'...the lyrics came from frequent visits to a home for retired service men called Broughton House, in Salford Manchester, were I'd often go to visit my grandfather. It made me very aware of my own relative youth and how precious my time was. There was one chap there, a former seaman in the merchant navy, who was bound to a wheelchair and likened his life there to being buried alive. I use to take him some hash whenever I went over and he'd sit in his chair, getting stoned and watching TV. He'd call them "funny cigarettes." He used to talk of all these far-away exotic sounding places he'd visited, like Tangier.'
Mark Burgess explains it like this:
'...the lyrics came from frequent visits to a home for retired service men called Broughton House, in Salford Manchester, were I'd often go to visit my grandfather. It made me very aware of my own relative youth and how precious my time was. There was one chap there, a former seaman in the merchant navy, who was bound to a wheelchair and likened his life there to being buried alive. I use to take him some hash whenever I went over and he'd sit in his chair, getting stoned and watching TV. He'd call them "funny cigarettes." He used to talk of all these far-away exotic sounding places he'd visited, like Tangier.'
P.S. Great, creepy, sad song.