The question

by Richard Dawson

From the album: End of the Middle

Duration: 07:55

End of the Middle cover art

Lyrics for The question

Elsie's little friends don't come any more with their little knuckles rapping at the door. "Sorry girls, she can't come to play, El's not feeling very well today" Our neighbour found her walking in her sleep through their onion patch on bruised and bloody feet singing an unrecognisable melody upon a voice not her own. She saw it again - the apparition in the hall: A heavyset man in old-fashioned railway uniform carrying under one arm his blinking severed head, the grey lips opening and closing and the question they were posing was 'where are you going?' WHERE ARE YOU GOING??? We would later discover the previous owner of this house was the former station-master before the line was closed, after the war. According to the knocker-upper he was only a relatively young man and a brand new father when he took his final step in front of a train and with a squeal of brakes abruptly departed body from brain. Elsie was the first girl on the estate to pass between the hallowed Royal Grammar gates then onto Cambridge University who paid a generous annual bursary. Now she's an associate research analyst two years at the London School of Economics trying with a wayward husband to keep a happy home and bring up her boy. She saw him again - the apparition in the hall: A heavyset man in old-fashioned railway uniform carrying under one arm his blinking severed head, the grey lips opening and closing, and the question they were posing is 'where are you going?' WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

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