The Sailor's Hornpipe
Composer(s): Vivian Stanshall
Performer(s): Vivian Stanshall



The hallway

From outside, an ordinary house
A great house, true - four hundred and eighty three rooms
each one with its own marble wash basin and douche, bidet as it may
But inside, and the positions are reversed
A human failing, some say a disease
but a disease that Sir Francis Dashwood knew, and knew it well

Upstairs, inside and a revelation
It's a discotheque
No, no, uh... there are paintings, real
and look here - a rare seventeenth century masterpiece
and if I can scrape a little of it off
beneath I can find hidden a fourteenth century underpiece

Made entirely of tiny pieces of eggshells
this lurid work has caused controversy in the world of embroidery and anthropologicky
No, I'll say it again, anthropolology
Umm... no quite possibly make an anthropol, no, uh, I mean an apolog... ph...
It has enthralled distinguished professors
and in layman's language is "blinking well baffling"

But to be more obtusely, "buggered if I know" 
Yes, "buggered if I know" 
And that's all we've gleaned so far from experts in fourteenth century painting
renaissance, greengrocers, and recently revived members of the public
Buggered if I know