David Heavenor: Music

In the scenario for this song I always think of Waverley station in Edinburgh in the steam age with the locomotive belching steam and straining to get going along the coast line to London. The guard's whistle shrills and the girl jumps on board.
Another song with an image from Mike Cruickshank's song Mandala. I can't find 'fireflack' in any reference book but it always conjures up starbursts or great explosions somewhere in deep space.

Night Rider



Oh, operator please connect me
Try that last number once again
My fire's flamed up my aide-memoire
But this memory is hard to burn
She said she'd stay around all summer
But ran to catch the midnight train (she made it)
So operator please connect me
I want to talk to her again


I made my roof to shield the starlights
My windows screen the fireflack
And that train that snakes along the coastline
Carries all my light within its tracks
I'd spent a half-remembered winter
So dull with part-forgotten sights (what were they?)
She lit the room, she flared the skyline
Which now melts into the black goodnight

So many words, so few that stick
So many thoughts kept from our lips
So many deeds where the meaning’s split
By rasp of wheels, by pulse of wings
A siren call, night rider's sting


So cold and clear, the charges mount up
I’ve watched the charges mount up
So cold and clear, watch the charges mount up
How the charges mount up


So operator are you listening?
There's such a silence from your end
This poor boy's hopes hang on that number
Won't you punch it through the wires again?
I'm sure it ended with a zero
I know it started with a two (that's one plus one)
So operator please connect me
Don't hang up now, please get me through