-I’m sorry, we can’t accept this
-It’s a passport!
-Do you have a driving licence?

Oh no, I thought, Ireland has turned into America.

Never having had a mobile phone, when I recently went to purchase a mobile modem I thought you could simply walk into a shop and purchase one.

The nice man in the O2 shop on Grafton street asked me where I was going and invited me to show him on his computer.
-I’ve looked at those coverage maps to death, I know what coverage it gets.
-We have much more accurate tools here than the ones online

He was right so I bit my lip and didn’t ask him why on earth they don’t make those mapping tools available online. Would the risk of lessening the time waiting to be served be too high?

Even with the advanced tools it was clear the modem was nowhere near an area with 3G coverage, and was smack in the middle of what was covered by the EDGE network.

To be fair he was trying to be helpful, and maybe I hadn’t made it clear that this was my only option for any kind of access to the web. So he told me there was no point in me buying a mobile modem because it would be uselss.

It will be like dialup, he explained. But, but, but, I responded, seeing no need to finish any of my sentences.

He told me I’d just end up bringing it back, and that they were using tools like this to try and prevent that happening.

I persevered with my sad face, because I had come into the shop to buy just access to the web not broadband or pseudo broadband.

So he finally conceded and said he wouldn’t stop me if I really wanted to, and he had made it very clear how useful/useless the modem would be for me using it from one specific location I’d indicated.

Breathing a sigh of relief I sat down on the offerered seat and he asked me for proof of ID and proof of residence. Ah, I thought, for I’m not in the habit of going shopping with a passport in my pocket.

The next day I went shopping with a passport in my pocket. And half of my earthly possessions. For I was in a van and moving to my new home. There was a Carphone Warehouse on the way.

I handed over my passport and a credit card bill as proof of residence, the residence I had just left. She came back to apologise that they actually didn’t have my modem of choice so I agreed to take whatever they could give me, and off she disappeared into the back room again.

The next time she came back was when she told me they couldn’t accept my passport as proof of ID.

It’s my 2nd passport. I got in in 2002 and it expires in 2012. The problem? Just 5 days earlier, the mobile phone companies had stopped accepting handwritten passports as proof of ID.

So I had two options. I could get a new passport and give up on 4 years’ of vaildity of my current passport. Just for a mobile phone company. Or I could learn to drive and get a license.

Either way I only had minutes as outside was a van with a dog destined for a cottage.

I do actually hold an American driving license but along with a load of credit cards it disappeared in a wallet one traumatic night in Dublin last December.

Then I remembered, due to my disorganisation in packing, one of the last things I grabbed was my Green Card, from America. And so it was in my pocket. It’s never in my pocket.

For those of you not familiar with the card commonly called a “Green Card” the Permanent Resident Card of the US is the most high-tech piece of ID I’ve ever had. And they haven’t been green since 1979.

My photo is an integral part of the card underneath a hologram of the Statue of Liberty. My fingerprint is also an integral part of the card and the hologram it is under is of the Official Seal. On the reverse is a hologram of me and my signature. If you hold it at the right angle I wink at you.

So I handed her my Permanent Resident Card and asked her if that would work. And for identification purposes, I winked at her.

She took into the mysterious back room to ask the ID monster who lives in the dark, and she came back to say sorry. I was kind of pleased at that really because it would have been wrong for an item of identification from another country to be accepted while my passport lay limp on the counter.

-If I pop next door to Vodafone?
-They won’t accept it either. If you’d come in a week ago it wouldn’t have been a problem.

She handed me their magazine with the full list of what was acceptable as ID from each of the companies. A magazine! That made it official.

In the end I did what she advised, I got somebody else to get one for me.

My passport was issued by the Consulate General of Ireland, in Chicago. It is handwritten because anyone who obtained their passport at an Irish Mission abroad (or from the Duty Officer Service in Ireland), would have a hand-written passport. It’s been good enough to get me to pass freely and without hindrance past international borders, but it’s no longer good enough to let me buy a cheap communications device in Ireland.

A machine readable passport is a passport where your details are printed on the page with your photo.

Ah, somebody said to me, it’s because you need a machine readable passport to enter the US on the Visa Waiver Programme, which makes no sense to me.

My passport remains the property of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ireland.

See More Like This:
   • Unemployment Assistance aka Emigration Assistance
   • Forget Your Irish PPS Number?
   • Proof of That American Life

Read: Irish Passport Rejected in Ireland »

For the regular readers who may be missing the chronicles of my life in an Irish cottage, here’s a few photographs from the adventure that was sadly much shorter than the planned year or three.

It wasn’t all mountains and islands; there were doors of blue. And there was a dog.

To save space I’ve put a mosaic of the 12 photos first with the actual photographs below the fold, so you’ll need to click on through to see those.

[The individual photos are below the fold]

Read: Photos: Ireland - It Wasn’t All Mountains & Islands »

The San Agustin Pass

Part 66 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

After pausing for a day in Alamogordo I embark on the journey across the desert that is White Sands culminating in the climb of over 5,000 feet over the Organ mountains to get to Las Cruces.

These excerpts are from the transcipts of a journal entry that was taped, so again they feature me rambling, jumping tenses, and in need of much more editing.

