INVISIBLE COAT by Randall Stephen Hall

Invisible Coat.

A song with audio file, by Randall Stephen Hall. ©

Just click the link or cut and paste it into your search engine. Thanks.

https://soundcloud.com/randall-stephen-hall/invisible-coat-28-3-15

When our daughters were young and I was picking them up in our Skoda (embarrassing for them but not for me), I began to notice (ten or fifteen years ago)

that many children (not just a few) didn’t wear a raincoat, you know . . . “a raincoat”

or any coat.

The kind of thing that keeps you dry, when it’s wet. After all, precipitation (I had to check the dictionary there), is a pretty common occurrence all over Ireland never mind Scotland, Wales and England. (I’m not talking politics, only rain . . .)

I scribbled these words for a poem one day back in 2009 but the tune didn’t come along until 2013. Yet, in all that time, all those years, what I noticed wasn’t getting better, it was getting worse, especially amongst teenagers (big wee people, the overly cool, bedroom Goths, the coatless).

I see them almost every day, at bus stops, wet, cold . . . but cool! Hoodies under blazers just getting wetter. I feel really sorry for them, for to me they seem to be caught in some form of mental confinement, where sense goes out the window in favour of fashion and remaining in their group. It’s hard to be an individual. (Tell ma about it . . .) They seem to imagine that, on a cold, wet, freezing day, if they wear, just an ordinary raincoat that they will be told off by their friends, not their teacher.

I’m sure it’s more complex than that. A collection of different factors but the situation remains the same. Wet children at bus stops and in classrooms in a country which is wet about 70% of the time. (Is that why we have so many rainbows and still no pot of gold?).

Either way, this very common sight, repeated, again and again, over the past fifteen years (my wife’s a teacher), inspired these words and then the song.

I have an invisible coat

A coat I wear upon my back.

And I have an invisible smile.

A smile I wear when it’s wet outside.

Chorus.

Oh, I’d like a real big coat

A warm and waterproof loving coat.

Oh, I’d like a real big coat.

A warm and waterproof loving coat.

My invisible friends are just like me

We walk to school all wet in threes.

The things they say you just can’t see.

For all their words have taken hold of me.

Chorus.

Paul and Jimmy, well they’re ok

Damp in their seats and wet all day.

In my white socks I know my place.

Who needs a coat, just a wet, wet face.

Chorus.

Don’t let the bullies get you.

Don’t let them get you down.

Don’t let the bullies get you.

Take them out with lovin’ sounds.

Repeat.

end.