Out there still, there are the eggmen
Four doors down, someone often flings his windows open late at night or in the early hours and plays I am the Walrus , repeatedly and very loudly. You know the song? Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come. Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday. Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. I am the eggman, they are the eggmen. I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob It doesn’t really bother me. The nights have got cold, so now we have our doors and windows shut. And anyway, after about half an hour a nearer neighbour starts shouting obscenities in such a rage that the broadcast stops. Before that, as the Walrus chugs along with the velocity and resonance of an old steam locomotive, I tick off various background choruses: “oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper,” which my Dublin grandmother would have recognised, and “smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smoke pot,” which she wouldn’t. These were added by an easy-listening group of the time called the Mike Sammes...