Litter Bin

As sung by Victoria Wood on Victoria Wood real life—the songs, CD number OMCD1212, and featured in Lucky Bag: The Victoria Wood Song Book, 2nd edition published 1992 by Methuen, ISBN 0-7493-0819-2

As an insane baby lover of many years’ standing, I’ve always been particularly cast down by newspaper accounts of newborn infants being left on doorsteps and in telephone boxes (how are they expected to reach the receiver?) and brooding on these and other human stupidities led me to write this song.

In my ’87 stage show it was the first half closer, which meant after you’d had your withers wrung, you could at least have a choc-ice.

In a multi-storey carpark
In the middle of the night
There’s a youngish girl just standing
In the artificial light,
With a blank pale face and stringy hair,
By the litter bin, just standing there.

She holds a little baby.

It isn’t very old,
Just a little grubby bundle,
Wrapped up against the cold,
And she looks around, then puts it in,
Puts the baby in the litter bin.

Chorus:
Because it’s a sad world,

What can I tell you?
Half of the things that happen
Don’t make sense at all.
It must be a sad world,
I know, I know, I know, I know,
That puts a baby in a litter bin

In a nice suburban high street,

In the middle of the day,
A small man with a rifle
Blasts a bank clerk’s life away,
And while women scream, the bank clerk’s eyes
Hold a look of mild surprise.

They ask him why he did it.

He only says, "Because,"
And the mother of the bank clerk
Keeps his bedroom as it was.
On his unmade bed she weeps for him
And the baby in the litter bin.

Chorus:
Because it’s a sad world,

It shouldn’t surprise you
If something sounds cruel and pointless.
Chances are, it’s true,
But I wonder if I knew
Somewhere inside, inside, inside, inside,
That they put babies into litter bins.

In a Bentley full of music,

In the early afternoon,
Some chap still drunk from lunchtime
Jumps the lights a bit too soon,
And while Callas sings, she’s so superb,
A crumpled figure hits the kerb.

While her face is covered over,

He blames its on his clutch.
There’s a gutter full of shopping
That no-one wants to touch,
Some broken eggs, a dented tin
And a baby in a litter bin.

Chorus:
Because it’s a sad world,

And people do dumb things,
And people have dumb things done to them,
And that is worse,
And whether you just curse,
Or cry, or cry, or cry, or cry,
There’s still the baby in the litter bin.

Because it’s a sad world,

We have to have kind hearts.
We have to light tiny bonfires
That can pierce the dark.
Then maybe one small spark,
Who knows, who knows, who knows, who knows,
Could possibly begin
To warm the frozen skin
Of the baby in the litter bin.

© Victoria Wood, 1987