Macaroon Bars

Lyrics:

© WanHu
Swamp music is supposed to be primal so this relates to a formative memory of mine. When I was 14 years old, I was already a long suffering supporter of my local football team. I watched them every week and, occasionally, they would play just well enough to give you a glimpse of hope; but mostly they lost. I didn't really care: I had a good time with my friends. I started going when I was small enough to be lifted over the entrance turnstile by random strangers: graduated to climbing over the wall a half hour before kick off and then, thanks to a nepotistic relative, got a press pass and National Journalist Union rates for two hours every Saturday and sometimes on Tuesday. I was the guy who phoned the guy who phoned the BBC with the football results, for 3 years. Being paid for something I'd be doing anyway had a certain bearing on my decision to become a cook.

The team were having a particularly poor season so, somehow, someone persuaded popular Afro/Uk jazz-funk band, Osibisa, to perform a good luck dance on the pitch. Shortly afterwards, my team got a new manager. Within five months, the average age of player dropped from 29 to 19 and skill levels had shot through the roof. Crowds went from 2-3000 a week to 18,000. Incredibly exciting times at an impressionable age for me. The sights, smells and sounds have stayed with me.
Floodlights; hot beefy beverages, on every match day corner was a guy selling macaroon bars, a Scottish delicacy I recently described to an Italian fine dining Maitre D', a guy who trained in the Vatican kitchens. You got to make a F*****g song about this, he said.

After 3 years, I moved to Glasgow and my team sacked the manager so the fun was over. Alex was the manager's name. Ferguson, maybe. He was very good, I wonder what happened to him?

The French have a fancy called the fondant cream: riff
It was served at the court of louis 14: riff
But The Sun King grew tired of sophisticated gateaux: riff
He said "send a page boy on a coach, the overnight tae Glasgow: riff

Where confectionary discipline has been forsook with gusto
They use sugar, chocolate, coconut and (instant) mashed potato

Get yer macaroon bars x 4
Buy two, eat one now, save one up for later
Sugar, chocolate, coconut and (instant) mashed potato


The Viennese masters of the baking arts
A a right bunch of fuddyduddy, old age farts
They think they're so clever, they think they're so smart
With their apfelstrudels and their sachertortes
Ha! They're trying to make pastries using laminated bread dough
See that coo's arse?, they couldnae hit it with a banjo


Well they make you fat and they rot yer teeth
They give you a sugar rush beyond belief
They're rich but they'll never be a millionaire
All you have to do is just stand by there
Singin "Buy two, eat one now, save one up for later x 3
Get your macaroon bars and guitar solo
Sugar chocolate coconut and (instant) mashed potato

Copyright. W Ian Young (WanHu) August 2021