The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

by Dawnie Walton

I popped over to the chemist nearest my hall of residence, and in the back running the shop was one of the saddest-looking men I’d ever seen. Mid-sixties and jowly and completely overwhelmed by his customers come to pick up their prescriptions. But he soothed each one of them, answering their questions and wishing them to feel better. I went back to my room, downed my medicine, and wrote about him from what I imagined to be his perspective. I gave it a jangly sound, very up-tempo, for irony but also to please a crowd. In the verses I go through his customers and their ailments—[singing] “Mr. Trout / Has the gout / Vitamin C will knock it out”—and in the chorus it’s about how he can’t mend his own broken heart. I never say it expressly in the song, but I had imagined the chemist to be a widower. Later it made me think of Dad, obviously, but it was written before. Anyway, I always played that one for American women, because it’s probably the most stereotypically English thing in my repertoire, and they loved it.