A Song Lyric - 'Sheer Force of Habit'

One of the many fun things about following quite a few people on Twitter is that things pop up in the stream that can sometimes inspire or, at least, incite a piece of writing action.

One of my weaknesses is that I like to try to write song lyrics from time to time.  They're really pretty much doggerel and the fact there are no tunes for them rather emphasises that perception but, hey, I 'm not hurting anyone and it keeps me off the streets, right?

My simplistic view of lyric writing is that many songs spring up out of little phrases which we know and use regularly without thinking about them.  Others arise out of odd, distinctive, expressions which make you stop and think when you hear them.  So, whenever such a phrase turns up, I like to try to mess with it a little.

It happened previously when @cherrymorello told me she was 'Driving up to Glasto with the offspring in the back'.  The resultant lyric is here.

@Gerrymulvenna also set one of my lyrics to a tune and sang it on his blog.  That was great and gave me a lot of pleasure.  Here's a link to it.

This time it was @SianMeadowcroft who put forward the notion of loving something out of 'sheer force of habit'.  I thought it was a very neat idea.  

If this has been done before, please don't sue me, I'm not aware of it.

Sheer Force of Habit

I’m trying to kick you
To give you right up
It’s stupid, I know, but it’s true
I’m still loving you out of sheer force of habit
There’s no patch for my craving for you.

I’ve been to the doctor
I’ve been to the church
The witch and the hypnotist too
But I’m still loving you out of sheer force of habit
My heart just needs something to do.

Should never have started, should just have said no.
The memory of you makes me shake
I should have been stronger and told you to go
You’re a mighty tough habit to break.

I pace down the hallways
I scratch at my arms
I’m restless the endless night through
Cause I’m still loving you out of sheer force of habit
I’ll never be all-clear of you



I think it would have a sort of overblown Engelburt Humperdink or Late Elvis kind of a vibe to it but what do I know?

I just scribble this stuff down...


PS:  The inestimable Gerry Mulvenna sings his version of the song here.

What a guy!

Doodling With the Dice

In October, which is coming up fast,  I’ve been asked to do some children’s workshops in creative writing as part of the Linenhall’s annual Roolaboola Children's Festival.

I’m planning to use a really cool toy called ‘Rory’s Story Cubes’ to show how stories can be made up and hopefully then crafted a little.  The cubes are lovely things – made up of nine dice with pictures on each side.  You roll the dice and make up a story on what you see.  The kids in the workshops will make up stories and then we will work together to make up a story which I will read aloud to an audience the next day.

If I’m going to do this, I figured I’d better get some practice in so, here, for the first time ever, is me rolling the cubes for a story.  I’m only allowing myself one throw.

(Roll, throw)

Okay… I got the following:  A question mark,  a bee, a magnifying glass, a sad face, a lock, a mobile phone, a crescent moon, a tower and a bridge.

Jaysus… is there still time to cancel?

Okay....

Dial Bee for Blunder

Bee mobile phones are incredibly small and that’s why you hardly ever see them and even scoff at the thought that they might even actually exist.  But they do and you shouldn’t scoff., if the wind changes when you’re doing it, your mouth will be left stuck in a permanent scoffing expression and you will never again get offered cake.

On the day that Roger the Bee lost his mobile phone, he tried to cover it up out of embarrassment.

When he returned from his pollen scouting session, he tried to convey the location of the bounty he had found by the old fashioned method of bee-dancing.  His colleagues looked at him in unbridled dismay.  They even phoned up their friends to come and see Stupid Roger trying to do the Ancient Honey Dance.  One of those that flew over scoffed and the wind changed and, well, you know the rest.

Honey watched the sad dance from a distance.  She was a gentle, kind, lady bee who hated the incredible obviousness of her name.  She had sweet and sticky feelings for Roger and, now, after she saw him trying to dance out his directions like their grandfathers used to do (in the days before mobile phones) she took him aside and buzzed softly in his ear.

“Where was the last time you saw it?” she buzzed and Roger didn’t even bother pretending that he didn’t know what she meant.

“I had it down by the Old Stone Bridge this morning,” he said.

Honey knew that because he had used it to call her and ask her whether she might like to go to the hivetop and spoon under the crescent moon that evening.  Bee-spooning, like hedgehog mating, is a careful and tentative affair but it is very rewarding, particularly in the early spring moonlight.

The call had ended in a rather dreamy, achy, manner and Honey could quite understand how Roger might have neglected to take his phone along with him when he flew back.

“Let’s go back there now and see if we can find it.”  Suggested Honey.

So they buzzed off back to the bridge blissfully unaware of the trail of alliteration they left behind them.

There was plenty of signs at the Old Stone Bridge but, alas, there was no sign of a phone.

Roger felt as if he could break down and cry and so that's exactly what he did.  It was neither a resilient nor a macho thing to do but Honey did not love Roger for such qualities.  She loved him because he was in touch with his Inner Apodia and because he spooned really really nice.

She came to a decision about what to do and, before she could think herself back out of it, she did it.

She put her feelers to her temple and used that magical fourteenth sense that lady bees have but that men bees have long since given up in favour of bigger stings.  She pushed her senses out into the world of nature around the Old Stone Bridge seeking the gentle carrier of a lost mobile phone – or ‘Handy’ as German bees tend to call theirs.  Then, against all odds, she felt it, a tingling in her senses like a tingly bee sense thing.

“It’s over there,” she said excitedly, pointing to the Old Stone Tower which stood beside the Old Stone Bridge, “it’s in there, lying on the top floor.”

“But how do you-“ started Roger but then he understood that Honey had used her fourteenth sense to help him.  He also knew that girl bees can only use their fourteenth sense once in their entire lives and that they invariably save that moment for when they are bopped by a rolled-up newspaper at a human picnic and need to bring themselves back to life.

“I can’t believe that you did that for me,” Roger said as they flew into the old locked tower in search of the phone, “what will you do now when the humans strike you?”

Honey smiled.

“I’ll just have to rely on you coming to rescue me,” she said.

And later that evening, as the pale crescent moon rose slowly above them, as they spooned so gently and so very dangerously, Roger swore quietly on his newly-rescued phone that, when the time came, he would do exactly that.