Hard Life In Country (Live, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, 19 August 1982)

It's hard to live in the country

In the present state of things

Your body gets pulled right back

You get a terrible urge to drink

At 3AM

The stick people recede

The locals get up your nose

And leather soles stick on cobble stones

It's hard to live in the country

It has a delicate ring

Nymphet new romantics come over the hill

It gets a bit depressing

Paper local

Drunken scandal

Publish your address as well

Locals surround where you dwell

Old ladies confiscate your gate railings

For government campaigns

Its tough in home country

Councils hold the ring

D. Bowie lookalikes

Permeate car parks

Grab the churches while you can

Port-a-loos

Yellow cabins by Methodist doors

New Jersey car parks permeated by

D. Bowie sound-alikes

It's good to live in the country

You can get down to real thinking

Walk around look at geometric tracery

Hedgehogs skirt around your leathered soles

Fall down drunk on the road

It's good to live in the country

Look at yourself as a man

The valley rings with ice-cream vans

It's good to live in the country

Leather soles stick on precinct flagstones

Small up town Americas like your outskirt town

The villagers

Are surrounding the house

The locals have come for their due

It's hard to live in the country