That Time Of The Night

Introduction: From an unnamed article in No1 Magazine written by Debbie Voller on 30 May 1987, sent to me by Kristie English:

Fish: "It's about paranoia! Torch is shifting against all his vices and feeling paranoid and desperate to be near somebody. The night I started writing this I was in a hotel and I couldn't sleep, and outside the trees were moving and the moon was like flying through the window and sending shapes like crosses over the walls. And it suddenly meant something, y'know, I found myself thinking about religion and death - it was a well hairy night!"

'Free Fire'
(Cf. Assassing)

'Clutching the Short Straw'
Cocaine is often snorted via a short straw, frequently formed from a rolled bank note.

It's been reported that all of Fish-era Marillion have indulged this little fancy at one point or another; I neither know nor particularly care if h does or not. Fish, as the public face of the band, was known for his coke taking, something he documented in his CaS lyrics. He was once caught out by a paparazzi photographer only to appear on the front page of one of the seedier British tabloids under the headline of something like 'Rock Star's Coke Shame Shocker Scandal Donkey Vicar Love Nest'. However, I seem to recall that on that particular occasion it was just an unflattering picture of a very tired Fish.

Bradsbeard said, "There's sort of a dual meaning I think; it also seems to allude to "drawing the short straw," which would indicate bad luck, losing, or being otherwise ill-fated. As in the practice of choosing straws among a group to determine who has to undertake an unpleasant, dangerous, or otherwise undesirable task. The person who draws the short straw generally loses."

Songs with a link have explanations.

• Introduction
• Hotel Hobbies 
• Warm Wet Circles
• That Time of the Night (The Short Straw)
• Just for the Record
• White Russian
• Incommunicado
• Torch Song
• Slàinte Mhath
• Sugar Mice
• The Last Straw
• Happy Ending?
• Going Under
• Tux On
• Beaujolais Day
• Story from a Thin Wall
• Shadows on the Barley
• Sunset Hill
• Tic-Tac-Toe
• Voice in the Crowd
• Exile on Princes Street

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