and Normandy in the Baie de Somme and adjoining Champagne and the Ardennes in the east. Its landscape gently unfolds, offering an amazing diversity: vast plains, sand and dune beaches, green valleys, bocage and large expanses of forest". Guess the insects love it. Just as a coincidence, the aphid's favourite food is the rose... 'Roses of Picardy' was a famous WWI tune, up there with 'Long way to Tipperary', etc., but has passed into obscurity...
"No frills, handy for the hills..." a play on Dillinger's Cokane in my Brain - 'A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork, that's the way you spell New York'.
No Frills is the low cost home brand of Kwik Save - possible the only product range that has a branding identity resembling prison supplies. Whether this is relevant or not is another matter...
New Mills is in Derbyshire, close to the Peak District but not actually in it. The Plain English Campaign is based there...
"Gimme that old time religion, it's good enough for me" is from a traditional folk song, adopted by Woody Guthrie. It also appears on Captain Beefheart's Mooonlight on Vermont, on Trout Mask Replica.}