Andrew Paul Regan - Spy Numbers lyrics
rate meI was just a girl
Raised inside a cave
Tiny was my world
Before the strangers came
In an unfamiliar accent
They told me what to say
To ‘study voices’
They’d travelled all this way
To a village on a hillside
Where my family and I
Kept cattle and horses
And pondered the impossible horizon
The distant lights
The potential
They brought equipment
Of a kind we’d never seen
Bright lights and moving parts
Sound recording machines
“Read the numbers
“Speak into the tape
“Say some words you don’t understand
“And this is what we’ll pay...”
More money in a suitcase
Than we’d ever seen in our lives
So we saddled up the horses
And headed towards the horizon
The distant lights
The potential....
Well could I love a city
As a simple country girl
Watch it all unfold
Make my mark on the world?
The suitcase money
Was put aside for me
Fulfil my father’s dreams
Go to university
To a red-brick institution
Where I learned (amongst other things)
That my mother’s home cooking
Was sub-par and somewhat naive
I broadened my horizons
Fulfilled my potential
When I went back to the village
Nothing there had changed
No one recognised me
Until I said my name
The familiar landscape
Was no longer my home
Lights on the horizon
Not so distant any more
And so I thought about careers
And when it came time to decide
An intelligence recruiter
Persuaded me to fight the good fight
Against the enemy
Against the cacophony
The cacophony
