A blast from the past, and more personal than my later songs, though not quite as personal as it sounds. You may notice that the words below are not quite the same as the ones I sing. That’s because I came across an older version of the lyric with a couplet I like better than the one I’ve been singing in the last few years: I’ll have to update the recorded version. I don’t know why I changed the words, unless it was just because I spent a lot more time in the Glanrafon than in the Globe. But then I probably spent much more time in the Union bar… And if the first couple of verses make Bangor sound rather grim, that’s more to do with the situation described than it is with the shortcomings of the city itself, which is actually in rather a lovely part of Wales.
Remastered:
Backup captured from live video:
A dusty sunbeam brushed my face
and splashed the bedroom wall
as I rubbed my eyes and answered
the landlady’s morning call.
I hoped to get a line from you
but I don’t know what you’d say
still I comb the static from my head
on another Bangor day.
And over breakfast coffee
I watch the new day born
Into the multi-coloured boredom
of another North Wales dawn
and it seems to me I had a dream
in waking from a dream
but the thought slips through my fingers
as I pass the egg and beans.
And talking sociology
at lunchtime in the Globe
Janey said she liked me
but there was this bloke at home
and I shrugged and let her tell me
she was sorry just the same
but I shouldn’t bring on substitutes
this early in the game.
Six weeks since I saw you
and another day half-gone
and autumn blunts my memory
as another term rolls on
and there’s still a space left in my life
where you once used to be
but even my nostalgia
isn’t all it used to be.
copyright David Harley, 1971
Wheal Alice Music 