David Harley – Page 72 – David Harley Words & Music

Stranger in Uniform [demo]

Words and music (c) David Harley

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video:

Audio capture/master:

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Antique electric version:

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Quiet days / Slow march past of the minutes
Remorseless progression / of the hours
The sun burns out / in a mock tropic sky
The sands run down / and time holds its breath

Waiting, ever waiting for the stranger in uniform
To shatter the mirror-still days

Quiet days / counting falling leaves
Stripping petals / from a scrap of bush
Nights under the trees / hiding from the world
Singing wild songs / to a gypsy moon

Waiting, ever waiting for the stranger in uniform
To shatter the cut-crystal days

Quiet days / sunrise leaps from tree to tree
A small boy with a fishing rod / re-lives jam-jar days
Ripples smooth away / the wrinkled image
Waiting for history / to rewrite the page

Waiting, ever waiting for the stranger in uniform
to shatter the diamond-cut days

Quiet country days / in a honeymoon paradise
Raindrops / dancing tiptoe on the glass
Clouds hang heavy / as time and history
Hiding in each other / in autumn 1939

Waiting, ever waiting for the stranger in uniform
To shatter the looking glass days

Janey

Words and music (c) David Harley

backup:

Janey, tell me are you leaving?
Talk to me without disguise
Is it time I turned to meet
The grey dawn rising in your eyes

Is the shadow in your sleepy eyes
The secret of your flight?
Will you leave me taking with you
The whispered secrets of the night?

When I wake some morning
Will I find myself alone?
Tell me now will tonight be the night
I’ll reach out and find you gone

Sermons in the dusty moonlight
Tell me that I should have known
I would wake some sad morning
To find my heart has turned to stone

Walls [demo]

backup:

Last time I saw Jeannine, we lost most of our time
In the company of friends who were neither hers nor mine

Castaways in different cities, working through some breaks
Regretting our vocations, scared of making more mistakes

And we talked of where we’d been
How we’d passed the interim
Since the last time together, building up
A wall of coffee cups and cigarette ends
Keeping our last rendezvous
At least, it looks to be the last we’ll keep

The last time I saw Jeannine, we lost most of our time
Talking of ourselves in terms of once upon a time

Clinging to the wreckage of lives we’d left behind
Hoping for the miracle we lost somewhere in time

And shied away from conversation
Of ourselves but in relation
To each other, but together, building up
A wall of alibis half-spoken
And chances we were missing
At least, from here it seems we’ve missed them all

The first line does, I suppose, invite comparison with Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’, though I didn’t hear that until several years later. But I suppose you could also compare it to ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’ or ‘Last Time He Saw Marie‘ if you really wanted, and you’d still be wrong. Personally I prefer the Mitchell song, but this has a certain nostalgic je ne sais quoi. See what I did there?

And for anyone whose interested in any biographical elements, the lady’s name wasn’t Jeannine or Richard, and it was Bangor (North Wales), not Paris.

I just realized that I also used the line ‘Last time I saw…’ in Diane. Probably Diane is the better song, and written about someone completely different. Whose name was not Diane, Richard or Jeannine.

Anyway, I promise not to use the line again. Probably.