Seagull Mania

The Astronauts

Early in the morning, just after dawn
Baby's posing around the lawn
Because it's quiet at the moment
And the world is hers
She has responsibility for that obscure freaking sound of the old milk float
She adds a postscript to the letter she wrote
Saying "City living takes it out of me -
Won't you send me a sachet of sanity"
Sits with a pile of magazines
Her face is falling apart at the seams
Looks pretty awful
But she says she dreams of some land
But dreams get frozen pretty fast around here
Choked by the suffocating atmosphere
Nothing ever seems to be really clear
Living in the urban slum land

In spite of the heaviness of her heart
She claims that her life is killed by art
And no reality shot will spoil it
D.H. Lawrence in the downstairs toilet
See pictures on the bathroom wall
You could swear you could hear the curlews call
The kindly fisherman drags his net
Goldfish in a bowl in a stereo cassette
But I bet you deny her methodical grace
Keeps every fantasy filled in its space
But still has a vision she could leave this place
For some land

A Dorset coast is where she would rather lie
With a chorus of gulls serenading the sky
As she watches the unemployed sail by
Living in an urban slumland
Radical solutions didn't get very far
The past disappears like a falling star
And now she follows the normal rule
A time warped fossil of the social school
But one day a letter came through her door
Mailed by a lover from '64
Saying "Come along to the coast with me,
I'm setting up a communal fantasy"
1 o'clock she is watching the rain
2 o'clock she is running for a train
At 9 o'clock she is home again
With shaking hands
Because Gerald was married with a house in Slough
He had wanted to escape, fate wouldn't allow
And now she wants to disappear somehow
Away from the urban slum land
There is a crippled note by the side of the phone
Traditional excuses for being alone
She's dressed in a white frock trimmed with lace
Beaks and feathers all round the place
The radio blares it's usual tune
Bruckner comes from each part of the room