Bohemia Village Voice

About twenty minutes into the lecture, Edward announced  “I think maybe it’s time for a song”. He said he’d considered “The laughing policeman” and “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman”,  but he’d finally settled on a slightly cheeky ditty of many verses, which he sang without a song sheet, “Instead of having a soldier, wouldn’t a policeman do?” The song is about a single woman who meets a soldier who says ‘give me your purse, and I’ll buy you a drink’. They stay in a pub till closing time, by when the soldier has disappeared and a policeman comes on the scene. He tries persuading the woman to come to the police station, but she only wants to go ‘where the soldiers go’. Eventually, he says he’ll take her to Hyde Park, as that’s where ‘all the soldiers go’.