Lyrics Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott – Advice To Daughters

Let no stone go unturned
No village go unburned
Let nations price taggers
Stick their sallow daggers

Let our very children
Sold as X-Factor cattle
Be stripped in teenage battle
As slabs of beef from bone, slabs of beef from bone

Let every minute of every day
Let no hour go unconcerned
In thrall or bent
To those bastards we pray
So no sovereign peace goes unearned

No child that you’d not sell
No memory you’d not chop or fell
No corner that you’d not plough
Duly burn and cast down to hell

Advice to daughters 1, 2 and 3
When you’re too old to sit on Dad’s knee
In the words of your Grandpa
When we’d given up hope
With so little left that was ours

(Telescope)
Don’t buy a 50p telescope
(Stars)
You’ll only see 50p stars, my girl
(Telescope)
Don’t buy a 50p telescope
(Stars)

Let’s carry around some bottles of water
To rattle around with the keys to your car
Are your jodhpurs stuck right up
The crack of your arse?
Mine still are

Let’s strike up a loud conversation
Of off piste or on
And turn the volume right up
When it’s some place we’ve been
And they’ve not gone

Let’s keep putting ‘right now’
After everything we say
Till a simple ‘at the moment’
Seems a dark and dark and distant day

Let’s chew gum like a six year old
With sunglasses on our head
So in winter they know
We’re half Brit and definitely half Med

Advice to daughters 1, 2 and 3
When you’re too old to sit on Dad’s knee
In the words of your Grandpa
When we’d given up hope
With so little left that was ours

(Telescope)
Don’t buy a 50p telescope
(Stars)
You’ll only see 50p stars, my girl
(Telescope)
Don’t buy a 50p telescope
(Stars)
You’ll only see 50p stars

Let’s go shopping in the better half quarter
Let’s look around the bazaar
5 pounds for a bottle of fizzy water
I’d rather be old than whatever
It is you are

See they do not like the outspoken
Only broken or soon on the mend
No time for bridges or valley ridges
No diversion nor no mountain bend

Let’s wreck the earth and do India
On the cheap in our bare feet
Come back home, order takeaway
Mock the way that they speak

Beware that coffee-to-go carrying bastard
He’s trying to kill you, child
Take ploughman’s lunch, reach it by path
And take that luke warm pint of mild

Until every path we may tread upon
And everything we ever see
Is more valuable to them and their kids
And valueless to me or thee

Advice to daughters 1, 2 and 3
When you’re too old to sit on Dad’s knee
In the words of your Grandpa
When we’d given up hope
With so little left that was ours

(Telescope)
Don’t buy a 50p telescope
(Stars)
You’ll only see 50p stars, my girl
(Telescope)
Don’t buy a 50p telescope
(Stars)
You’ll only see 50p stars

We are the world — no you’re not
You’re overpaid chancers
On an oversize yacht
Message in a bottle to Sting
Lose the fuckin’ yoga
And the yang and fuckin’ ying
If you wanna teach the world to sing

(Shotgun)
Don’t buy a 50p shotgun
(Stars)
You’ll only shoot 50p stars, my girl
(Shotgun)
Don’t buy a 50p shotgun
(Stars)
You’ll only shoot 50p stars

x2

Let’s adopt some African babies
Now we know they’re free of rabies
Shove them in a bag at the port
Then into the back of our Mercedes

Everything we tread upon
And everything we ever see
Is more valuable to them and their kids
And valueless to me or thee