Reader, we ate them. The spotted apples on the tree on the short walk outside Nontron. On the winding road near the stream, the little apple tree just there, as pastoral a picture as you could hope for. I wish I’d taken a photo now. I remembered those lines from Big Yellow Taxi:
Our second day’s walking was around Agonac, a small town about a 20 minute drive south-east, and the morning fog hadn’t yet lifted, so we couldn’t see much of the countryside as we headed down there. But we knew it would, as the sun rose and warmed the day. Der had been up and out on the porch when I’d come back from Aldi with the baguettes rustiques first thing that morning, watching a watery dawn rise over the glen beyond, brightening the trees – the same trees the sun had reddened as it set the evening before, the darkening slowly pushing up its soft and tired red light until finally it was only a thread at the treetops and then it was gone.
We wanted to start our first day’s walking from the house so that’s what we did. By making our way down to the town via the paths along the meadow, and then taking on two loops in a figure of 8 route around Brantôme, near to where we were based. We’d had a short stroll around the town the day before finding our bearings and that was pleasant – it’s picturesque and old and cobbled and French. We were buoyed just to be there, after the long drive down from Nantes the day before and having met Aude and her nephew Bastien, and Marine, and especially Aude’s mother, all of 88 years old – that was a wonderful treat.
All the old Cork City cinemas get together now and again, for a few jars in a quiet pub, and to reminisce about the good old days. Capital is in great form tonight – they’re making a retail centre where he lay derelict for years, and he’s proud of that. Capital – Come here lads, what was the best fillum ye ever showed? I can go back to the forties, but still, I think for me it was Jaws in ’75. That was a great show, a big breakthrough for Spielberg, and I had queues all the way ‘round to Oliver Plunkett Street. The screeching of the girls when that shark came out of the water, you never heard the like of it. And the John Williams music when it was going to attack. Dadum, dadum, dadum. Great show. What about you, Savoy?
“Onions! Onions! Three for a penny.” Once I sells off the last of these, I’ll go over to the Market and get a nice bit of tripe for Joseph’s tea. He loves the bit of tripe boiled up in milk. He be’s starving after taking the horse and trap all the way to Ballycotton, to get them poppies and carrots. I hope to God he don’t go into that dirty pub and lave everything on the cart outside like he done a few weeks ago.
I’m a West Cork scaffold, I’m on the go now 22 years, and I work all over the county. I even did a job in Tralee once – I was glad to get out of the place to be honest, they’re wicked boastful down there about their footballers. Right now I’ve a job in Cork City, in South Terrace. I’m outside the old Jewish Synagogue, that’s being renovated. Now so. This is different. This is something different altogether, lads.
I’m the golden fish on Shandon. Well you might call it Shandon but it’s St. Anne’s Church to me, and from here I can see my city in all its manifestations and its finery. I’m a salmon, not a goldfish. Do not call me ‘the goldfish’ on Shandon. I don’t like ‘the goldie fish’ either – it’s somewhat demeaning. You don’t hear the golden angel on Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral being called the ‘goldie angel’ do you?
And so, we have St. Brigid’s Day. Lá ‘le Bríde. February 1st. We made it! We got battered and bruised by storms Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, Desmond, Eva, Frank, and Gertrude, but you know what? We’re still here and they’re gone. That’s what. And now we’ve Henry but that will pass too. Now we’ll see the days lengthening. Now we’ll start to feel the touch of Spring, like a girl who knows she’s going to be kissed for the first time, any moment, any moment, any moment… NOW. And summer not far behind. I can already hear the sweet shriek of the Swift in the high bright air. I see a glint in Jackdaws’ eyes as they coolly watch me cycling by. I was down in Crosshaven early yesterday (sitting outside a café, after a cycle – in January) and a young Rook was hopping around picking up crumbs. He has
I always look out to the garden (such as it is) when I’m having my breakfast (such as it is), even in the paling grey mornings of an Irish November* (such as they are). Just joking. The garden is fine, and the breakfast finer. And mornings bring miracles and the hope of renewal. And outside the window there is a patio area and a concrete retaining wall painted white by my own hand. And growing from the apparently barren pebbles on the shaded ground below a proud unlikely nasturtium flourishes each year. It appears in early Summer, full of curiosity and hope (as perennials do) and crawls its tiptoe creep along the stones and the patio slabs. One, two, three, four stems grow and thicken and seek the purchase they need to go upwards, onward, towards the bounty of light. Like fingers feeling under the bed sheets for the promise