I started yesterday in what was a Waffle House in all but name. I had a waffle. And a double egg plate with hash browns. The hash browns were overcooked, so they’re not nice at all; it’s just all this scattered stuff and crunchy hard bits of potato. I ate them all.

I stacked up with, to take across the desert, 2 breakfast burritos, one smoked ham, one sausage, and a bean burrito, as well as bits of chocolate and a lot of water. Then off I went.

In the end I braved the road without the shoulder because I was running a bit late, but it is a 6-lane highway and the traffic had gone to work, so it was safe. It hasn’t happened since the east coast that I’ve been up at the same time as the traffic - or if I have been there hasn’t been any, like from Elsmore to Kansas City.

The wind was southwest yesterday, a headwind and strong, and today it miraculously turned around to a northwest because I’m going northwest.

It was pretty much uneventful out to White Sands, because I’d done the journey twice the day before, there and back. So I looked up at the aeroplanes again. I seemed to notice much more activity. Planes seemed lower down. I could have a good look at them; I’m sure I could’ve waved to the pilot at times.

The day before there was helicopters, and there was a huge big bomber but yesterday there was a few planes. Very noisy.

I read the posters and stayed on the road. Ones welcoming soldiers and their families, written in German. Another one with a great big picture of a couple of planes. One of them was that stealth thing, to confirm I wasn’t going mad when I saw it overhead the day before.

I pulled in at the monument, to get more water and a quick browse around the Visitors’ Center. I was there for 20 minutes and I bumped into a a relief map I hadn’t seen the day before, which was great because I could see exactly what I was doing today, and potential changes for the road ahead.

In White Sands I spoke to a chap who said he met 2 people from England in South Carolina and they were cycling around the world. He explained that they used to get the plane to fly across…, and he paused for ages as he was thinking of the phrase. I was going to say “water” when he said “when they get to the sea”. So I’m not the only one who can’t cycle on water.

When I had about 30 miles done, yards in off the road is the edge of the big dunes, so you can’t see them. You’d need to get up about 50 to 100 feet to look at them. The rest of it is that kind of yellowy desert. There was lizards running along. They were visible when they came onto the tarmac, on the shoulder, because they were the colour of the the sand which is a dirty yellow.

[The rest of this long post is continued below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #66 »

A hazy sunny day and another whole heap of silence. Until the dog starts barking at the sheep and I start shouting at the dog.

The sheep have been moved in closer another field. They are now in the roughest field, the one where Dog-dog was roaming mischiveously a couple of days ago.

Decide to walk earlier than recent days in case the day gets consumed by the final stages of packing. The van is due after 11pm when it will be loaded in time for a very early getaway in the morning to make the storage facility in Dublin at 11am.

So we walk. The dog and I agree on our direction. Out the gap. Today’s decision is greeted by 3 meadow pipits.

At the turn something is on the ground dumped in the bushes. Something wrapped in black plastic and rotting, with flies all over it. It looks like meat. I pull the dog away. The package is the size of a human head.

Walking up through the gap we see half a dozen Mohicans on the grassy knoll above us. I count 3 plastic bags in the purple moor grass. I suspect that number is much lower than it might have been in the era of the plastic bag. From the gap itself an old suitcase has been thrown off a long time ago. It lies open in the long grass below. It is full of shoes.

Further on a few metres there is fresh rubbish dumped at the side of the road. I wish somebody would dump cut grass on it, especially on the pink plastic.

Half a mile on I choose a track into the bog that I think will be dry enough for sandals. Because this is where we walked on the day we were to find out the roof would not be getting fixed.

There are 3 fords for us to cross. In the sun the dog loves splashing through the streams while I step on the stones off leash. A distant figure is about 100 metres from his tractor. I think he is cutting turf.

Looking back we wait for the sun to reappear from behind a cloud. For a photo. It brings back so many memories of childhood holidays where my siblings and I waited for the contrast of sunshine.

Turn right onto the former railtrack. A red car door is upright in the grass like a strange but brilliant bog plant. We carry on to the raised bank. It is real grass. Ordinary grass, not the stuff of the bog below. Dog-dog loves it and runs along backwards and forwards. Looking at the bog there is evidence of hundreds of trees. In the light breeze and warm sun this walk along a raised straight bank of soft grass is exhilarating. I don’t know why but it reminds me of walking in the forum in the heat of Rome. Straight walks are so rare.

Views all around as we are in the middle of a wide plateau between 2 mountains. The sun haze has long gone, with everywhere now being under a sky of blue and large fluffy white clouds.

There is colour everywhere. Dots of yellow on long thin stalks, and other flowers of purple and pink in among the auburn grasses and moss of the surrounding bog. A couple of fields of green like cloths lain on a mountain. Hills of orange and mauve, and mountains of blue. A skylark rises up to provide the soundtrack.

See a rusted red car growing out of a distant hill. From a tiny green island on top of an orange hill 2 sheep look down on it. I wonder if rather than being dumped someone drove it there, then stopped just to look, and never saw a reason to ever move again.

When the railtrack is waterlogged we rejoin the boreen. As I am watching the giant Chinese shadow theatre that takes place on the mountains from the small clouds overhead, I hear a noise caused by something moving. Something much bigger than a bird. It is coming from just below us on the railtrack. Good lord!

