In looking for good songs to feature this week, I was surprised to see that I hadn’t posted a Belle & Sebastian song for 6 months, and only two in the past year.
I was even more surprised to learn that I’d never featured today’s SOTD, ‘My Wandering Days Are Over,’ one of Belle & Sebastian’s signature songs and a favorite of mine.
I love the reference to the band’s own name at the end of this song. There is no Belle or Sabastian in the band (the name came from a popular children’s program) but they fake it well.
I’ve never really understood the song’s chorus, with its references to a circus boy and a disenchanted pony, but the verses ooze the loneliness and melancholy that are mentioned directly in those confusing lines.
Does that mean that I’m getting boring?
You tell me
I’m tired of listening to myself now
I’m tired of fixing things for Michael and the rest of them
You know my bip-bopping days are over
I hung my boots up and then retired from the disco floor
Now the centre of my so called being is
The space between your bed and wardrobe with the louvre doors
I said “My celibate days are over”
You put me straight on the finer points of my speech rehearsed
In the mirror of my steamy bathroom
Where the lino tells a sorry story in a monologue
Six months on, the winter’s gone
The disenchanted pony
Left the town with the circus boy
The circus boy got lonely
It’s summer, and its sister song’s
Been written for the lonely
The circus boy is feeling melancholy
It’s got to be fate that’s doing it
A spooky witch in a sexy dress has been bugging me
With the story of the way it should be
With the story of Sebastian and Belle the singer
I said “My one man band is over”
I hit the drum for the final time and I walked away
I saw you in Japanese restaurant
You were doing it for business men on the piano, Belle
You said it was a living Hell
You said that it was Hell
Meet Me In Montauk 
Well, of course you love a song that actually contains the word “melancholy” right in the chorus!
Our family’s interpretation, as first articulated by Daniel, is that the disenchanted pony and circus boy line is a drug reference. As Amy added in agreement, most cryptic references of this sort are about drugs. 🙂