Phantom Floorplan

[Verse 1]
Here are the drawings you left in the loft in Crouch End,
Rolled in a tube marked 'Project: 1958'.
I can still smell the graphite, a fifty-year blend
Of ambition and dust, a line drawn straight.
This was the load-bearing dream, the grand design,
The fenestration planned for the afternoon sun.

[Chorus]
We're living in your phantom floorplan,
A ghost in the machine, a half-drawn hand.
You built the damp-proof course, a perfect line
To keep the London damp out of the family line.

[Verse 2]
Here is the photo of you on the empty lot,
By the Hornsey gasworks, back when they were still hot.
Mum said you'd joke, "One day, this'll all be glass,"
A city sketched in air that would never come to pass.
You're tracing foundations the council wouldn't clear,
Smiling like the future was already here.

[Chorus]
We're living in your phantom floorplan,
A ghost in the machine, a half-drawn hand.
You built the damp-proof course, a perfect line
To keep the London damp out of the family line.

[Bridge]
And I walk right through the living room wall,
Feel the phantom sun in the unbuilt hall.
But the rising damp, it found a hairline crack,
It's the one detail your blueprints still lack.

[Outro]
A perfect line...
In a phantom floorplan.