The Full English Lyrics

She says she can't sleep on her own.

She means that she can't leave men alone.

So Des and Den and Nige and Bri

All spend her money and make her cry.

Her lovers come and go too fast,

Each more unsuitable than the last.

Her friends think she is all at sea.

They speak of rescue and tragedy.

Don't they understand

She don't need saving.

She's not far from land

Not drowning but waving. 

George couldn't cope with being adult

And so he joined a religious cult.

He knows the guru's always right

And he only sleeps for four hours a night.

He sells the pamphlets, eats the rice,

A happy certainty in his eyes.

His mother's hired a special man

And they'll deprogram him if they can.

Hey, Ma...Though your boy's jumped ship

He don't need saving.

Just taking a dip,

Not drowning but waving...

They don't need saving...

Not drowning but waving... 

Scotch whiskey was the thing for Jim.

He said it thoroughly suited him.

He found it kept the world away

So he drank a pint-and-a-half each day.

We all grew worried for his health.

We said "You must not destroy yourself."

But when he hears that kind of thing

He jumps on the table, raises his glass,

And then he starts to sing.

And he says...

Please don't man the boat,

I don't need saving.

I keep well afloat,

Not drowning but waving.

 

Don't they understand,

I say we don't need saving.

We're not far from land,

We're not drowning but waving.

This is a song about the way we all would like other people to behave in a way that we find normal and sensible. We are forever interfering in people's lives 'for their own good', but usually we do harm instead. As a very wise man once wrote "Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else or with the world." (Anthony De Mello: 'Awareness' 1990). So leave us weirdos alone.

Originally, this track had no Bass Guitar, because I was worried about making it sound too much like a Reggae number. (Elderly white Englishmen are ill-advised to attempt to mek rockas inna ragga stylee.) However, once we had mixed the track it became clear that this diffidence had been an error on my part, and, at the last minute, my old friend Ian Fordham, who first played Bass on my stuff in 1975 with The Imperial Storm Band, came in to help me out.

For non-UK listeners
I do not know how well-known the writer Stevie Smith is outside the UK, but the phrase 'not drowning but waving' is a reversal of a line from a famous poem by this most English of poets: 'I was much further out than you thought/ And not waving but drowning'.