"[Spoken Interlude 3]" lyrics - ROBYN HITCHCOCK

Ah, yeah, when you extinguish the candle then you have to pay the penalty.
And the penalty is that you're taken,
you're transported from here by two minotaurs.
Which, you know, are human up to the neck and then they have bull's heads.
They have real bull's heads, they're not just wearing bull head masks,
they actually become bull from the neck up.
The minotaurs have a lot of duct tape and they swaddle you in it
(or gaffer tape, if you're watching in England).
And you're swaddled in duct tape and you're carried away by the two minotaurs
down and endless series of ducts.
And then you're pinpointed just above, about 2723 feet above sea level.
And you are fired out over central London and then you come down.
And you ...
It's the reverse of normal gravity:
It actually gets slower as you get nearer to the ground.
So you run out of momentum about eight feet above Leicester Square.
And everybody thinks that you're a bomb, a thermo-nuclear device.
'Cause we've always been brought up, in our folk stories in Britain,
that the bomb would detonate above ground to achieve maximum devastation.
So as they see this thing, which is you, swaddled in duct tape,
coming down over central London,
people begin to flee and there's enormous traffic congestion
especially on the A4 but also on some of the other main routes.
Like the beginning of the A1 and, whatever its called,
Highbury Corner and that stuff.
It get's more and more cluttered and people are fleeing
and they're starting to tread on each other in their panic
and they're spilling cups of honey
and they're knocking over theodelites and retort stands and trivets
and all those sorts of things.
And a lot of the people are blundering through ancient chemical apparatus.
And there's stuff ...
People have got hundreds of ...
People with slides, you know, slides of tissue.
And things like corroded lungs, they're spilling out in their panic.
And they're saying "Just one more cup of coffee, Miss Patterson".
And then it's getting spilt as well.
And they're getting more and more disturbed.
And rubber tires, which have never seen the outside of a wheel,
they're just cosmetic, they come smashing through the venetian blinds.
And they knock over the paper cups
and they hit the files
and the computers all go blank
and all the big buildings begin to shake
and they realize there's something wrong underground.
So they have a strike underground
and hundreds of passengers are trapped underground
as you get closer and closer to the surface.
And then, just eight feet above Leicester Square you stop.