Nothing Important

Lyrics for Nothing Important

I am born by Caesarian section at 9: 30 AM in Princess Mary's Maternity Hospital on the 24th May, sixty years ago today, dangled by the ankle, smacked across the bum, swaddled in a blanket howling like a wheel. My big brother Iain on his tip-toes hisses 'I don't like him'. He's Maradona, I'm Peter Beardsley, chasing a ball through the mud followed by the kitchen window, bellowing through the fern: 'Boys! Dinner's ready!' Dad is tuning in the telly beyond a heaving mountain of spaghetti hoops. I am nothing You are nothing Nothing important Death within a dream Petrified on the back of a pedallo in the Balearic Sea off Alcudia I can see the ghost of my uncle Derek waving to us from the beach, gently drifting out of reach, the telephone reciever swinging by its cord, a glass of broken beer expanding on the lino. My mam slips into the coffin a polaroid of his sweetheart Clutching Good-Luck Bear I peer gingerly over the side, press my nose up to the tide, and there behold a barracuda chewing on a chrysanthemum and a family of clownfish hovering in the corpse's hair. In the scullery of the cub-hut my clarinet falls into a sack of flour - a flurry of pins squashed into the leather handle a crescent moon of stricken fig-wasps. Drizzling my fingers with The Magic Sponge Dad says 'we'll probably have to chop them off'. He collapses like a canvas tent on the floodlit astroturf rent with a fibula guide-rod poking a hole through his shin There are teardrops in his moustache charging a flute of champagne down the aisle and out for a throw-in A St.John ambulance careers between the sugary pillars of the wedding cake A crystal spoon A pewter tankard these words inscribed upon the base: HAPPY RETIREMENT BEST GRANDDAD IN THE WORLD A toby jug filled to the brim with curtain hooks A sheepskin rug discoloured with tobacco smoke within it's braids concealed a rank of plastic soldiers set to burst underfoot Berwick in oils: a skiff on the swollen tweed cradling a false pearl a ceramic seraph with an ashtray for a brain - and I don't care about these things Why do they remain so clear while the faces of my loved ones disappear? A Rington's plate a forking hairline seam of superglue through the Black Gate a digital photoframe frozen on an blurry orange thumb I remember all these things Old karate trophies I am tethered by these things Thimbles and pesatas I remember all these things A roll of Woolworth's price stickers I can see all these things but where have all my people gone? In the end it wasn't meant to be. He was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen. He survived for seven days before he slipped away