Lyr Add: My Electronic Watch (Fanthorpe)

Subject: Lyr Add: My Electronic Watch (Fanthorpe)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 08:35 AM

I've used this song a few times, and feel it deserves wider airing.

MY ELECTRONIC WATCH (Parody My Grandfather's clock)
Patricia & Lionel Fanthorpe (1982)

My electronic watch doesn't work very well
Since I wore it while bathing last week.
Its alarm rang a knell, like a Swiss alpine bell,
Now it's merely a discordant squeak.
It would wake me betimes with its simulated chimes,
Or a mouthorgan's chromatic slide.
But its spark … went dark … never to glow again
Once the guarantee died.

.   Ninety days without faltering … elec-tron…elec-tron
.   Its time never altering electron, electron
.   But its spark went dark never to glow again
.   Once the guarantee died

My electronic watch shows strange lights on its face
Since I wore it last week at the baths.
It appears that the damp penetrated its case
Making curious electrical paths.
Now its calendar says that a week has fifteen days.
And it mixes its nones with its ides
But its spark … went dark … never to glow again
Once the guarantee died.

My electronic watch once fell into the bath
And it's never been really the same.
It was more than a watch, for it also combined
A computer & video game.
But the tunes it once played (as the aliens invade)
Have not synchronised since it's been dried.
And its spark … went dark … never to glow again
Once the guarantee died.

It would show you the date, play roulette or calculate,
Multiply or divide at a touch.
Since its unlucky dip on my last bathroom trip
It regards one plus one as too much.
For it makes nasty jerks, and blows bubbles as it works.
Hieroglyphs flash around on each side
For its spark … went dark … never to glow again
Once the guarantee died.

My electronic watch is so hard to adjust
I avoid it whenever I can.
But it's now gone so wrong that adjust it I must
So the book of instructions I scan.
Yet the problem's that these are inscribed in Taiwanese
Not a language that's easy to learn.
Now I long for my old-fashioned half-hunter watch
Which adjusted with one simple turn.



NP

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: My Electronic Watch (Fanthorpe)
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 08:44 AM

Clever.

Robin

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: My Electronic Watch (Fanthorpe)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 09:17 PM

Thanks, Nigel.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: My Electronic Watch (Fanthorpe)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 24 Jul 17 - 09:17 AM

Refresh;

I'm starting to think what I might want to sing at the Science Fiction Worldcon Worldcon 75 in Finland next month