https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCVqRzhpAAo
Anyone who knows me will be aware that there’s nothing I like better than hosting afternoon tea. Though I say it myself I’m a stunning baker and I like getting out the best china. So this is, on the surface, a nice song about a late afternoon visitor. But it is about grief as well. As so many of these songs are. No apologies for that. I’m five years a widower now and I still don’t feel sorry for myself, but I do feel sad. I sat down with the intention of writing a modern country music song which is why the chords were simple and formulaic, but it eventually changed, got all minor and ended up in A flat. And it’s got jokes!
Afternoon Tea
There’s nothing going on here, nothing to see
Nothing to alarm anyone, least of all me
It’s just one of those evening
When that familiar stranger visits me
I open the door and welcome in grief
I open the door because he’ll come in anyway
It’s better to feel like I have some say
He likes to come as the dusk fills the sky
He likes to watch as I start to cry
He strokes my head like he’s done before
And he smiles with love as I go to the floor
This is the heat, the eye of the storm
He sits on my back, my lungs deform
Which is why I can’t breathe, and I need to breathe
It’s the only thing left at times like these
Then it starts to get less my guest grows restless
He springs up and away. His power is less
But he has to wait til the second wave
The after shocks shock. I’ll never be safe
Then slightly ashamed, he twitches to leave
I open the door. It’s the only way this could be
This is right, I smile, he smiles at me
We are polite, like he’s been to tea
Not to the harrowing depths of the high price of love
My neighbour she smiles at the pair of us
There’s nothing going on here
Nothing to see
These visits might stop soon
Then where will I be?
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