The Sticks - The Cool Greenhouse

Well you can go a bit nuts out here

Spending all day looking for your cigarettes or your glasses

Or plugged into high-minded conspiracy theories

About all the piano-playing cats

Trained by the government and uploaded by devious civil servants

To subdue your mind

I guess that’s why people say that musical pets

Are the new opiates of the masses

But just don’t forget

Nobody actually says that

And it’s true

The true oddballs are stationed in the market towns

And all you meet

Are ex-military personnel

With dark browsing histories

Or children’s entertainers

With questionable intentions

And all the village shops

And all the village shops are definitely manned by robots

So is this the kind of catharsis you were after?

Strange shapes appear in the mirror when you’re not there

And you can hear people’s skin crack at regular intervals

Oh, when the sun comes out

They’ve got your number

They’ll be seeing you

Better stay in from here on in

And sometimes when you close your eyes

There’s grinning Jimmy Saviles painted on your inner eyelids

Other times it’s Yoko Onos on treadmills

Stretching out into infinity

Or there’s Kermit the Frog doing up his flies

On the beach, on repeat

These things all reinforce the need

For a proper occupation

Find clipped toenails still growing near the basin

A little camera in the shape of a bit of eggshell in the bread bin

Surveillance wires disguised as bits of spaghetti

Down the side of the oven

Looks like the cleaner’s not working

Today the birds are flying unusually low to the ground

And the insects are flying unusually close to the clouds

There’s all sorts of inversions that you need to get your head around

Clerical workers are lurking in the long grass

With remote controls, dog shit bags and their sons

And God only knows, what they’ve been feeding the ducks

And God only knows, what they’ve been feeding the ducks

And God only knows, what they’ve been feeding the ducks

Make some elderflower wine, or some sourdough

Well that’s the kind of thing you’re meant to do around here

Wrap it up in old brown paper and you can sell it for a fortune

To all the city weekenders

If only you didn’t have the weird feeling

That your arm is not your arm

That your arm is not your arm

And the strange plants growing in the outcrop near the village

Have been plagiarising your dreams

And everything’s conducted in hushed tones

In the market towns