Cabra History.Com

‘Sure do you know what it is all the same, there’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned Chip Sambo and more especially when you can get it out in Bray of all places. Well there I was at a loose end and I decides to go for a good long drive and ended up in Bray. I no more intended to go to Bray than the man in the moon, as the Ma’ used to say. And do you know what it is, as soon as I walked away from the car in my head I could hear all the roaring and screaming of gangs of kids on the beach from years ago. And sure here they all are coming from the train station, gangs of them from Dublin. All the Mammies and Daddies struggling with babies and bags of sandwiches and pots of water and roaring at the kids to stay together and don’t get lost. And what comes around the corner of all things only three bus loads of people from Cabra, the Tenants Association must have organised it. Sure there’s Father O’Farrell on the platform of the bus and he wearing his black hat on a day like this.

All the men from the Parish wearing their Sunday suits and the women in their best dresses and some of them with scarfs on their heads. Sure it’s a great treat altogether for them. The older brother goes off and buys a bar of seaside rock and lets us all have a suck on it and of course it comes with a health warning from him…’If you suck on it too long you’ll get a box in the side of the head’ he tells us. Our hands and mouths are all sticky and we have to run down to the salty sea water to wash ourselves clean. Well what do you know, some ould fella brought his own deckchair and your man on the seafront telling him he can’t put it up on that part of the beach unless he pays for it. It’s great craic altogether.
Well back to my Chip Sambo, I saw this little chipper and asked for a Cod and Chips when the oul one says ‘Do you want any bread and butter with it love.’? And there I was with the old tongue hanging out at the idea but she knew by the look on my face that I did. Well she must have poured a half a bottle of vinegar on the whole thing followed by lashings of salt. Now I can honestly say that the smell coming out of that little window was just massive. Sure if you close your eyes and picture Bray in your head the smell will come to you. Ah the oul Chip Sambo, there’s nothing like it all the same…’