Just 20 feet away, and looking straight at me, stands a stag in all its antlered magnificence. The dog senses something but can’t see as her view is obscured by bracken. The stag runs away out of sight quickly. We walk on.

We come to an old railway bridge over a stream. A deserted farmhouse comes into view. Walking on we see that there is a new house beside it. On the other side of the stream. The stream is 12 foot wide. I walk across the 6 large flat stepping stones. Dog-dog wades. Like the other fords this one has a bed of cobbled stone. Designed more for tractors than small dogs her paws slip into the gaps.

We walk on past the house. To the view. It is green. While the bog continues on to the mountains over 20 miles away, we can see the edge of the bog towards the village. This is the way to come to avoid cycling on the main road. Quite a detour in distance terms. Quite a detour in any terms.

Look, just look, I say to the dog. In my head I had already taken some of my friends on walks out here. That’ll teach me to do things in my head.

I put the dog on the leash briefly in case we suddenly see the stag again. To protect her paws we step together across the stones this time. Challenging with a dog on a leash. And risky in sandals.

At the point where we can rejoin the railway track there is a big pool. I walk around into long grass where larvae and adult insects await my sandals. Dog-dog shocks me and leaps 6 feet over the pool. It is the biggest leap she has ever done.

2 walkers come from the direction of the big mountain. We meet where the railway track crosses the boreen. Dog-dog barks at them. I shout back that she’s fine, adding that she’s not used to seeing people. I see the concern on their faces as the dog goes to greet them.

-If you see her teeth it’s a smile.

The walkers relax.

-They’re people Dog-dog, like animals but bigger.

They all make friends very quickly and for life.

I tell them of the stag. They tell me of 3 they saw shot in the nearby National Park being carted off in a pickup truck. I persuade the dog to come with me as we head homewards. The walking couple turn onto the former railtrack and head the opposite direction that we had gone.

After the fords I put the dog back on the leash in case any sheep have come down from the hill. In the gap a meadow pipit makes the sound you’d expect it to make, and it’s not the word “meadow”.

As the sea comes back into view see that the world this side of the mountains has stayed the whole time in that sun haze. The far island is barely visible.

We have walked 4 miles. As we reach the turn at the bushes, the turn for our cottage, we meet our first car. She is driving too fast. Behind her a hooded crow is out walking on the bog, and beyond it a flock of 30 birds seems to know where it’s flying.

Walking on our driveway we are escorted by a Great Tit skipping between the conifers. Just like on our very first morning we see half a dozen peacock butterflies. They are on the heather and grasses beside us, and on the stones beneath our feet. They are a spectacular sight, an extravagant arrangement of intense deep orange with the purple and blue eyes on their wings like peacock feathers. As we reach the cottage the sheep seem solemn.

Make tea and share the last of the rashers with the dog. They are the best rashers I have ever eaten. We fight over the rinds.

The sheep are just 50 feet from the cottage. Dog-dog growls.

There are 2 tractors on the bog road. There is no way they can pass each other. A face off. They chat. Ah, a sheep is loose on the bog. I box up my plates and my cutlery.

I am looking at 10 very old paintings. They’re on panels, and I can’t remember where they go.

The blue sky outside is now all cloud and turning grey. It is 4pm when I realise that the day is Friday and not Saturday. But it is still the day that the van is coming.

In case I forget in the morning I go out to read the electricity meter. A sheep near me sneezes. A glint catches my eye. It is from the ferry.

Back on the bog road I see a traffic jam. 2 cars crawl behind a small tractor and trailer. As the lights start to get turned on in the village the islands no longer have any features being just pale blue shapes on a featureless sea.

Use last slice of cheese along with last few slices of ham and add them to the last of the pasta for a nice warm bowl of traditional gloop. Add pepper to taste. Share with dog.

Before it is dark I walk outside and pick up the stepping stone made several years ago by my son.

The van arrives after 10pm. Smaller than the van that brought me here it takes more time to fit things in. Fearful of being left behind the dog keeps jumping in the back, even when there is no room, until finally she is curled up on the bumper. Most stuff is loaded by 2am.

With the dog out of the house anyway I light a big fire. Afraid of a gust of wind from the mountain slamming a door into the dog I invite her into the cab where I cover her up and close the door.

For the first time since moving to the cottage I do not go to bed.

When it is still dark I slide in on top the biggest canvases, a mixture of finished paintings, unprimed canvases, and all stages in between. They are the second last things to be loaded.

To get the dog’s bed in I have to remove several boxes and take it apart.

Over the last pot of tea I sweep everywhere, and read the electricity meter for the final time.

The van is ready. The driver is ready. The dog is ready. A wagtail is on the roof of the porch. I stand on the grass taking the views of the islands and the mountains for granted, and I go back inside for one more lookover.

Bang my head as I leave the bathroom.

I climb into the van beside my dog, and I leave the cottage. The van bends slowly past the sheep and the conifers, and out onto the bog road. We turn right at the bushes.

THE END

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

Read: The Cottage - Day 20 »

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

Read: The Cottage - Day 19 »

It’s as if God is taunting me. The insanity of leaving such a wondrous world.

