What I love about this song is it tells a story from beginning to end.
I never thought it would happen
With me and the girl from Clapham
Out on the windy common
That night I ain't forgotten
When she dealt out the rations
With some or other passions
I said, "You are a lady"
"Perhaps," she said, "I may be"
We moved into a basement
With thoughts of our engagement
We stayed in by the telly
Although the room was smelly
We spent our time just kissing
The Railway Arms we're missing
But love had got us hooked up
And all our time it took up
I got a job with Stanley
He said I'd come in handy
And started me on Monday
So I had a bath on Sunday
I worked eleven hours
And bought the girl some flowers
She said she'd seen a doctor
And nothing now could stop her
I worked all through the winter
The weather brass and bitter
I put away a tenner
Each week to make her better
And when the time was ready
We had to sell the telly
Late evenings by the fire
With little kicks inside her
This morning at four-fifty
I took her rather nifty
Down to an incubator
Where thirty minutes later
She gave birth to a daughter
Within a year a walker
She looked just like her mother
If there could be another
And now she's two years older
Her mother's with a soldier
She left me when my drinking
Became a proper stinging
The devil came and took me
From bar to street to bookie
No more nights by the telly
No more nights nappies smelling
Alone here in the kitchen
I feel there's something missing
I'd beg for some forgiveness
But begging's not my business
And she won't write a letter
Although I always tell her
And so it's my assumption
I'm really up the junction
And then there's this one...
With her hair up in his fingers
The fish and chips smell lingers
Under amber streetlamps
She holds the law in her hands
The moistness of the damp night
Falls silent through the lamplight
Although she's only fourteen
She really knows her courting
And up the railway sidings
There's him and her
They're lying
Hand in hand they whisper
You're my missus and I'm your mister
The moon was white and virgin
And she was on the turning
Remember your first nibble
When best friends were so little
They really trooped the colors
When walking with each other
And all her mates would giggle
As ladylike she'd wiggle
All along the high street
They'd splash out on an ice cream
He'd sometimes really treat her
But he'd done his mother's meter
Well he went off to Borstal
He said that he was forced to
Rob the flats of Hi Fi's
'Cause she was ill
And she would cry
Each morning she got sicker
Her mother sometimes hit her
If she'd have known the story
She would have been so sorry
He received a letter and admitted it
There was nothing else to do but get rid of it
Lonely in his dormitory
He'd sit and stare
If this is for real
And is it really fair
Summer came so they went
Down to the coast in his tent
She cooked upon his Primus
And sampled local cider
She told him in his rucksack
I think I want that chance back
To be perhaps the one who
Will forever love you
To be perhaps the one who
Will forever love you
