Scenes from a short Irish summer
EVERYONE was high on the improbability of it. The sun shining. And we were off. Proper off. Not working-from-home off, or technically off but vaguely working. No, we were off, away from our own houses, some of us in other people’s houses. And the sun was shining. Not just for an hour, but for a day, and for the next day too, and even the next day after that. And it shone all day, right into the evening. Proper balmy evenings like on the Med. People still in the sea after the Angelus. And of course everything seemed better. For a while, everything seemed almost fine.
Some scenes from a short Irish summer:
We drive into Clonakilty on the second mini-break and after we get our coffee in Stone Valley Roasters, the first thing we see is a relaxed, fitlooking man walking down the street, being accosted in a good-natured way by everyone he passes. Seeing the leader of the country casually walking along with a bag of messages on a sunny day, communing with his people, makes you feel briefly like you’re in the Hamptons, or Martha’s Vineyard. I saw him looking grim on the news the night before and I will see him again grim and back in Dublin on the news a day or two later. But for a moment, all is well and we are somewhere exciting.
Sherkin Island is like paradise on a sunny day. We find a beach that isn’t beset by ribs and while we get reports by text of packed beaches and beaches being closed across Kerry and elsewhere, we watch people on our beach literally playing football without disturbing anyone else, such is the space here. People living here will tell you the lockdown was a strangely nice time on the island. They had it to themselves again and the sun shone mainly. But they seem welcoming enough of a small bit of life coming back to the place.
We make a detour to Castletownshend on the way back. I haven’t been here for a while and we leave the kids in the car just to take a quick walk around. I’d been walking over a hill down a quiet pastoral road with a friend the day before and we suddenly came upon Castletownshend across the water, and from our vantage point it looked like a perfect little Cornish village, which is presumably what attracts all the English there.
So this evening I do a brief stop-off and we walk down the steep village to the waterfront. A guy engages us in conversation and before long we have it all. We stand with our backs to the water and I point out houses and he gives me the history of who owned what, from the Townshends to the Chivas family to more modern captains of banking and IT. I trade him some other bits and pieces I’ve picked up around the place and we both part happy and knowing slightly more useless information.
On that balmy evening, it was getting late for dinner and we were still on the road so I had promised chips. From a chipper. Then we spotted out of the corner of our eyes that there was a food truck operation outside the Castle Ross hotel in Rosscarbery. I stopped, turned awkwardly and came back. There were picnic tables out in the grounds of the hotel and families eating and taking food away and people milling around waiting. The wait would be half an hour. We hummed and hawed. The kids were getting cranky with hunger. We ordered, and boy, were we glad. We were actually the last order they took. The chef in the van had run out of food. I’m not surprised. Little tacos made with belly pork, perfect little arancini, Middle Eastern lamb, and the promised chips, but hand-cut and home-made, and West Cork wild garlic roast potatoes. We played cards at a picnic table in the warm evening air while we waited and then stuffed ourselves. You could have been in the piazza in a little town in Italy.
The chef said lots of people were asking him why he didn’t have fish and chips. Fish and chips would be easier, I said. And he agreed it would. There were nine different elements in his little pork belly tortillas that were six quid. But you know what? He cared, and he was proud of what he was doing out of his van. And you’d hope that a lot of other people would take a leaf out of his book, and that there’d be little vans like this, full of passion, all over the place.
The surfing was ostensibly for the elder child. We were just coming along to support her. I had promised I’d be worse than her at it. And I was. The pride in her little face each time she managed to stand up was worth anything. Like her father, she can overthink new experiences. I half stood up a couple of times myself.
Our teacher, Brendan from
Kerry, who started surfing on bits of plywood at home in Ballybunion after he saw it on TV, got that I was more a talker than a doer, so he talked to me about the buzz of surfing, how it puts you in touch with nature and life. The few times it all came together for me, and it was suddenly effortless, I saw the attraction. And I decided that maybe I have one last mad act in me. Maybe, despite being 50 and not hugely fit or flexible, I might give surfing a go. It’s improbable and too hard. But that’s no reason not to do it.
And it will give me an opportunity to overthink what it all means. And feed that connection I feel to the sea and this place. Because I think I carry this place in me. I carry in me its light and the darkness, its madness and wildness, its softness and sharp edges.