Up against the wall, Redneck Mother

It's been going round in my head like a mental tic these past few days. I don't even know what started it off, but there it was, even with a tune, and I know it's a Country and Western song. That's alright, but what was I doing listening to it in the first place? I can remember the subsequent line "Mother who has raised her son so well", then a der-der-dah-dah... up to a line "Bustin' Hippies' asses and raisin' hell".

Note the other little ticks in there. Two of them are for a missing letter, well, it's C&W, they don't use the g-sounds, and the third is one of these tricky cases of the plural possessive, because there is one Hippy, two or more Hippies, and we are talking about the bustin' of the asses of the Hippies, so I believe a tick is called for. When the good doctor is in Dr. Zen will usually pronounce definitively on such cases, but he has been on a political jag of late.

Doctor, doctor,
give me your views,
I've got a
bad case of plural abuse

Nope, rotten puns just don't cut it beside the quirky viciousness of "Up against the wall, Redneck Mother"

So how did I come to know a country and western song so well that I could remember the tune as well as some of the words? It was easy enough to track down on YouTube and the other lyric sites. But that still didn't answer the question of how I had come to hear it in the first place and then obviously hear it enough times to park it somewhere inside my head. Could it have been one of the Paddy-gigs I used to drive my brother to? I doubt it. Was it the Tom Jennings band? Possibly. Or, far more sinister, did I have a huge chunk of repressed abuse lurking deep inside me, waiting to burst forth into the light and smother me with shame? Had I been a tame butt-boy for a group of Country-music loving perverted hill-billies somewhere in the green hicksville quarters of the American-tainted English countryside? I scratched my arse experimentally, then a little bit more forcefully. Nope, that sphincter was still virgin-taut, I was glad to find.

The more mundane daily tasks of making a living got in the way for a few hours, and I got a bit of peace inside my head, We both sold some things, Little Petal on ebay and me to a car-parts customer. So we went up to the town at the top of the hill, to the post-office first, and then to the banks. As we parked in the Tesco car-park that doubled as the town shopping car-park, I felt compelled to burst forth into "Up against the wall, Redneck Mother". Two women just getting into a small red car stopped and stared at me. An oops, then. But surely, they can't be C&W fans? Little Petal was doing her best to look like she was with someone else.

I hate the town nearest to us. They cut down some massive trees five years ago in order to build a new Tesco with a car-park, and the trees were pronounced to be suffering from a serious internal disease that would have meant they were likely to have fallen and caused serious damage to parked cars if left there. A large sample ring cut from one of these 'diseased' trees was displayed for a while outside a small cluster of shops for all to see the non-existent problem, but it really goes to show that a large supermarket chain can run rings around any town council when it comes to getting what it wants. We popped into the cafe close to where the ring used to be, but it was just closing. Even the banks stay open later than that in the afternoon. I suspect that the rise in internet shopping is hitting the high street shops hard, and coupled with the new Tesco many of the traders have their backs to the wall...

"Up against the wall, Redneck Mother"

Heads turned. Another Oops.

They closed the street through the town for a few weeks while they 'pedestrianised' it. That meant removing all the give-way markings at the top and bottom junctions and making three large areas of raised granite paving. The idea was to terrify the cars into slowing down and letting pedestrians wander happily across the road. Only it hasn't worked. As I wandered happily across the road last week I felt a crunch as something hit me in the back and legs, and found a mountain-bike rider had cannoned into me. "Where's your bell?" I asked him. His reply, as he dashed off, was "Next time use your eyes, dickhead". I did, I know what he looks like, and will remember.

Now that all the roadworks had finished, the left-hand side of the street was lined with parked cars, and the two-way traffic was having to mount the pavement to pass each other, forcing us pedestrians against the wall

"Up against the wall, Redneck Mother"

More heads turned, in the semi-stationary cars trying to force their way through the pedestrianised centre. They didn't look terrified or hesitant to me, they looked extremely annoyed. I dodged into a cafe doorway, deciding that we ought to have a coffee and put a bit of money back into the trader's purses, but they too were shutting up.

So we went round Tescos instead, for coffee, and for spicy sauces for my noodle concoctions, because I believe that having spicy food cranks up the metabolism a bit and helps you to shed some weight. At the checkout counter, I murmured "Up against the wall, Redneck Mother" sotto voce, and got a quick glare from both Little Petal and the checkout lady.

And so we finally got back out into the fresh but windy open air. The town is on the top of a hill, and after they cut the trees down there were too few natural windbreaks left. It won't be like that for ever, they're building new housing estates to the East, which will help break about a quarter of the vicious winds that otherwise roll unchecked over the bleak expanse of tarmac and parked cars.

"Up against the wall, Redneck mother", full-bellow, knowing that the wind would whip the words away before anybody else could hear them. Two women glared angrily at me from inside a small red car with the windows rolled down. It was them again, they were still there. Had they been sitting in their car for nearly 30 minutes waiting for me to return to check up on me? I smiled at them, and their faces changed to looks of disgust. I found out why when I squeezed into the passenger seat and smiled at myself in the vanity mirror. The liquorice stick I'd been chewing had left me with horrible brown-yellow stained teeth.

The skin of my yellow country teeth

Oh God, don't start that again. Although it is a much better song.

Insanity doesn't run in our family, but I'm getting worried that it might gallop.

Just in case you really want to know what the hell that song sounds like, here it is:



20090119 No it isn't, I hate the way the net can't stand still for five minutes. Call it bladder-weakness.

Here's an even more Yee-hargh version than the missing one:



And just in case they pull that one too, here's another:



The bad pun earlier was on a Robert Palmer song, and since YouToob won't allow his video to be embedded, and since I found 'House' quite watchable, here is the song with a different video subject



And the song prompted by the liquorice smile is



Warning, awful sound quality.