Strawbs - Lawrence Brown lyrics

Cousins Lawrence Brown was a family man Worked as hard as any man can His wife was thin And his daughters were fat And all day long his daughters just sat And watched their mother scrub the floors And do the other family chores They just sat around indoors A bank clerks life is boring is as hell It's even worse when you're not feeling well He came home one afternoon At four o'clock on the second of June With a cup of tea He went to bed He took a book That he never read By five o'clock Mr Brown was dead The Doctor came and with hardly a look He drew the sheet and closed the book Mrs Brown sat numb and just stared The only one who really cared She thought of all that she had to do And wondered how she would see it through And how she did it no one knew Her daughters went out dancing that night Staying home didn't seem right Mrs Brown was left all alone To sort the future out on her own She got a job in a week or two In an office block with a lousy view Of another block That was lousy too Six months later poor Mrs Brown Had a council flat in the middle of Town Her youngest girl had ran off from home Leaving her mother to cope on her own Her elder daughter quite by chance Had an easy life in the South of France As a paid companion To a maiden Aunt