Waking Hours

It seems like weeks since you looked at me baby
without that look of distaste
I don't know why your feelings are changing
but I've seen it in your face
All those times when our lips were kissing
our tongues were telling lies
And all those signs that I've been missing
were right there in your eyes.

So come on babe, let's kiss this thing goodbye.

I sometimes feel when we're together baby,
everything has turned out wrong
and I know you feel exactly the same way
but still we carry on.
I've been waiting up by the window
watching these cars go by
And I tell myself that I'll go through the motions
for the last time tonight.

So come on babe, let's kiss this thing goodbye.

Now I'm watching the fumes foul up the sunrise
I'm watching the light fade away
And I'm hoping tonight that I'll open the door
and you'll stand here and say

Come on babe, let's kiss this thing goodbye
Better make it sooner than later
Before it all turns sour
We'd better kiss this thing
Goodbye.

We could be away from here
by ten o'clock tonight
Pennies won't get us to heaven, I know
but a borrowed car just might
Look through my wallet
There's enough for a hotel room
But no, no, no, you say
"I wanna stay in and get wet with you."

Why do you take the opposite view?

We could be different people tonight
Who do you want to choose?
I'll book a table in a suit and tie
and you can wear your sister's shoes
Look through my wallet
Which cities shall we travel through?
But no, no, no you say "You just got paid,
Money's not for wasting it's for holding onto."

Why do you take the opposite view?

Is it something in your nature
that makes it hard to say, "Baby, I do."
You don't have to agree
when someone says they love you
But you don't have to take
the opposite view

We can walk on the roofs tonight
and watch the midnight traffic flow
Unscrew the lightbulbs babe,
and we'll throw them from the 14th floor
I say we're yellow
if we don't do something new
But you just laugh and start filling up my glass
as if it's not true.

Why do you take the opposite view?

Every precious second there's a chance to change
The present tense is perfect baby,
Let's rearrange it

A struck match faded like a nervous laugh
Beyond the halo of a naked bulb
Your low voice mingles with your other half's;
Schoolfriends in second-hand clothes
Eventually your world will shrink within four walls
Of neglected debts and stolen stereos.

So move away Jimmy Blue
Before your small, small town turns around
and swallows you

A drunk mother was the cue
For the legendary things that you do
Behind a carnival tent with mud on your face
Behind the old glue factory too.

So move away Jimmy Blue
Before your small, small town turns around
and swallows you

Wet feet visit the same old places
Finding nothing new
It's a binful of tissues from made-up faces
In a townful of nothing to do
A love match with the moon
In a layby, while insects hum and
You got put in the darkness of a woman's womb
Jimmy Blue.

So move away, yeh,
Move away Jimmy Blue
Before your small, small town 
Turns around and swallows you.

Everybody in the funhouse
Says they want out
But we're taking our time
'Cos we're in love with time
Whole generations thinking of themselves
As infidels and pop stars
While the bomb loses patience
We line up and just lean against the bar

Stone cold sober, looking for bottles of love.

Caught in the headlights
Wide-eyed and ready to receive
We are the dead life
Locked in dogfights, lost in disbelief
And these dark days
Make the nights seem brighter than they are
So while Fleet Street rolls and the moon glows
In the funhouse the fun starts

Stone cold sober, looking for bottles of love.

Born in the half-light
Of threats and bribes
In a hopeless porn parade
We get the dog's life, tidbits train us
What to wear, what not to say
When you're footloose but you just feel limbless
Life gets in the way
So we get loaded or totally legless
But stay the same

Stone cold sober, looking for bottles of love.

I turned on a T.V. station and
Lip-read with the sound turned down
It was Pro-Celeb mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
With Esther Rantzen
Playing the one who's drowned

In a room next door a couple is fighting 
But isn't that just one of love's charms
When moods change as fast as lightning
And fifteen minutes later you're 
Lying in each other's arms

And you're gone

They say that it's better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all
But if you sit down and count the cost of
All those losses
There's no profit at all

This city gets crazy at Christmas 
Glitter guards the crucifix all over the place
Its head gets too big for its body 
And its mouth gets 
Too big for its face

And you're gone

Never throw away an old newspaper
Everyday's rich with its current accounts
Prince visits Philippines and parliament debates it
Back page, column five
Somebody's wedding's announced

Sunday night's the night for loving 
And squeezing out the weekend's last drops
Sunday night's the night for forgiving
maybe that's why
They shut the shops

And you're gone

One day you wake up
And all the pain you've given out gets returned
But I'm not sorry now
I've payed for what I've learned

And you're gone

I turned on a T.V. station and 
Lip-read with the sound turned down
It was the Church of Christ playing the Price Is Right
Where everybody starves
While Leslie Crowther counts.

You sent greetings from Liverpool
and I took the next train
Passed by people putting flowers on graves and 
We got delayed
When I arrived you had vanished like steam
and left me in a diesel day
So I walked around and spent ten pounds 
in amusement arcades

Felt like I was in a field 
looking for a pin

It's a kind of loneliness
It's a kind of emptiness
But I'm not trying I'm just rehearsing
For the perfect day

When I want you, I'll come looking for you
Yes I will, yes I will, yes I will.

