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The Numbered Streets

from Our Streets Are Numbered by Ribbon Road

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    DVD with a film of Carl Joyce’s photographs taken in Horden Collery, 2015/16 with original songs by Brenda Heslop, performed by Ribbon Road

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about

This song is a comment on the underhand treatment that the residents of these streets have received from ‘Accent’, the housing association who were gifted these houses after pit closure. It speaks of their empty promises and of Tory resentment, still alive and well and aimed at these mining areas. What is left of the original community are unable to leave due to the low value of the houses they bought with redundancy money, and the newer residents are people who have little and no hope of anything else. Their lives are troubled and dark, and because of the actions of Accent, have become dangerous.

lyrics

Be there for me
they told us tales as tall as trees
Be there for me
the breaking day is breaking me
me rent is paid, me head is laid upon the block
of damp and cold and numbered housing stock

Be there for me
for I am all alone and cold
In hungry streets
the rats all live on 9 days old
And if at school they say that I’m a fool
It’s just the price you pay for living poor

Look out to sea
I wish that I was out there free
Far away
from Horden’s prison colliery
They said they’d mend and make the houses dry
But politicians hate the miner’s cry

Be there for me
They say in accent loud and clear
that money is to make
And not for buying beer
It’s not for us but just the chosen few
They bite the given hand that much is true

Be there for me
I cannot feel the stars tonight
That glimmer in the sky
above the dimming light
Me dreams are boarded up, the people’s hands are tied
They will not let us live and love has died

Be there for me
The walls are going higher now
They’re not for me to try
And I can’t show you how
The day has come and gone before we speak
There is no mercy for the poor and weak

Be there for me
they tell us tales as tall as trees
Be there for me
the breaking day is breaking me
me rent is paid, me head is down and I don’t sleep
behind the blinds in Horden’s Numbered Streets

credits

from Our Streets Are Numbered, released September 11, 2016

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Ribbon Road UK

Ribbon Road are:

Brenda Heslop
Geoff Heslop

For over 30 years, Brenda Heslop has been one of the undiscovered talents of songwriting. Only now is she starting to get the attention she has so long deserved, with singers taking up her lovely songs and spreading the word.
Geoff and Brenda now release material under the name Frank and Rose and have a separate Bandcamp page ... more

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