Advice To Daughters - Paul Heaton, Jacqui Abbott

Let no stone go unturned

No village go unburned

Let nations price taggers

Stick their sallow daggers

Into everything that we own

Let our very children

Sold as X-Factor cattle

Be stripped in teenage battle

As slabs of beef from bone

Let every minute of every day

Let no hour go unconcerned

In thrall or bent

To those bastards we pray

So no sovereign peace goes unearned

No child that you’d not sell

No memory you’d not chop or fell

No corner that you’d not plough

Duly burn and cast down to hell

Advice to daughters 1, 2 and 3

When you’re too old to sit on Dad’s knee

In the words of your Grandpa

When we’d given up hope

With so little left that was ours

(Telescope)

Don’t buy a 50p telescope

(Stars)

You’ll only see 50p stars, my girl

(Telescope)

Don’t buy a 50p telescope

(Stars)

You’ll only see 50p stars

Let’s carry around some bottles of water

To rattle around with the keys to your car

Are your jodhpurs stuck right up

The crack of your arse?

Mine still are

Let’s strike up a loud conversation

Of off piste or on

And turn the volume right up

When it’s some place we’ve been

And they’ve not gone

Let’s keep putting 'right now'

After everything we say

Till a simple 'at the moment'

Seems a dark and dark and distant day

Let’s chew gum like a six year old

With sunglasses on our head

So in winter they know

We’re half Brit and definitely half Med

Let’s go shopping in the better half quarter

Let’s look around the bazaar

5 pounds for a bottle of fizzy water

I’d rather be old than whatever

It is you are

See they do not like the outspoken

Only broken or soon on the mend

No time for bridges or valley ridges

No diversion nor no mountain bend

Let’s wreck the earth and do India

On the cheap in our bare feet

Come back home, order takeaway

Mock the way that they speak

Beware that coffee-to-go carrying bastard

He’s trying to kill you, child

Take ploughman’s lunch, reach it by path

And take that luke warm pint of mild

Until every path we may tread upon

And everything we ever see

Is more valuable to them and their kids

And valueless to me or thee

We are the world — no you’re not

You’re overpaid chancers

On an oversize yacht

Message in a bottle to Sting

Lose the fuckin' yoga

And the yang and fuckin' ying

If you wanna teach the world to sing

(Shotgun)

Don’t buy a 50p shotgun

(Stars)

You’ll only shoot 50p stars, my girl

(Shotgun)

Don’t buy a 50p shotgun

(Stars)

You’ll only shoot 50p stars

Let’s adopt some African babies

Now we know they’re free of rabies

Shove them in a bag at the port

Then into the back of our Mercedes

Everything we tread upon

And everything we ever see

Is more valuable to them and their kids

And valueless to me or thee