There are still no clouds when the dog persuades me down from my perch in the morning. A pure blue sky with nothing but the hint of a long gone aeroplane, so high that we never heard it.

A perfect summer’s day. In late September. I can see what looks like two ferries at once, one that left the mainland, and one that left the far island. One takes a line closer to the near islands so when they pass, in the region of the smallest island, they are not close.

I count the slices of bread left. They will last 2 more days after today. Dog-dog sits glumly at the window on the world, so I give her some of my toast. She ignores it but not enough that I can take it back.

Yes it’s a perfect day. For walking, for hiking, for cycling, and most of all, for painting. I leave in 2 days though, so I’ll be packing.

I cover the dog and within minutes she is snoring.

Something is towing a trailer somewhere. The little white van comes into view. It is towing a trailer and stops at the crest of the hill a mile away towards the main road. The driver and his dog get out. I think the man in the white van is my sheep farmer.

I hear a wren in the bottom of a fuchsia bush so watch it closely until I see him peep out. A mile away I watch a farmer stand in a field with his sheep being moved by his dog. It’s a brilliant sight against a background of a few dark trees, the deep blue of the sea, and cliffs of the far island.

As I empty my mug and chew on some tea leaves, I want to go back inside and get another mug but the sun on the back of my neck and arms feels too good to move.

Behind me small white fluffy clouds start to come over the mountains.

We walk. In sandals. To the gate. But the dog wants to go further. So we go a bit beyond. Well okay then, to the crest of the hill a mile away. The dog however wants to go to the gap. I don’t know why I don’t but I don’t. The dog pulls firmly and will not budge. We have a stand off for 5 minutes.

-You can choose tomorrow, but today in my sandals I want to go this way.

Out on the bog a lone hooded crow looks for carrion. Beyond on the sea I notice something much larger than the ferry and much nearer than the ghosty grey ship I’ve seen a couple of other times. This being the first time I have walked with my monocular I have a look. Yes it’s big. And it has something attached to the side of it. And I think it’s headed for the far island.

The dog and I look at each other as we hear what sounds like a lawnmower going 40 miles an hour. Or a chainsaw. Turns out it is a lawnmower going 40 miles an hour. A young man on a quad appears back by the cottage, and turns speeding towards the gap. For a couple of minutes we hear no birds.

In the woods beside us a small yellowish bird flits from conifer to conifer. I get closer. Yellow cheeks? It must be a young Blue Tit not yet moulted for the winter.

At the hill we meet the red jackets that are the walking women as we reach the crest by the sheep. Rex is with the women again and everything is cordial between all species. The womens’ jackets are tied around their waists because of the sun, but their t-shirts are red so we know they are still the red walking women.

As expected the dog doesn’t want to turn around and go home. Roads that loop in smaller distances than 5 miles would be useful. I assert myself but she pulls her head out of her collar. If that had happened yesterday on the main road she would now be dead. Feeling guilty she lets me put it back on and softly we talk through our differences before walking back to the cottage.

2 miles away under the mountain pass I see a small group of cattle walk down a slope. Behind them is a shape that I’d guess is a rock but for the fact that all the other rocks are shades of grey and this shape is a bright cream. I wonder if it’s a goat. So with my ankle I nudge the dog.

-Hey Dog-dog!
-Uh-huh?
-What’s that coming over the hill?
-Is it a monster?

The clouds come from the mountains now in one uniform thick grey blanket. But they move slow and the sun moves just ahead of them in the blue sky so that we all remain in sunshine. It’s an equilibrium I’m sure must have a name.

As we reach the cottage the red walking women pass through the gap ahead, and a skylark lifts out of the bog by the gate. No cars passed us on this walk.

The ship, which is probably a very large fishing vessel and I don’t know when you stop calling something a boat and move to ship, is anchored in the harbour of the far island. Nearer to the mainland a very small boat is out from the beach close to the near island. The deep blueness of the sea shows me easily a white dot beyond the island, and far beyond the route of the ferry. I follow it until it is no more, either sunk or halfway to Greenland.

And then, for the first time since I’ve been here, I see a fishing boat where I have seen no boats. It moves across in front of me towards the near island. If I had a camera with a very long lense I would take a fabulous photograph of it moving in front of the middle island, the cliffs and ruined chapel just behind it.

As I move cardboard boxes around, outside the clouds have finally won, with the dunes and the beach being the last holdouts for sunshine.

I see 2 horses out on the bog road. Unlike in Dublin their riders have headgear on.

By 6 O’clock it’s a light blanket of grey that covers everywhere but a narrow band of light along the horizon. The islands have softened to increasingly paler shades of grey the further away they are. The sea is a midnight blue and looks very striking contrasted with the brightness of the sky towards the setting sun. The cone-shaped mountain behind which the sun will eventually set, is a burgundy. It stands in front of the narrow strip of light sky and just beneath the dark cloud blanket that is fringed with a gold edge. The headland below it is a muted olive green.

As the lighthouse flashes out of the blue-greyness I see the large vessel leave the harbour of the far island and think that I should be painting. Then I return to packing.

