The Last Bus to Ballymore – Song Description
“Old friends are worth more than schedules, that’s one thing I’ve learned for sure.” Nothing dramatic happens in this song. A man misses a bus, repeatedly, because a neighbour’s story always seems too good to interrupt, and the whole thing could easily read as a portrait of someone who simply can’t manage his own time. I don’t think that’s fair to him. Missing the bus isn’t a failure in this song — it’s a choice, remade fresh at the stop each week, weighing a fixed timetable against an actual person standing in front of him with something to say. He’d probably make the same choice again tomorrow. The schedule he keeps failing is the arbitrary one, invented by a timetable that doesn’t know his neighbours’ names. The one he keeps, without ever quite deciding to, is the human one, and I think that’s the quieter argument the song is making — that punctuality and attention are sometimes genuinely in competition, and it isn’t always obvious, or even wrong, which one deserves to win.
TITLE – THE LAST BUS TO BALLYMORE
Verse 1
Every Friday after market
Just before the evening rush
I’d leave the town for Ballymore
On the half-past-seven bus
I’d plenty time to catch her
Or so I always swore
But somehow things kept happening
Before the road to Ballymore
Chorus
There goes the last bus to Ballymore
Rolling down the lane
I could have caught her easy
If I’d only used my brain
But somebody stopped me talking
Like they’ve done ten times before
And now I’m watching tail lights
As she leaves for Ballymore
Verse 2
Old Murphy from the hardware shop
Was standing by the square
He asked me if I’d fixed the gate
That broke the previous year
One question led to twenty more
And stories by the score
When Murphy finished talking
There was no bus for Ballymore
Chorus
There goes the last bus to Ballymore
Rolling down the lane
I could have caught her easy
If I’d only used my brain
But somebody stopped me talking
Like they’ve done ten times before
And now I’m watching tail lights
As she leaves for Ballymore
Verse 3
Mrs Kelly from the post office
Caught me passing by
To tell me all the village news
Both true and otherwise
She started after lunchtime
And wasn’t finished sure
Till long after I’d missed again
The bus for Ballymore
Chorus
There goes the last bus to Ballymore
Rolling down the lane
I could have caught her easy
If I’d only used my brain
But somebody stopped me talking
Like they’ve done ten times before
And now I’m watching tail lights
As she leaves for Ballymore
Verse 4
I finally made the station
Determined not to fail
I stood beside the shelter
With a grip like iron rail
Then Seamus brought his fiddle out
And played a reel or four
And music stole another ride
On the bus for Ballymore
Bridge
The villagers began a book
To place their weekly bets
On what would stop me this time round
And how delayed I’d get
The baker won three Fridays straight
The priest won twenty-four
Predicting I’d still be talking
When she left for Ballymore
Final Chorus
There goes the last bus to Ballymore
Rolling down the lane
I could have caught her easy
If I’d only used my brain
But old friends are worth more than schedules
That’s one thing I’ve learned for sure
So I’ll probably miss it next Friday too
When she leaves for Ballymore
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty