The Cottage - Day 19
It’s not the Mediterranean views of yesterday morning but the relentless parade of beautiful days continues.
30 sheep are sitting on the slope of the near hill. One is up eating his breakfast. It is the one that is up that has the dog in a barking fit.
I stand outside and look around. I try to see a couple of houses to the west that I know only by their lights in the night, but I don’t find them. Maybe they only exist in the night.
With the naked eye I can see clearly that the large vessel has gone back in again to the harbour of the far island. Did it just pull out a bit for a night-time party?
The dog is playing with a bee and lucky that the rest of beedom on the fuchsias aren’t a vengeful nation. It’s a thin layer of dappled white clouds high in the sky through which the sun bleeds and occasionally even peeps through.
It’s not cold, and there’s no threat of rain. Would love to go for a walk but I need to box things up. The van comes tomorrow night.
3 miles to the northeast I can see a short stretch of the main road in the region, and on it I see the bus to Dublin. On the water the ferries swap positions.
There is no attic in the cottage, adding to the sense of space which a 2-roomed dwelling can use. You can’t use that space for storage but there’s value in feeling like there’s space at hand.
The roof window in the kitchen is the right size and shape for the sun to cast its bright light directly onto the art table - a perfect fit. It is time to dismantle the art table and get it ready for transport.
Something catches my eye. It is geese. Six of them are flying west along the coast. I follow them for 5 miles until they turn to the sea.
As promised I let the dog choose the route of the day’s walk. She chooses the opposite of what she wanted yesterday, not right to the stone walls and green fields but left to the bushes and then away from the gap. Beside us a meadow pipit rises up from the bog and celebrates our choices.
We talk a lot on the way to the crossroads, stopping once in a while to just look behind at the mountains or to look close up at the heather. We go on towards the main road.
I don’t like to admit this, but there is something we pass on the side of the road. We have passed it before. It has moss on its north side so it’s a little buried into the peat, but it’s unmistakeable as to what it is. It is my first tennis ball to find in Ireland since returning over a year ago.
There is a stone cross about a hundred metres along the main road in a stone circle. Although there is no traffic, there is also no shoulder, not even a few inches. After Dog-dog’s pull out of her collar yesterday I decide against risking surprise by speeding traffic to get there. Plus the cross seems perfect to remain unseen, something that will keep for any time in the future when I might return as a tourist.
As residents we walk back. We meet Rex again. His owner comes out and roars at him before I have a chance to shake my stick. A minibus goes past us, the sign on its back identifying it as part of something called the Youthreach programme. Clouds dissipate.
-Dog-dog, do you know the theme from “Van Der Valk” ?
-Eye-Level
-What?
-Eye-Level. The tune is called Eye-Level.
-Oh. Well anyway, I was thinking we could make a film about our life in the cottage and that would be good theme music.
-You’d have to ask the Simon Park Orchestra.
-Who?
-The Simon Park Orchestra. It’s their tune.
-How do you know these things?
-I’m a dog.
Dog-dog jolts me as I walk in the gate into our drive. She pulls me back and walks over to the postbox where she waits looking at it. So for one more day I step on the rock in the small bog pool, and lean over the barbed wire fence as I open the back door and look into an empty postbox.
We have walked 4 miles.
I open biscuits that came with me from Dublin. They’re chocolate chip cookies. I’m not a biscuit man. And I don’t like chocolate. But I’m low in food so I struggle through 3.
Low grey clouds have taken over from the high dappled white unconvincing cover of earlier. There is now no horizon, only islands in the mist.
Eat the last 2 slices of bread. It’s tomorrow’s breakfast but I want to pack the toaster.
As the light declines, Dog-dog leaves the window on the world and asks me to fix her bed. This frees up the chest in the window from whereon she looks at the world. I pack into it all the unfinished paintings. Back again into darkness.
I don’t want them in storage for another year. I don’t want them in storage again at all. My poor brain is tired, working on them without paint and now having to stop as I put the chest lid on them. There are over 30.
As the last bit of colour ebbs from the scene outside, some bird cacks up a racket. It’s not a jackdaw nor a magpie. It is the loudest noise of the day. Even when we had reached the main road on our walk earlier, only one vehicle went past there, and it a tractor.
It is so misty that the lighthouse looks detached from the rest of the far island. Perhaps that’s the reason there’s a lighthouse there.
My pictures are all down. The other things that make a house a home are down now and I’m trying to remember into which boxes everything came from. My labelling was loose. It’s not a home anymore, at least not my home; it’s a property again.
I hold my favourite paintbrushes one at a time. Dry, beat up, and incredibly familiar. To think I went a year not even seeing them. I put them back in their case, and lock it.
As another insect gently pings off the window I look at my tea cosies. I have 3. How do I do this again? I’ll be using one until just before the door is closed behind me. Do I pack the other 2 now anyway?
The dog snores quietly.
Read the Next Day at the cottage
Read the Previous Day at the cottage
List of all the Days at the Cottage
More from The Cottage:
• Day 1 at The Cottage
• Photos of The Cottage
• 12 Photos of Scenery Around The Cottage
• 12 Photos not all Mountains and Islands
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Maybe as she snores, Dog-dog is dreaming of how wonderful it was to have her Eolaí all to herself these past 19 days? The exploring. The conversations. The adventure of it all. And, we readers benefitting from your glorious word-paintings. (Sorry, I try to be a silver-lining type.)
Please take care, Eolaí, and know we are all praying that the next place you land will be even more special (and drier).
Slán
i will miss this.
driving home from work last night,i caught myself thinking about your walks and the bees. it surprised me to realize i was almost entirely there.
i selfishly hope you keep this up…. wherever you find yourself next.and i offer up sincere condolences for your loss.
it’s better to have loved and lost…..
thank you.
Has it really been a year? In some ways it seems like last week.
In reverse order:
Spyder - September 11 is the anniversary of my return, though sometimes I count February 1 as the real date as that was when I brought Dog-dog to Ireland, and the months before then had mostly been spent travelling. Either way, yes, it does all seem so recent.
Stephanie - Thank you. I found great company in the noise of the bees, and they’re like beautiful exotic little teddy bears when they cling to the white-washed walls for warmth. There are far worse things to lose than money, time, and dreams though, so I suspect I’ll survive.
Kelly - Dog-dog loves people, loves company, and I was worried taking her to the cottage that she would be depressed for a time missing people (it happened when I took her to Wexford for the month of housepainting) so I put a lot of effort into her happiness at the cottage, especially in the first week, and it worked.
I don’t think whatever happens next can be as special, but maybe it might be drier.