Sea gulls glided and squawked in the sky above Dublin’s shipping port. The road out towards the Poolbeg lighthouse was always a noisy place. The Shelly Banks were a mile’s walk away, past the Pidgeon House Fort. This small beach was formed naturally, by the tides on the Dublin bay side of the harbour wall.

“How long have you been coming here?” asked the boy, a recent arrival from England. He was curious about the name ‘Shelly banks’.

“Sure our family have been using this beach decades, we practically own it now, don’t ya know,” responded his Aunt Rose.

Patrick on holiday with his cousins just looked at her, but did not ask about her strange way of speaking, “it’s Irish,” he thought, not knowing that her lingo was just another dialect, of the English language.

When they arrived at the little beach the tide was in. He cried “Yipee!” as he ran straight into water.

But he quickly found the shells under his feet. “Ouch, crikey!” he exclaimed, and he carefully turned, and walked back very slowly, out of the water.

Aunt Rose then prepared a small area to lay a picnic blanket, and they all gathered for hot chocolate and sand sandwiches. Patrick nursed the cuts on the soles of his feet, from all the shells.

“Now ya know why this place is called the Shelly banks,” His Aunt Rose said to him, laughing while all his Irish cousins looked on mischieviously.