Because my frying pan is just 4 inches wide, I cook my 3 rashers one at a time. In fairness I don’t have a great need to put 3 full rashers into my mouth in one single go.

There is one cloud moving faster than all the others. It’s pixelated. Ah, that’ll be the starlings getting ready for bed.

The dog comes in to get me. Out in the porch she has dropped something behind the chest she sits on. As I move it I see the lights of an aeroplane out over the village. They are under the cloud cover so it must be a small plane. It turns and for a moment its lights glare at me, as if it were a car and I a deer. I wasn’t expecting such personal air traffic while living in the mountains.

Out at sea the large fishing vessel never went far from the harbour. In the dark its lights make it look like a small cluster of cottages.

A couple of hours later I stand outside under the stars with Dog-dog. More lights on the water. It’s another floating clachan, this one heading out towards the east of the far island, a space where I’ve seen nothing ever go.

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

Read: The Cottage - Day 18 »

The earlier you get up the longer the shadow from the mountain. By the time the sun is high enough to reach the cottage the sun is behind clouds.

The dog’s blanket is outside her bed. I cover her. She will sleep late now having slept uncovered in the cold.

Dark rain clouds cover everything to the east. They are coming to cover us. Everything to the west including the village is also covered. Sun and blue sky run in a narrowing strip from the cottage to the islands.

Bring the empty cardboard boxes in from the barn.

I see 2 red jackets a mile away on the road across the bog. The sheep are a field nearer, down from their hill of the last few days. The dog growls less the nearer they are.

I don’t want to put my paints back into storage. I’ve only just seen them for the first time in a year. I don’t want to put all my unfinished paintings back into storage. I don’t want to put all my blank canvases, papers, and art materials back into storage. But without a home I have no room.

It’s raining at sea but missing the islands.

I begin the job of putting things in the cottage back to the way they were when I arrived. The cottage is no longer my home. It will be hard to ever come back to this part of the country, remembering that all too briefly it was my part of the country.

A line of white clouds hangs over the islands like a curtain that doesn’t reach the floor.

Walk to the gate. 100 meters from the cottage the driveway comes within 20 feet of the far end of the field that the sheep are in, separated only by the marshy wedge of another field which has been left open. Dog-dog ventures in and makes straight for the entrance to the field with 50 sheep.

Before the dog works out that the fencing acting as a gate is very low I roar at her. She doesn’t come back but I have her attention. I scream at her. She’s not moving but I still have her attention. So I tell her that after going to the gate I’ll give her something nice. She races around the long grass out of the field and past me on the track. The sheep are safe.

After seeing nothing in the postbox we return to the cottage for food.

I see a goose fly towards the gap. It’s not a Canada Goose; I wonder if it’s a Greenland White-Fronted Goose?

The sea looks cold in its greyness. Its horizon is blurred into the greyness of the clouds, but it’s not a smooth blur. Something feels different. I look closely with the naked eye and yes I think there’s a tiny bump. With my monocular I can just about see a blurry grey blob in the shape of a ship. Or a sinking ghost lighthouse.

We walk. With packing up home being the only job for the next couple of days, our walk isn’t part of a new set of routines, but part of a farewell tour.

We walk 5 miles. I notice there are berries on the hawthorn. There’s only a few, and despite their redness hanging from grey bark, they are rather lost for impact in the sea of surrounding fuchsia.

There are so many bees on the fuchsia that it seems to vibrate with life. And when you have fuchsia on both sides of you it is very loud and creates a sensation that you are walking somewhere you probably shouldn’t.

A kestrel hovers over the bog. To the east where the houses are, is where we will walk to. By the farms, stone walls and green fields. The cliffs on the far island are just magnificent in the sun. Sheer and jagged, a wonderful collection of contrasting shapes in shadow and sun, the stuff of fairytales. Then you remember that the cliffs really are the stuff of fairy tales, of myths and legends that have been around far longer than the cottage or the village.

I look at the road as we walk on it, thinking of friends who ask me how I can adapt to one side or other as I swap countries and their rules of the road. But there is no left hand side of the road when the road is only 5 foot wide.

We go down by the quarry. The road gives great views of the headland a couple of miles further on, and great views of some oversized houses mid-construction.

A sign says “Danger! Cliff Edge. Quarry Road Only” so naturally I want to walk past its locked gates and down this forbidden road. If the sign hadn’t been there the thought wouldn’t have occurred to me. It’s like when you see a sign that says please don’t pick the wonderful fruit hanging above your head, and it causes you to look up and think, what a great idea. Signs that say don’t shouldn’t.

But the walk is long enough without sending a small dog on a cliff rescue mission, so we walk down to the main road instead, which is surely much more dangerous.

We also walk backwards. Because of the mountains. The great far mountains include the highest peak in the county, and every 50 meters we walk we have a different foreground to the fantastic backdrop of pointed peaks and slopes of slurry.

And always, dominating everything, you have THE mountain. Our mountain. The one that is our back garden. It stands untouched by clouds magnificent in its presence, and sometimes a small cloud stops by just to rest gently on its wide peak before continuing through the sky.

