LYRICS
The afternoon comes sliding sweet, beneath the kitchen window in the heat. In my glass the ice retreats; from the sky the rising rumblin’ of a helicopter freezes me. And just on the other side of here, frantic you are fumbling round in fear, sweat obscures your eyes like tears, edging round the fields to find a way to disappear. And I hear the helicopter drowning your life out with every beat of its terrible wings and I feel the helicopter drowning my heart oh with everything that its being there means. I lace my hair behind my ear; you claw the branches and the air. I spare my heart for you out there because I know we’re both relying on somebody else’s care. And I hear the helicopter drowning your life out with every beat of its terrible wings and I feel the helicopter drowning my heart oh with everything that its being there means and I don’t even know your name, and I won’t pretend that we are just the same. But if I came upon your hiding place I wouldn’t give you away. And I hear the helicopter drowning your life out with every beat of its terrible wings and I feel the helicopter drowning my heart oh with everything that its being there means yes I hear the helicopter hounding you just to get out, get away, you’ve built your life on that refrain oh and I feel the helicopter sounding your heart what a thundering thing in such a fragile machine.

NOTES
I've been tweaking this song for a couple of months now. It was meant for July, but as you know - or maybe you didn't - my awayness in June to Canada for 4 weeks and then Austria for another week, combined with the struggle this particular song has given me in terms of getting it feeling right meant that I couldn't have it ready in time. It takes quite a different angle content-wise than usual - it's a song about a guy who was apparently around in Marston being chased by police, and who had disappeared into our neighboring fields hoping to hide there. I had run into a policeman that morning in the park and he had just returned to his car after an unsuccessful foot-pursuit. He said, 'ah we'll get him; they're sending a helicopter.' Sure enough, around lunch time when Jez and I were sitting outside having our nibbles, the foretold helicopter showed up, and I just got to thinking about the fact that we were sitting there so at ease, sunning ourselves, and not a mile away some poor soul was running essentially for his 'life', and just the discontinuity of that. I felt a lot of sorrow about it for several days and knew I wanted to write about it, but I was waiting for how to come at it. After I began it, there were a lot of rewrites before I was able to get in touch with everything I was feeling and express it in a way that had integrity, capturing both the drama and the earthiness of the whole thing.