Coffee Homeground

I'm not sure of this, but the part about arsenic tasting like bitter almonds is referenced in Roald Dahl's short story, The Landlady, which is about a lonely lady who runs a bed and breakfast and likes to poison her customers. Then, after they die, she stuffs their bodies and taxidermies them like she did to her pets that died.

Other connections between this song and that story:

*The part about the two missing men is similar to the story of the two missing gentlemen that the story's narrator finds out (too late) were last seen checking into her bed and breakfast before they disappeared.

*"Well maybe you are lonely, And only want a little company, But keep your recipes for the rats to eat And may they rest in peace with coffee-homeground.'

These lyrics DEFINITELY remind of the The Landlady. She kills people and keeps their stuffed bodies for company, because in her own crazy way, they keep her company and through her twisted imagination she's able to create her own stories for them without ever knowing who they really were as people.

Arsenic is a poison that causes a slow, painful death; historically, it has been used in many famous murders. A large does is fatal, but, since it builds up in the system, small doses over time are equally fatal.

Cyanide, another poison, is commonly said to smell like "bitter almonds." It's a component of the poisonous gas that was used in Nazi Germany and is still used today in gas-chamber executions in the United States.

Belladonna (aka "deadly nightshade") is a poisonous plant which, in sub-lethal doses, may cause hallucinations and is thought to be a component of the "flying ointment" used by medieval witches. It contains the alkaloid scopolamine, which in minute doses is used by ophthalmologists to induce dilation of pupils; but mostly it causes death.

"Crippin" refers to Hawley Harvey Crippen, a homeopathic doctor who was famously executed in 1910 for the murder of his second wife Cora Turner; there was evidence that he poisoned her with scopolamine--however, since scopolamine is commonly used in homeopathy, some say it was an accidental overdose.

I think the song is really Kate Bush's humorous rejection of homeopathic medicine, which was a popular fad at the time the song was written.

This is a good song to listen to when you believe everyone's out to get you.

I don't know about this being a song about paranoia. It's more of a playful homage to crime writing and murder mysteries, maybe the kind of literature Kate Bush could have been reading at the time? She sees herself as the heroine in a gothic/crime novel, but a smarter version refusing the killer's offer of coffee.

lol. this is a funny song: the lyrics and the music. i love when kate has some fun, instead of her usual poignant and deep stuff.

has anyone else noticed tha accent? she says "ze" isntead "the" all the time xD and as far as i'm concerned, this song is about a light paranoia of being murdered, the first verses are pretty self explanatory. lionheart isn't a very good album, but this song deffinately stands out the rest :)

From an interview with Kate Bush on a Promo Cassette for Lionheart, 1978:

KB: "Yeah, well there's one called Coffee Homeground which was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it's just a song about someone who thinks they're being poisoned by another person, they think that there's Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it's got poison in it. And it's just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of jamming [??? vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it."

gaffa.org/reaching/im78_lh.html katebushforum.com/forum/index.php

"...pictures of Crippen / lipstick smeared ..."

Cora Crippen was a stage performer who openly had affairs; she even cuckolded Dr. Crippen with a border staying in their own home. Although both Dr. Crippen and his wife were unfaithful to each other, it was widely believed that Cora's affairs could have been a motive for her murder.

Police found human remains buried in the cellar of Crippen's house, and Cora was believed to be the victim - although modern DNA analysis has cast doubt on this belief. Cora's stage name was "Belle Elmore" (beautiful moor).

I love the gruesome word-play that follows" "Torn wallpaper / Have the walls got ears here?"

I owned the cassette version of Lionheart for many years before I ever had a lyrics sheet - with Kate's affected accent, I really couldn't understand a word of this song. It was fun to finally get the lyrics years later and unravel what this weird song is about.

The "torn wallpaper" line is another reference to arsenic, which was a component of wallpaper paste until around WWII. One could obtain the poison by scraping the paste off the wall.