If It Wasn't for the 'Ouses in Between

If It Wasn't For The 'Ouses In Between - Gus Elen

If you saw my little backyard

What a pretty spot you'd cry

It's a picture on a sunny summer day

Wiv the turnip tops and cabbages

Wot people doesn't buy

I makes it on a sunday look all gay

The neighbours' finks I grows 'em

And you'd fancy you're in kent

Or at epsom if you gaze into the mews

It's a wonder that the landlord

Doesn't want to raise the rent

Because we've got such nobby distant views

Oh it really is a werry pretty garden

And chingford to the eastward could be seen

Wiv a ladder and some glasses

You could see the 'ackney marshes

If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between

We're as countrified as can be

Wiv a clothes-prop for a tree

The tub-stool makes a rustic little style

Ev'ry time the blooming clock strikes

There's a cuckoo sings to me

And I've painted up to leather lane a mile

I wear this milkman's nightshirt

And I sits outside all day

Like the plough-boy cove

What's mizzled o'er the lea

And when I go indoors at night

They dunno what I say

'Cause my language gets as yokel as can be

Oh it really is a werry pretty garden

And soap-works from the 'ouse-tops could be seen

If I got a rope and pulley

I'd enjoy the breeze more fully

If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between

There's the bunny shares 'is egg-box

With the cross-eyed cock and hen

Though they 'as got the pip and him the morf

In a dog's 'ouse on the line-post

There was pigeons nine or ten

Till someone took a brick and knocked it off

The dust cart though it seldom comes

Is just like 'arvest 'ome

And we mean to rig a dairy up somehow

Put the donkey in the wash-house

Wiv some imitation 'orns

For we're teaching him to moo just like a cow

Oh it really is a werry pretty garden

And 'endon to the westward could be seen

And by clinging to the chimbley

You could see across to wembley

If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between