It’s greener over here. With more animals. And I ask the dog for permission to stop as I look at cattle, horses, and sheep. She rarely sees them herself though because they are behind stone walls, so the peace remains. Some walls are almost entirely covered from ground to top with earth and luscious grass growing from it. Others just have heavy coverings of moss.

We walk along the main road. There is 12 to 18 inches of a shoulder. That probably rules it out of being called a shoulder, but we are very grateful for it. Not much traffic comes, but what comes is going 60 miles an hour and more. Sometimes much more. We are walking around a blind bend, and while I think it is madness to do this with a dog, I’m confident that only meters away there’s a turn that leads back to our world.

It is a total of maybe 300 meters that we have walked on the main road before we can cross over and join our back road. It leads to the crossroads, the one from where the red women walkers appear, and where Rex reigns.

There are no cars all the way home. I run past the point where I know the smell of the decomposing postman is. As we crest the hill from where the cottage comes into view, I stop and look at the sun shining through the long moss on the top of a fence post.

-There’s our house, dog-dog.

Alone on a bog road, with no vehicles to yield to, we saunter the last mile to what we briefly called home.

Clouds slip by. It’s warm enough for a t-shirt outside. It’s chilly in, though. As I go to and from the outbuildings there are 8 bumble bees clinging to the white of the cottage for warmth.

There is no wind. I see a piece of paper in the grass. I don’t understand where it came from, because there is only me. Picking it up I read the small print. It is part of the wrapper of a roll of flashband.

In the evening drippy sun I look at the soft colours in the distance, and the bold and luminous ones close up. So still. No movements from the trees or bushes. No vehicles. No people visible in the fields. Never any people visible on the beach. If you wait for a bit you see a wave break at the rocks at an island end. Sometimes a bee flies by. A robin sings again from the top of the hawthorn tree.

The light of the lighthouse throws out a flicker against the hazy pale pinkness of the clouds that sit along the horizon. The rest of the sky is blue. I put down a cardboard box, walk around the back and stare at the mountains. I am back in that place with a giant hand, reaching out and stroking their textured colours.

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   • 12 Photos of Scenery Around The Cottage
   • 12 Photos not all Mountains and Islands

Read: The Cottage - Day 17 »

A beautiful, perfect day, if cold, the condensation slowly going from the windows. The sea a deep blue, everything in sunshine.

Except the cottage of course. It’s not until half 10 that the sun is high enough over the mountains to reach the cottage.

I feel the same. Two nights of sleep. Two days of walking. The deliberations for space weren’t necessary as I did them a month ago.

The ferry has almost reached the island. The double red dots I know to be women are walking on the bog road. Dog-dog is growling quietly at the window on the world as she looks at the sheep on the hill. And the space where I need to paint is a beautiful space if you didn’t know it leaks.

-Dog-dog, we may not get this chance again. There’s something I think we should do while the weather is on our side.

So we walk. A wren peeps out at us from under the exposed moss-covered roots of a tree.

Some things before you start them you know are destined to end horribly. Yet there’s a compulsive quality about them that pushes you to hope that maybe they won’t. So it was with our walk.

We go across the bog. The actual bog, not a road. Picking our steps on sponges of heather, sphagnum moss and bog grasses, we wind our way through what immediately is a maze of pools. Very much a 2 steps forward, 1 step back, kind of place.

Afraid of losing the dog I keep her on the leash, but her route is not the same as mine and only a few 360 degree speedy turns perched on a firm lump of vegetation followed by a quick leap into hope, prevents me from taking a full bog bath.

A tractor tyre. All by itself. With no obvious route to or from it. Perhaps it was dumped by helicopter. A car door. I know I shouldn’t like it but there’s an elegance about rusted metal items isolated on the land.

Tracks. More dumping. The tracks lead nowhere. They just disappear into bog without trace. We are nearly halfway across and it gives us some respite for 20 meters. Then we start again.

The vegetation gets thicker with less pools. We follow what I tell the dog are hare paths. I can’t think what else would have made them. Then the ground gets marshier but with the vegetation remaining dense you can’t see what exactly you are walking on. The stick becomes less useful for when I use it to feel my way it gets stuck every time and I have to pull it out without falling or being pulled over by the dog.

Less than 30 feet in front of us I see a hare. The dog can’t see because of the vegetation, and doesn’t know what a hare is anyway so doesn’t understand my excitement.

-It’s like a rabbit, a very big, very fast rabbit. A rabbit, just there. Really!

Now Dog-dog is excited, and instead of following me in the hare path, takes the lead. The hare, however, being a very big, very fast rabbit, is long gone.

The grasses get taller. It’s more like a marsh and I’m thinking that should be easier when I get plugged in the ground just like my stick. The wet peat holds onto you feet as you squelch your way out almost to a loud pop on release.

We reach the edge of some fields. Except they are on the other side of a stream and over a stone wall. The dog wants down into the stream because she’s not bothered by the mud but I persuade her to try and stay high up on the edge of the stream as we work our way around the field towards a small farmhouse.

The grass is up to my chest at times, and I just want to go home. I apologise to the dog, but tell her it is nearly over. Then I go in unseen water up to my calves. Both feet. The dog now persuades me that the stream really was the better option. And I accept that I probably shouldn’t have worn my best pants.

