Song

[avevale_intelligencer]

Sung in a chirpy yet somehow mournful cockney voice, probably to a moderato twelve-eight vaguely marchy sort of thing. Well, I say march. More of a saunter really.

This song's for Mister Idle, Mister Chapman (rest his soul!),
Messrs Jones and Palin, Gilliam and Cleese,
Who have gone their sep'rate ways but are remembered as a whole
For a show they did back in the seventies,
When they boldly pushed the boundaries of comedy on the screen
As far as anybody wanted them to go,
And now as I look back on all the wonders that we've seen
There's something that I'd like them all to know...

CHORUS
Some things aren't meant to progress
Some things are great as they are
It's really no big deal to reinvent the wheel
But I'd rather keep the round ones on my car
A house can have two storeys, or even three or four,
But only a raving idiot would keep on adding more
And when the enemy's defeated, it's time to stop the war--
Some things aren't meant to progress.

The purpose of a road is to extend from A to B
So that travellers can move from place to place.
If it just goes on for ever it will end up in the sea
Or projecting off the planet into space.
The ingredients of a stew are calculated, don't you know,
To make enough to serve a normal family;
But if you go on adding stuff your pan will overflow
And you'll hear your loved ones singing plaintively:

CHORUS
Some things aren't meant to progress
They've done all the growing that they need
When I hit six foot four, my body said "No more!"
And I'm really very grateful, yes indeed.
Art is never finished, just abandoned, so they say,
But if you never stopped you'd still be doing it today
And the thing would get so big it would be in the bloody way--
Some things aren't meant to progress.

(SPOKEN) We've been cracking jokes ever since the dawn of time, you know. Mostly the same ones. And we've got fairly good at it. We're learning that some jokes are offensive, racist ones, sexist ones. Nothing wrong with improvement, or weeding out the dead wood. But you can't keep on looking for something new for people to laugh at. They'll laugh, eventually, but not 'cos it's funny, just 'cos they know they're supposed to, or 'cos they're confused or embarrassed or just plain disgusted. And the further away you get from what's actually funny, the harder it is to find your way back. And that's because--

CHORUS
Some things aren't meant to progress,
There's no more to which to aspire;
When you reach a mountain peak, you can stay there for a week,
But you're never going to get any higher.
Let's go back to the comedy we loved in former days
And prove that being funny is not a passing craze
So up with Mister Milligan and down with Ricky Gervaise--
Some things aren't meant to progress
(Like ripe bananas!)
Some things aren't meant to progress
(Or Botticellis!)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it (TTTO "No Place Like Home")
Some things aren't meant to progress!

Prompted by Monty Python--Almost The Truth, which just finished airing on Sky Arts.

Post on my Ancestry endeavours will follow in due course.

Comments

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

You've been *thinking* again, haven't you ?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, since I discovered there's an app for me (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/zander-free-virtual-pet-alien/id451034268?mt=8), I rather thought I'd better...

[gimmeahand.livejournal.com]

I don't remember who originally said this, but it's one of my favorite quotes: "It takes two people to create a work of art -- one to create it, and one to shoot him/her before he/she ruins it."

Such sentiments are usually best set to music. Well done, Mr Nyrond!