Album: Cold Chisel (1978)

One Long Day

City life is closing in on me
The way things go, thirty years,
Bus timetable'll be my elergy

Up at seven every working day
Pay comes in, pay goes out
It's a week-by-week charade

General panic in the marketplace
Boss found hung in office
Could not stand the pace

And as the peak-hour traffic jams below
Someone gets the story, somebody spread the rumour
People come and go

Wandered down along the river last night
Call me romantic, I say I couldn't sleep
Until the first-light struck me down

Padding homeward on the inside lane
Early morning, freeway's cool and quiet
Dodging rubber stains

People talking in a seaside bar
I ain't sentimental, but Lord
Sometimes I get that gypsy urge to travel far

You know I'll disappear some long weekend
Find a mangrove landscape
Stretch out along some busted jetty
And forget who I am

You go to move
You got to go
You go to be somebody
You got to roll
You got to stop
You got to change
You got to make a little money
And be a little strange

And one long day
Is all it takes to steal her heart away
One long night
And it's allright, you've done it again
Soft, low words
And slender ladies, beneath the cafe fans
One long day
Layed by dreams
Cotton dresses, a Spanish border town
Dreams so far
From the subway, the crowds heading home
Close each day
In technicolor, a million miles away
One long night and you're alone

Meanwhile
City ways
Life goes creeping on
Sometimes
I get the blues