Track 10
Central Park Manoeuvres
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10 Central Park Manoeuvres 1968
A cry from the frustrated adolescent male heart! A very early song that I stop playing for a while as I thought it too simple (and strummed, too...). It was rehabilitated when a Cambridge guitarist who’d played with Nick Drake the year before said they liked it…. The title is of course a nod to Al Stewart’s Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres (in which he suffered less frustration); the Central Park in question is if course East Ham, not New York.
She walks through the park with her dazzling beauty
You see her go by you think she looks fruity
You’re feeling so high think you might try maybe you’ll take her
But try as you may you’ll have to pay you’ll never make her
She really looks good in short skirt and tight sweater
Her figure’s so fine, legs couldn’t be better
She sits on your bench you’re feeling so tense she really looks randy
She gets out a book you have a good look but it’s only the Dandy
You say hello and get ready to follow
She makes a remark but her voice sounds so hollow
she gives you a look goes back to her book she pays no attention
for emotion she lacks she’s frightened by sex she believes in abstention
you try one more time and this time you get talking
you say she looks nice she gets up and starts walking
you can’t make her out you’re really in doubt you can’t understand her
she’s brushed you aside fractured your pride still you feel you must land her
you follow her down she stops and turns slowly
she asks what you want she sounds almost holy
you rush to her feet say she looks sweet and ask her out for tomorrow
your pulse starts to race but she laughs in your face and leaves you in sorrow
she only exists as a form of temptation
she’s not there to be touched she’s for observation
her outlook is false she thinks that it’s coarse to have any affection
but she thinks it’s fun when she frustrates the men she needs police protection
one day she will find when her beauty has withered
nobody will care no one will be bothered
she’ll be left on her own numb to the bone she’ll always be lonely
but she cannot complain she’ll inherit her pain the fault’s here and hers only