Trudge through the peat mud and across the stream. Then climb up somehow and face the stone wall with barbed wire fencing on top. There are sheep one field over so I dare not let go of the leash as I go through the fencing without anything getting torn by the barbed wire. Hurray I think as I stretch my way through. The stretch rips the pants.

But then we are safe. Wherever we are. In somebody’s field overlooked by a house and washing lines. I am certain that we look like a man from the city who thought it a good idea to walk across the bog with his dog.

We climb over a couple of more stone walls and our feet touch gravel. Oh sweet civilisation.

Houses. Old English Sheepdog comes out to us and walks with us for over a mile. I suspect it’s really a local man dressed in a dog suit. A small man with an exceptionally long tongue.

Based on the mountains and the sea I guess a couple of turns. It’s not that we’d get lost but we are already facing a 3-mile walk home and don’t really want to make it longer. An ambulance is ahead of us at one point and we have to wait for it to move because there isn’t enough room on either side for even the dog to get by.

Shielded from wind, it is a glorious sunny day, the green of fields particularly blinding. And much warmer than in the winds up at the cottage.

We walk past the goat, but Dog-dog doesn’t care. She does care though when we get the the smell of something decaying in the woods. It’s very powerful, a large animal I presume, or a murdered postman.

The tree trunks I’ve had my eye on for days are being being chopped and moved into a car boot. The man carrying the discs of tree trunks waves to me.

We pass the spot where the rally-driving kids did their high-speed doughnuts. Black circles. Tyre marks. Like crop circles. Then a car speeds by, dangerously so. It has a Dublin reg.

Ahead of us coming from the gap are the red women walkers and Rex. “He’s not even our dog”, they say in unison again as Rex goes for Dog-dog and I show him I have a stick. This is a timeless place. Check the postbox; there is nothing.

In the cottage I compose my response for the landlord. Really I just type up what I composed out walking. I leave it unsent.

Boil some water and wash my feet. In clean socks I send the email to the landlord. It tells him how happy I’ve been for the last 2 weeks but that I still need the space that I moved here being told I would have, so I will leave on Saturday. Outside the day could not be nicer.

The landlord’s backing out of the agreement so late in the day has left me no time to find out if I could get the roof fixed myself, and his demeanour on Saturday left me with no uncertainty that it would be a waste of time to approach him with a deal where I would take care of it.

With a fresh pot of tea the dog and I sit outside, but back up here by the mountain the wind is too cold so we retreat to the sunroom which works just fine when it’s not raining.

Arrangements are made. To gain access to put my stuff back into storage in Dublin. To get a van driver. To get a van. It’s a lot of money to get back to where you were a couple of weeks ago.

With the dog exhausted I cycle to village for milk, bread and cheese. And treats for the dog. The day is gorgeous. I stop repeatedly to take photos.

Closer to the village there are different sights to enjoy. An old man beside a pile of turf is white-washing an outbuilding. A ruin of a house long deserted, beside half a new house abandoned during building.

In the village I look at all the shops that I haven’t been to, but planned to go to regularly. The butchers, the shoe shop, the outdoors shop, the craft shop, the coffee shop (for tea though). And all in Irish. Because I’ve been living in a Gaeltacht. Slán Abhaile says my receipt.

A small fly in my eye notwithstanding, the cycle to the village and back couldn’t have been more perfect. The trips would only get easier. Or would have.

There are bees on the house, keeping warm, when I arrive back to a smiling dog.

There is no need to collect any more wood as I have more than enough for the few nights before I leave, if I even light any. I’ve gone without most nights, waiting for the landlord to fix the roof before committing to buying heating oil that would last for months.

After 9 sometime the landlord replies, and says that it was clear to him after talking to me on Saturday that it would not work out.

I’ve never felt more that a place is right for me. I peel off my right sock and see a cluster of swollen welts from insect bites on my ankle. Probably from the bog, I think.

Look online all over Ireland for a new home. I don’t want to do this for another 6 months, but I do it for 5 hours anyway, stopping only to make the dog’s bed when asked.

Before I go to bed the biggest beetle in the world walks across the kitchen floor. I escort him outside.

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   • 12 Photos of Scenery Around The Cottage
   • 12 Photos not all Mountains and Islands

Read: The Cottage - Day 16 »

It’s grey, it’s cloudy, it’s misty, but it all feels different now.

I walk outside with the dog beside me and I look at the headlands, and the mountains, all so familiar now, and wonder if this is the last week.

The near islands are in view as dark misty shadows on a sea the same shade of off-white as the sky it merges into. The sun trying to get through the clouds picks out a far part of the near island, a pale olive echo of itself with a strip of golden beach. It is like a ghost island among the other real islands.

High above me the clouds are white, golden and fluffy, and I notice it isn’t cold. It’s what September should feel like, the winter of a few days ago premature.

The village is in dark shadow. It seems asleep. Maybe it is, because this is Sunday morning, but then being 3 miles away as the crow flies it always seems asleep. Beyond it a headland is lit up, all golden and brown dotted with white and yellow cottages. And beyond that the conical mountain that is usually dark brown is but a barely percetible pale blue misty impression.