I took a spoon to the swimming pool 
to drain your trace away
And I changed my name so only my looks remain
And if looks could kill I'd need a license for my face
'Cos where his fists put bruises 
A scheming smile now takes their place

Felt like I was in a field
looking for a pin

It's a kind of loneliness
It's a kind of emptiness
But I'm not trying I'm just rehearsing 
For the perfect day

When I want you, I'll come looking for you
Yes I will, yes I will, yes I will.

Nobody's perfect, and that's something that
I'm sure she'll know
'Cos trying to tell her lies from the truth at times
Is like trying to divide ice from snow
When I knew it was over, I jumped into a taxi
And said, "Just guess where to go"
And the driver turned about and said,
"Finding what you want is like
Trying to divide ice from snow"

So here I sit, rolling back to bed
Knowing love is a hazard
That I'd never guessed
But from this side of the morning
I couldn't care less

Nobody's helpless, although
I've never felt this helpless before
And trying to persuade myself not to think about her
Is like trying to tell the clouds not to pour
So I put down the bottle
While in my head time is collapsing
and the currents run cold
So I can curse her memory
But don't try telling me that she was not
An emerald in a mountain of coal
Or that there's a crock of cures for cancer
at the end of the rainbow

So here I sit, rolling back to bed
Knowing love is a hazard
That I'd never guessed
But from this side of the morning
I couldn't care less

And she's the kind of girl who won't forgive
But will forget
So take me frome this party, driver,
Put me back to bed
I wanted to be loved but just got laughed at instead
So if this taxi is for hire
I'll get in the back 
Just to hear the friction of the tarmac and the tyres

So nobody's perfect, and that's something that
I'm sure she'll know
And trying to persuade myself
Not to think about her is like 
Trying to tell the cockerels not to crow
Or like trying to tell the striker
Not to think about the goal

So here I sit, rolling back to bed
Knowing love is a hazard
That'd I'd never guessed
But from this side of the morning
I couldn't care less

Don't get so distressed
If the good life won't arrive
You've been reading S.O.S.
When it's just your clock reading 5:05
And why are you so possessed
By the thought that she got free
And why are you figuring who's the best
When just your luck ran out
and she chose me

We do not lie side by side
and mock the thought of you
And I don't take her hand and ask
Is this what he used to do?
'Cos I just want to free her from
Your jails of jealous dreams
'Cos at least a house when it's empty
Stays clean

I won't pretend 
That I was simply swayed
It was a two way thing not a
Three day fling
No secrets kept, no truth betrayed
And here's the house that held
The nightmare that went on
And you're sitting there wishing you'd never been born
With that self-inflicted crown of thorns

We do not lie side by side
and mock the thought of you
And I don't take her hand and ask
Is this what he used to do?
'Cos I just want to free her from
Your jails of jealous dreams
'Cos at least a house when it's empty
Stays clean

I won't pretend
That I'm the saviour of the innocent and bad
But put two withered old blooms in a couple of rooms
And they'll behave like lunatics
and crave what makes them sad

So here's a card that says
Happy twenty-second birthday and I wish you were dead
And here's a house that held
a bevy of devils and an angel as well
And you want what I've got
When all I've got is guilt
And a room that won't stay still
Filled with pockets full of crumpled up money and
a mantelpiece littered with bills
'Cos at least a house when it's empty
Stays clean

Lovehearts on an old stone building
Have no relevance now
Sherry bottles in a bus-stop litter bin
Remind me of you somehow
You look so young it's frightening
Life's been good to you
But strike me down with bolts of lightning
If I wasn't good to you too

Throw me away, throw me away again
'Cos I don't mind, I'm still satisfied
With just a hatful of rain

Merry widows in stock gloss magazines
Dumbstruck open their mouths
And out comes some old jackpot philosophy --
Everything must pay somehow
And I've heard you say that he just works for me,
Doing things that you can't do
But grease my palms with a hatful of currencies
I don't belong to you

Throw me away, throw me away again
'Cos I don't mind, I'm still satisfied
With just a hatful of rain

Post office clerks put up signs saying position closed
And secretaries turn off typewriters and put on their coats
Janitors padlock the gates
For security guards to patrol
And bachelors phone up their friends for a drink
While the married ones turn on a chat show

And they'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Gentlemen time please, you know we can't serve anymore
Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there's nothing to go
And by five o'clock everything's dead
And every third car is a cab
And ignorant people sleep in their beds
Like the doped white mice in the college lab

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Telephone exchanges click while there's nobody there
The Martians could land in the carpark and no one would care
Close-circuit cameras in department stores shoot the same video every day
And the stars of these films neither die nor get killed
Just survive constant action replay

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs
While angry from Manchester writes to complain about
All the repeats on T.V.
And computer terminals report some gains
On the values of copper and tin
While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs
For the price of a hospital wing

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before
Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
They'll burn down the synagogues at six o'clock
And we'll all go along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow