| Ice-Cream Man
Lyric by Clive James, music by Pete Atkin
This afternoon the ice-cream man
Has driven his magnetic van
From Angkor Wat or Isfahan
To park down by the meadows
The captain of a pirate ship
He struggles hard to keep his grip
With cannonades of strawb'ry whip
Delivered through the windows
A British Bedford Dormobile
Done over pink for eye appeal
With rainbow discs on every wheel
It makes a magic wagon
A mass of metal glorified
Sesame thrown open wide
And this amazing man inside
Fantastic as a dragon
It must be standing on tiptoe
And reaching up to trade your dough
For scoops of Technicolor snow
That makes the man look royal
To me he looks a normal bloke
With a second line in lukewarm Coke
Busting for a decent smoke
To break the round of toil
I guess I've got a jaundiced eye
The children never spot the lie
They're queueing up and reaching high
For something that tastes lovely
Neapolitan wafers make the day
The king is in his castle gay
And they're behind him all the way
Below me they're above me
Who'd guess from how they make a meal
With darting tongue and teeth of steel
From a mess of frigid cochineal
That they were born to sorrow
Gone to dust the age of kings
Lost the taste for simple things
If only time would give me wings
I'd double back tomorrow
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