Bum, Bum, Bum

Well, I’d just like to say, thank you very much for coming and being such a nice audience, and I’d like to dedicate this song to the anxious, the insecure. Because we live in an insecure world, don’t we, ladies and gentlemen? Full of unanswered questions like:

and most important of all:

I'm terribly torn
About being born.
I mean, what is the whole thing about?
Plop! Out you come,
Very near someone's bum.
It can't have been properly thought out.

It depends on one sperm
Knowing which way to squirm,

In its version of swimming the channel.
I'd have preferred
To hatch out like a bird,
Or been grown on a piece of damp flannel,

But just to arrive,
And be told you're alive,

Wait ten years for a nice cup of tea,
To be suddenly hurled
Right into the world,
It all seems quite barmy to me.

Isn't it a pity
Life was planned by a committee,

While the clever ones had popped out to the lav?
This is my theory,
Though it isn't very cheery.
Our existence is a harsh 'un.
Try explaining to a Martian,
What a tricky conversation you would have,
And I'm not dense.
It makes no sense.

We're only here cause an egg meets a sperm and then grows blobs on,
Tell me there's more to it than that. I'll just go (rasp) with knobs on.

One thing that gets me seething
Is all this bloody breathing,

No sooner breathing out than breathing in.
It's very tiring,
And there's burping and perspiring.
Another source of loathing
Is the need for wearing clothing,
When some of us look better in our skin,
And no matter how well built,
We all look stupid in a kilt.

If we didn't have hair, we could be brushless and be combless.
If we were bald, our dandruff would be permanently homeless.

Bum to the world! The whole thing stinks.

I never asked to come.
My reasoned, sane, thought-out response,
Is bum, bum, bum!

Another large misgiving
Is this urge to keep on living,

And the way we were designed to run on food,
And this doesn't justify
The individual fruit pie,
And there's never any question
Of actual digestion,
Till it's been divvied out and shovelled in and chewed.
I'd be happy to invest in
A little portable intestine.

I hate meals out, all that please wait here to be seated.
Your food is being sprayed with germs, spat on and re-heated,

And the pinnacle, the steeple,
Is the hell of other people,

And the stupid things they have and say and do,
Like smoking cigarettes,
Or videoing their pets,
People with a pager,
Prats who voted for John Major,
People with a gas fired barbecue,
Women using Hermesetas,
Or showing you photos of their foetus,

And worst of all, and I'll only ever say this once,
Is any Brit with a house in bloody Provence.

Bum to the world! I won't give in.

I raise a cheery thumb,
And on mature reflection I say,
Bum, bum, bum!

Then of course there's dying.
Well, they couldn't have been trying.

Why not find a way to keep us all alive?
There's heaven, I suppose,
But no one really knows.
No doubt heaven will be raining.
Sorry, closed for staff retraining.
Please come back in nineteen ninety-five.
Please use the stairs,
Pearly lift closed for repairs.

When we get there we will be a might depressed,
To find a Benetton, a Little Chef and no doubt a bloody Nat West.

Bum to the world! Let's not be glum.

Each bum can shine a light,
And all that's left for me to say is,
Thank you very much. Good night.

© Victoria Wood