Twenty Four Hour Garage People by the group Half Man Half Biscuit (
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Lyrics -
"I fancy I’ll open a stationer’s
Stock quaint notepads for weekend pagans
While you were out at The Rollright Stones
I came and set fire to your shed
‘Cos you probably work at an all-night garage
You probably work at an all-night garage
You probably work at an all-night garage
With Talk Radio on
And you curse my soul if I don’t want petrol
Curse my soul ‘cos I don’t want petrol
I only came down for a tube of Pringles
…Sour Cream and Chives
Because you gotta get up off your fat arse to go and get my crisps and you gotta go around the counter and it’s really inconvenient; and when you come back, you toss them into that sliding metal tray device thing that separates us and you say: “One pound thirty-five”, as opposed to: “That’ll be one pound thirty-five please, sir”. This is of course done to annoy me but has the opposite effect of amusing me no end, because suddenly I’ve got other things to buy…
“I’ll have two Scotch eggs and a jar of Marmite,
Two Scotch eggs and a jar of Marmite
Two Scotch eggs and a jar of Marmite
…what sandwiches have you got?”
Well now you become quite irate and your voice becomes louder, and you start to sound like Leadbelly at the depot…
“I got ham, I got cheese, I got chicken, I got beef,
I got tuna-sweetcorn; I’ve got tuna-sweetcorn…”
“I’ll have ten Kit Kats and a motoring atlas
Ten Kit Kats and a motoring atlas
And a blues CD on the Hallmark label
– that’s sure to be good”
Oh he went to play golf on a Sunday morn’ just a mile and a half from town
His head was found on the driving range and his body has never been found."
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The last track on the album Trouble over Bridgwater, "the eighth album by UK rock band Half Man Half Biscuit, released in 2000. The title is a play on words, based on the Simon and Garfunkel classic, "Bridge over Troubled Water". Bridgwater is a town in Somerset, England; but, the similarly named Bridgewater Canal runs nearby the band's homebase in the Wirral."
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From the fan website (
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"Twenty Four Hour Garage People
Title nabbed from The Happy Mondays' Twenty Four Hour Party People.
Rollright Stones ancient stones, located just north of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. I think Nigel's trip round the county last year has had a profound effect...
Talk Radio absolote bollocks, although the cricket was handy.
Leadbelly wrote Goodnight Irene and popularized Rock Island Line, which was also Lonnie Donegan's first hit.
"I got ham, I got cheese..." is a reworking of the "I got sheep, I got cows..." bit from Rock Island Line.
The last verse of the song is a variation on a verse from Leadbelly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, probably more famous these days since it appeared on Nirvana's Unplugged LP.
Hallmark cheapo compilations a-go-go.
Wilmslow suburb of southern Manchester; also an insurance company."
"The Rollright Stones are a group of prehistoric megalithic monuments built from large natural boulders found within about 500m of the site. The stones are naturally pitted, giving them extraordinary shapes.
The legend goes that a king and his army were marching over the Cotswolds when they met a witch, who addressed the king...
"Seven long strides thou shalt take, and
If Long Compton thou canst see
King of England shalt thou be"
The king strode forward, but on his seventh stride the ground rose up in a long mound obscuring the view of the village below. The witch turned them all to stone, the king overlooking Long Compton, his men standing in a circle nearby, and his five knights whispering treachery further off.
The King's Men Stone Circle is a circle of about 70 or so stones about 30m across, thought to have been built in 2500-2000BC. Originally the circle had about 105 stones forming a continuous wall except for a narrow entrance opposite the tallest stone.
The King Stone is a large single standing stone. It was probably erected to mark a Bronze Age cemetery, which was in use around 1800-1500BC.
The Whispering Knights is the remains of a 'portal dolmen' (or burial chamber) probably built around 3800-3000BC. Seen from downhill (south-east side) two massive stones flank a closing slab to form the 'portal' with a leaning stone at the rear of the chamber. A large capstone, now fallen, would originally have sat on top of the uprights and the sides of the chamber would have had more uprights."
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