Living Together

As featured in Lucky Bag: The Victoria Wood Song Book, 1^st edition published 1984 by Methuen, ISBN 0-413-56140-2 (hardback), 0-413-56150-X (paperback).

I wrote this song as part of the soundtrack for a television play called ‘Happy Since I Met You’. I wasn’t in it, so I hung round in an anorak making a nuisance of myself.

The play was a love story, with fighting. I’m not very good on love, so I banged in a lot of jokes to help out. I didn’t put any sex in it—my one concession to dramatic trends was to have the couple sitting up in bed eating cheese and tomato sandwiches.

Living together is great.
Living together’s like Popeye and Spinach,
Puts hairs on your chest.
It’s like passing your test.
I’m very impressed.
Fairly splendid,
It’s recommended.

Oh, Living together’s a laugh.
Living together is ever so matey.
It’s him in the bath

With you on the loo.
The last thing you do
Is worry whether you’ll
Stay together but

Ooh in the night in the dark it’s so cosy,

All snuggled up nothing left to say.
Ooh to intrude any more would be nosy.
Let’s slip away, slip away.

Living together is work.
Living together’s like running a business.
You daren’t take a break.

You daren’t call a halt.
It’s always your fault,
And there’s no way of stopping
Production dropping.

Ooh where did all of those moons and those Junes go,

All the romance of a love that’s new?
Now it’s just ‘Who put the knives where the spoons go?’
Was it you? Was it you?

Living together is mad.
Living together’s like being in prison.
You’re never alone.

You’re sharing a cell.
Most days are hell.
In addition there’s no remission,

And ooh in the night you are silently screaming,

Crying for something, you’re not sure what.
You hope you might wake up and find that you’re dreaming,
But you’re not, you’re not, you’re not.

Ó Victoria Wood, 1981