Nothing Alas Alack: Christmas Day in the workhouse

Every Christmas, someone on a fan forum asks for a Vegas festive playlist. And every year we point them to the same song.

“Nothing Alas Alack” is not a Christmas song. Not really. But it has Christmas Day in it, Father Christmas in it, and lucky bags in it. That is about as festive as Vegas ever got, so it will have to do.

Christmas Day in the workhouse

The song’s best known line borrows from a very old source. “It was Christmas Day in the workhouse” is the opening of a Victorian poem by George R. Sims. For over a century, people have been making rude parodies of it in school playgrounds and pubs.

Terry takes that famous, gloomy opening and does something very Terry with it. In his workhouse, they are handing out lollipops. Later, the setting changes to the doghouse, where Lassie has gone barking mad and Father Christmas turns up with lucky bags.

It is silly. It is also quite bleak. That combination is exactly what Terry did best.

Work, work, work

The song opens with a simple complaint. There is nothing to do but work, nowhere to go but out and nowhere to come but back. Then he swaps work for thinking, and then for drinking.

It is a song about routine and about being stuck. It came out in 1992, at the tail end of a long British recession, when a lot of people were either working too hard or not working at all. “No bees, no honey, no work, no money” is an old proverb, but it lands with real weight here.

The song never gets angry about any of this. That is the difference between Vegas Terry and Specials Terry. In 1981 he would have written a protest song. In 1992 he wrote a shrug.

Progress would be wonderful

There is one line in the middle that we think is one of the cleverest on the whole album. Progress would be wonderful, he says, if only it would stop.

Read it twice. It sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t. It is the feeling of a world changing too fast to keep up with, where every improvement brings a new problem. Thirty odd years later, it feels even truer than it did then.

King bank is calling

The song ends with the word “money” and then a line about king bank calling. It is a slightly sinister little sign off, and it leaves you with the image of a bank manager on the phone on Boxing Day.

The track runs for over five minutes, which gives the words plenty of time to quietly do their damage.

A Christmas song after all

So is it a Christmas song? We say yes. It isn’t cosy, and it isn’t about snow or mistletoe. It is about what Christmas can feel like when you are tired, broke and a bit fed up, which is how a lot of people actually feel in late December.

Put it on after the Queen’s speech, or the King’s speech these days, when everyone has fallen asleep on the sofa. It fits perfectly.

Merry Christmas from all of us here. You can read the full lyrics on the song page.