Brilliant, brilliant song. I love the joy in the chorus - the harmony is just ... epic. Seen footage of them singing this live and Alan was just beaming when he sang it. One to belt out in the shower, I've always found.
I agree with the cmments above that the song is open to any interpretation and that it may even be meaningless. BUT for me the song seems to tell the story, albeit in a dreamily veilled way, of some sort of tragety. The lines "After expenses and pulling up fences" imples that there was a payout of some sort (redundancy? life insurance? something more sinister - silence money? witness protection?) and that the family had to up sticks and move house. Why move house? A simple downscale due to loss of earnings or was it the fleeing of some sort of scandal?
So for me those lines are at the heart of the song.
Brilliant, brilliant song. I love the joy in the chorus - the harmony is just ... epic. Seen footage of them singing this live and Alan was just beaming when he sang it. One to belt out in the shower, I've always found.
I agree with the cmments above that the song is open to any interpretation and that it may even be meaningless. BUT for me the song seems to tell the story, albeit in a dreamily veilled way, of some sort of tragety. The lines "After expenses and pulling up fences" imples that there was a payout of some sort (redundancy? life insurance? something more sinister - silence money? witness protection?) and that the family had to up sticks and move house. Why move house? A simple downscale due to loss of earnings or was it the fleeing of some sort of scandal?
So for me those lines are at the heart of the song.