The sleeve notes to the 2002 album Home say this: "Based on a speech from Eugene O'Neill's quartet of sea plays "The Long Voyage Home". Yank, facing death, concludes "This sailor life's not much to cry 'bout the leaving"." John Tams played a Swedish accordion playing merchant seaman, his first speaking part at the National Theatre, in the play.

Like many of Tams' songs, this one took a long time to write - about ten years in this case.

Bound East For Cardiff

Fair wind and a light to guide me by
A thousand miles of ocean and a million years of sky
It's the promise of the poet - it's the storyteller's lie
Nothing's ever how it seems to be
Can you stay alive and still be lost at sea

I used to care now I don't give a damn
I know every bar and brothel from Argentina to Japan
I've fought my way across every bay and they tell me once that I killed a man
Well maybe it was either him or me
You could say that I saved him from the sea

chorus
And this sailor life's not much to cry 'bout the leaving
Travelling the world around
Trying to get out of sailor town
Another drink - another bar-room brawl
Then you're too drunk to stand but not drunk enough to fall

All the faces and the places they seem the same
Like wreckage on the shoreline we play the loser's game
And all my pay it just drains away I'll never get back home again
Why are the dice all loaded against me
Never chance your luck against the sea

chorus

One more trip and then I'll take my pay
And I'll go back home and make believe I've never been away
I'll look for work and hope someone might still want me to stay
One last drink and then I'm on my own
Still trying to make the long voyage home

chorus

You're not drunk enough
You're not drunk enough
You're not drunk enough...