I fall asleep with the TV on

Wake with an ache it's another week gone

And consider how my light was spent

And where it was that the real thing went

I asked a wise man for advice

I told him once and I told him twice;

My life is one long damage limitation

He smacked me hard around the head

He handed me a card that read:

Work like you were

Living in the early days of a better nation

Living in the early days of a better nation

Play that tune again! I cried

It's dead and gone the band replied

But as they slowly tried it through

The hands remembered what they had to do

Give it poke and give it licks

The name of the tune is Laying The Bricks

I Stood outside the Albert Hall

And wept, and wrote upon the wall;

Work like you were

Living in the early days of a better nation

Living in the early days of a better nation

We take the water to the tree

She says, Now do the same for me

It takes your sweat as well as art

To dig a channel for the human heart

There is no garden of delight

Unless you weed it day or night

Don't leave your life a lifelong long vacation

I hear her whisper when we meet

And when I crawl between the sheets, she says;

Work like you were

Living in the early days of a better nation

Living in the early days of a better nation