Beyond the window lies what most call the World and a few the Illusion. When I was young I was told that the people on the other side, of whose beliefs and language nothing is known, decreed long ago that the window should never be covered up.
The sense of place that is integral to so many American pop songs has few equivalents in British pop.
The car window smashed, the briefcase (leather, old-style) taken, the wallet emptied. And now these fragments of a life are scattered on the damp grass by the canal.
Blackpool, Christmas Day. Low season, high winds. The sky swaddled with cloud. The sea restless and threatening. The English seaside resort in winter: shuttered, forlorn, dormant.