A hand held over a candle in angst-fuelled bravado   A carbon trail scores a moist stretched palm   Trapped in the indecision of another fine menu   And you sit there and ask me to tell you the story so far   This is the story so far      Shuffling your memories dealing your doodles in margins   You scrawl out your poems across a beer-mat or two   And when you declare the point of grave creation   They turn round and ask you to tell them the story so far      This is the story so far      And you listen with a tear in your eye   To their hopes and betrayals and your only reply   Is slàinte mhath      Princes in exile raising the standard drambuie   Parading their anecdotes tired from old campaigns   Holding their own last orders commanding attention   We sit here and listen to all of the story so far      This is the story so far      Take it away, take it away, take it away, take me away      From the dreams on the barbed wire at flanders and bilston glen   From a clydesdale that rusts from the tears of it's broken men   From the realisation that all we've been left behind   Is to stand like our fathers before us in the firing line   Waiting on the whistle to blow, we stand here waiting   On the whistle to blow   They promised us miracles, and the whistle still blows   Broken promises, and the whistle still blows   The whistle still blows