Story Behind The Song

A composite of various fictional characters, but also a real person who lives in my town with a bomb site for a garden dressed in slippers and a tiara.

Lyrics

She sits alone in her
Upholstered art deco chair
A history painted out in
Smudged Maybelline mascara

Slippered, shawled
Silk dressing gown
Decades of layered dust abound
Stranger in her own home town
A life tipped over

Wielding her secateurs
Pruning the parts of a past
Where she never succeeds
And the lights
Are left on forever
Till her lover returns

Denying decline
This withering vine
Her Heathcliff a myth, set in dreams
And the lady wears a tiara
Star of stage and silver screen

Grass uncut, gone to seed
In a once proud garden
Turned to field
The wind a solo sound
Like an out of season seaside town
Shutters down

Lives in an oasis of
Mothballed memories, fated love
Her Darcy, just a fantasy
No happy ever after

With ochre stained fingers
From menthol laced cigarettes
Crushed white hair, tousled, unkempt
And the neighbours
All call her crazy
Though she's just eccentric

Hesitantly adamant
A paradox of sentiment
With nervous malingering fears
Yet the lady, still wears a tiara
Year on year on year....