Married, Two Kids

(1)

In 1978
Was in a hotel in Notting Hill Gate
Now in 1992
Staying in a hotel in Notting Hill Gate (2)

Abject

I'm too busy to think
Too busy to work
Just can't cut it

Married, 2 kids
Married, 2 kids

I pretend to go to work
I pretend to go to work
Got a porta-fax (3)
Aftershave like mustard (4)
Two pints of lager do me in
And The Spirit of Man
Is a pub I go in
I'm married, 2 kids
Have a peculiar goatish smell (5)
Am a long-winded article
I get livid 
Married, 2 kids
Married, 2 kids

1. This song, like "The Birmingham School of Business School," may be about Trevor Long, the Fall manager MES accused of pilfering Fall money, and unsuccessfully sued. MES hints at this,  anyway, in an interview with the NME; the journalist doesn't directly quote MES, but reports that "Mark says the guy only started conning him once he'd had two kids." On the other hand, in the same interview MES suggests that "married, two kids" is his name for a more general phenomenon: "I call it 'married, two kids.' Got married, got a mortgage, can't afford to take risks. I've seen it in the Manchester scene, groups trying to do what someone else has done because it's safer."  

From Dan, some enlightened views from MES:

Scribbled note from the sleevenotes of Code:Selfish, as far as I can decipher the words (there are insertions, which I've just accommodated straight into the text): "2 KIDZ: It is the considered opinion here that New Dads are full of crap, & it's cruel to the kids. They should butt out and leave it to their respectives."

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2. Notting Hill Gate is in London.

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3. I think this is a portable fascimile machine.   

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4. Ten years later, "My Ex-Classmates' Kids," a song with a similar theme from Are You Are Missing Winner, contains the line "Up your nose,/ Aftershave like little twigs..."

From the interview quoted above:

"I was brought up, you see your dad in the morning and at tea-time if you're lucky...When a bloke has kids, he goes right down the fuckin' shaft. They start fiddling, they don't concentrate on their work. I come from a family of six, I never saw my dad. But these guys with their pony-tails, they're just hanging about their kids all day. It's cruel to the kids...people go on about child abuse but that's child abuse." There's more; click it and see, it's well worth it. 

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5. From The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris: "Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia" (135). "Hip Priest" appears in the soundtrack of the famous movie version of Harris' novel.

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Married, 2 Kids: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1992