Pete Smith - A Lady Without Soul/ Soul Cake (feat. Pete Smith (Vocals, Acoustic Guitar), Manny Grimsley [Fiddle], Tom Wright [Electric Guitars], Soul Cake [Chorus Annie Smith, Pete Delamere, John Newman, Steve Sinclair, Alec Thompson, Martin Watson]) Lyrics

My father was a young man in the thirties
Like many of his age he refused to crawl
He took the royal shilling and went to do his duty
Chose the comradeship of war to the evils of the dole

They shipped him to Bombay to check the rising sun
Then marched him to China and back again
Lost his mates and his health on the jungle trails of Burma
And his hopes and his faith in Man on the road to Mandalay

But the forties brought them peace and a place in a council house
The fifties gave them work and rock and roll
The sixties were a shock that screamed from Mick Jagger's mouth
The seventies brought 'In Place of Strife' and a lady without soul

Dressed in his demob he entered civvy life
A chest full of medals as victory from the dole
Forty-five brought VE day, drunken nights and welfare rights
The morning gave them rationed goods and a future digging coal

For thirty years he served his time working down a local mine
Digging coal to pay his dues towards the new welfare
In seventy-nine he left the mine and hoped to sit with rod and line
But the pension hardly paid the bills and left the cupboards bare

But the forties brought them peace and a place in a council house
The fifties gave them work and rock and roll
The sixties were a shock that screamed from Mick Jagger's mouth
The seventies brought 'In Place of Strife' and a lady without soul

And the eighties brought decay as the right to work was tossed away
Though profits soared and prices rose to please the Tory clan
And the nineties brought them Blair with promises of new welfare
But a politician's promise is not worth a grain of sand

And now he sits in sheltered home and thinks about his mates who've gone
Smokes a fag and sips tv and waits the bugler's call
And once year at armistice he stands around to reminisce
On a life of broken promises and lady without soul

But the forties brought them peace and a place in a council house
The fifties gave them work and rock and roll
The sixties were a shock that screamed from Mick Jagger's mouth
The seventies brought 'In Place of Strife' and a lady without soul

A soul, a soul, a soul cake
Please good miss a soul cake
An apple a pear, a plum or a cherry
Any good thing to make us merry
One for Peter, two for Paul
And three for them that's on the dole