You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

Not steady enough for the office

Not hard enough for the hod

You'd rather be riding your Norton

Or going fishing with your split cane rod

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

When your grammar school days were over

It was nineteen-seventeen

And you did the right and proper thing

You were just eighteen

You were never mentioned in dispatches

You never mentioned what you did or saw

You were just another keen young man

In the mud and stink of war

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

Not steady enough for the office

Not hard enough for the hod

You'd rather be singing the Pirate King

Or going fishing with your split cane rod

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

You came home from the Great War

With the pips of a captain's rank

A German officer's Luger

And no money in the bank

Your family sent you down in the coal mine

To learn to be captain there

But you didn't stand it very long

You needed the light and the air

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

Not steady enough for the office

Not hard enough for the hod

You'd rather be watching performers fly

Or fishing with your split cane rod

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

When the second war came along

You knew what should be done

You would re-enlist to teach young men

The booby trap and the gun

And they sent you home to Yorkshire

With a crew and a Lewis gun

So you could save your seaside town

From the bombers of the Hun

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

Not steady enough for the office

Not hard enough for the hod

You'd rather be finding the nightjar's nest

Going fishing with your split cane rod

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

And when my mother came to your door

With a baby in her arm

Her big hurt boy just nine years old

Trying to keep her from harm

If you had been a practical man

You would have been forewarned

You would have seen that it never could work

And I would have never been born

Never Any Good - Martin Simpson

There's no proper work in your seaside town

So you come here looking for a job

You were storeman at the power station

Just before I came along

Nobody talked about how you quit

But I know that's what you did

My mother said you were a selfish man

And I was your selfish kid

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

Not steady enough for the office

Not hard enough for the hod

And your Norton it was soon gone

Along with your split cane rod

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

You showed me eyebright in the hedgerow

Speedwell and travellers joy

You showed me how to use my eyes

When I was just a boy

And you taught me how to love a song

And all you knew of nature's ways

The greatest gifts I have ever known

And I use them every day

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job

Not steady enough for the office maybe

Not hard enough for the hod

You'd rather be riding your Norton

Or going fishing with your split cane rod

You were never any good with money

You couldn't even hold a job