The Cloud Factory

Sometimes you hear a song that is so touching and that can speak so tenderly it brings tears. Bill Caddick's song does that. Listen to June Tabor singing on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYYkDJDUYI









The Cloud Factory
(Bill Caddick)

My father worked in the Cloud Factory,
He'd come home wreathed in dreams each day
My Mother took his cloudy clothes
To brush the threads of dreams away.
She'd scold and say "you and your dreams,
They're just for kids and fools like you."
But Father he'd just wink his eye and smile and say "Are you sure that's true?"

Chorus
My Father taught me how to sing. He sang that dreams were everything,
Can't be bought and can't be sold, More than silver,more than gold.

My Mother thought him fanciful,
She used to chide him all the while,
But me, I thought him wonderful,
Do anything to see him smile.
I used to hear him singing low,
The words are with me to this day:
"You have to hold on to youre dreams or else they simply slip away".

The last time I saw him ill and dying,
The only time I saw him cry.
Too late for dreams to come true now,
As he watched his last cloud rolling by.
Back home she opened windows wide,
And let the clouds out strand by strand
Til all but one had blown away and I caught and kept it in my hand.

My Mother doesn't do much lately
With no more clouds to clear away.
since they closed the factory down
No dreams seem to drift this way.
I found her sitting alone and still,
at first I thought her fasst asleep.
But Father'sd coat lay in her lap and around her feet the dreams lay deep.

Chorus
She said "He taught me how to sing......

Sometimes I pass the disused factory
And gaze into the empty sky,
and if I let the fancy lead me
A dream or two comes drifting by.
Oh I'll teach me children how to sing,
To sing that dreams are everything,
Can't be bought and can't be sold - More than silver, More than gold.


This track from At the Wood's Heart