A Family Escapade
Song lyrics from the album "No Time Like the Future "

A Family Escapade  ©   Bernard Carney   1996

I remember back in Dublin when i was just a kid

It makes me laugh to think about the things my family did

But of all the silly stories my fondest memories

Are of the days we packed a picnic 

And went off to see the sea

The train was black with people

We were standing in the aisles

When we got there it was raining

And the tide was out for miles

But with the cockles and the mussels

And the buckets and the spades

We'd be off on a family escapade

Chorus

We'd go to Dollymount to Malahide

Dun Laoghaire or to bray

And if the sun would show itself

We'd stay there all the day

With the cockles and the mussels

And the buckets and the spades

We'd be off on a family escapade

We'd be off along the boreens a racing to the sand

With our towels and our togs and our lunches in our hand

There’d be brown banana sandwiches

We'd eat them all the same

They were always full of sand

We thought it's how they got their name

Grandad had his flask of holy water so he said

He often got so holy that we thought that he was dead

So we covered him in sand and put a bottle at his head

All on a family escapade

Chorus

My father gathered wood and made a fire in the sand

Ma would make the tea and throw some rashers in the pan

Then we'd boil a pot of winkles up

And eat them with a pin

And be packing up and leaving

By the time the tide came in

The train was overloaded

But we crushed up and we crammed

The carriages would rock us and the weariness was grand

Until ma remembered grandad was still lying in the sand

All on a family escapade

Chorus