G'day all,

Dan (aka Liam's Brother: I was looking around a few years back for a version of A Man You Don't Meet every Day to sing with a nice Australian-collected waltz, obviously related to My Home is on the Cold, Cold ground and A Man You Don't Meet every Day. I did see Stan Hugill's song, but found it difficult to sing from an Australian perspective (notice how many stanzas to get past the Bay of Biscay - and how few out here!).

I found a little 1-stanza compressed version of this (collected in south-east Queensland, from Alan Offa, of Toowoomba (who turned out to be an uncle of my old friend Eva Gaddes). this seems to get a complete story across in a remarkably short time ... in contrast to all those long English farmers' songs detailing everything they grew and everything that they do with them on their self-sufficient farms.

This was just enough for me to work on the difficult task of singing along with my own buttion accordion playing. Being an old mouth-organ player, I suffer from Mouth-Organist's Syndrome - compulsive huffing & puffing in concert with the accordion's bellows ... not very good for the singing style! I needed something I never played on harmonica to cut out that connection and a good tune to keep the mechanics of playing out of the other side of my brain. (Alan actually sang this to another tune, but it does belong with something very like the tune I now use.)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

A MAN YOU DON'T MEET EVERY DAY

I've a nice little cottage, all made out mud,
On the border of County Kildare;
I've an acre of ground and I grow my own spuds,
I've plenty - and a little to spare.
So drink up your fill when you're drinking with me,
Whatever the damage; I'll pay;
So be easy and free, when you're drinking with me;
I'm a man you don't meet every day.

HTML line breaks added. --JoeClone, 25-Jul-02.