There’s no postal deliveries on late Saturday nights or early Sunday mornings, but I gamble on the dog not knowing that and invite her on a walk down to the gate. Because it’s dry. Because it’s beautiful. Just because.

But first I go back in and leave my tea behind.

We walk for half a mile beyond the gate talking quietly, and as a dunnock lands on a fence post beside us the clouds behind us darken almost to black. We turn back and make it to the cottage as the first drops, cold and large, fall.

I could probably have a look at the porch and see how the leak repairs are doing, but I don’t seem to care anymore and instead put the kettle on as the rain turns to mist.

It is mid-afternoon and I realise I haven’t eaten anything today. Outside eveything but the conifers and the bog is swallowed by the clouds and I hear a single bird chirp.

I stand in the porch. Its slate floor is dry. I look at the wood supporting the glass panels; they are dry. I look at the wood by the big gaping hole where the porch joins the house; it is dry. I stand in the porch and look out at the world, which in the misty rain ends at the horizon of the bog making it as though the bog goes on forever.

What if yesterday’s half band-aid fixed everything? I like this world so much, and now there is a sick feeling in my stomach. People do that to me. Landscapes never do. Outside the window I watch a wren on the fuchsia. Drip.

The first drip hits my shoulder. I have no television here, and no radio. My internet connection won’t sustain streaming anything so the only noise in the house you ever hear is of myself and the dog, with the gentle hum of the fridge in the background, and sometimes the odd insect. The dog is asleep in her bed. The sound of the next drop on the slate floor is a loud splat with an echo of sadness. Quickly the drops accelerate into almost a pour. They are coming from where the landlord placed more flashband yesterday. I make the tea.

As I drink my tea at my art table in the kitchen, the regular splats I hear from the porch of water drops hitting slate changes to the slapping sound of water dropping on water. There is now a puddle 12 inches in diameter.

As the rain moves on leaving everything outside glistening and rich in colour, I go online and look for alternative houses in the area, but I know I won’t find any. I don’t.

Sunday? That means my team is playing in England. It means the Ryder Cup is on its last day. Japers, it means the All-Ireland is taking place right now. As I wonder if I should bother with an updating screen of text updates, in the porch I see there are 3 more leaks.

I take out some tins to stamp on. The sun is out now and in the healthy wind I enjoy the islands and mountains again. There is never any movement in the landscape. A single motor vehicle somewhere once in a while, or the ferry a dancing speck beyond the islands, but any sense of movement comes from nature, the vegetation in the wind, the clouds in a hurry to dampen somewhere, or the waves bashing off the cliffs.

Although sunny, the warmth has gone from the day with the wind being from the east now, and the sensation a hot cup of tea makes, when fully grasped by two cold hands, is lovely. It’s all too nice to just stand and look at though so I tell Dog-dog that we will venture into it. Just as soon as I finish this pot of tea.

We walk. Out the gap. The sun is in shadows immediately. It is cold without its rays. I put Dog-dog on the leash at the gate in case we might meet any loose sheep.

We turn at the bushes and as we walk up into the gap there is a loose sheep just ahead of us eating by some freshly dumped rubbish. Seeing us it trots away. Seeing the sheep the dog pulls me uphill.

As we pass through the gap 3 sheep ascend sheer rocks slowly, looking back down on us. It is like a scene from Last of the Mohicans. We are the bad guys.

-You’re the one with the tendency to rip live hearts out, I say to the dog who ignores me other than pulling me forward by force of nose.

Along the road we stand aside when we see a tractor coming. But it turns into a bog track just before it reaches us. It is going where we walked yesterday. Its earth digging bucket is full of rubbish and items that can only be destined for dumping. I take a photo. The mountain is a magnificent backdrop.

The dog and I stand still and just watch the tractor for a mile as he goes through the bog, clanging throught the stream fords and on to the foot of THE mountain. And it dumps. We turn around to walk home as he turns his tractor around to come back.

Coming down through the gap we hear cars. 3 cars together. They appear to be rally driving. They stop at the bushes near my gate and get out. Kids. We’re 300 meters away walking toward them.

It looks like they have one car to play with, to drive into the ground. In the turn near my gate that one car does handbrake circles for a few minutes. When I’m 200 meters away they all drive off in the direction of the village but stop a mile on at the hill and repeat the process. There is so much smoke I assume one car is on fire but when it clears all 3 cars have moved on. I hear them in the distance repeat again.

Directly overhead a twin prop looks fantastic against the evening deep blue sky and large golden edged grey fluffy clouds. As we near our gate the cars get louder. They are coming our way. We run into our drive and take cover from sight in the trees. The 3 cars speed and limp by.

If I do leave it would be next weekend. I can only get a van driver on Saturdays, and it would take days anyway to pack everything up again and to put the cottage back to how it was when I arrived.

Should I just paint furiously amid the boxes for 4 days? But much of my art materials are still packed away, never unpacked as I waited in vain for the promised fixing of the roof. And if I was to leave I’d need to pack away what I was painting with. There would be no room for error. Everything would have to be ready to go when the van arrives or the cost of moving would double.

Whether I stay or go, I don’t see me getting any painting done this week.

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   • 12 Photos not all Mountains and Islands

Read: The Cottage - Day 15 »

A perfect blue square through the skylight as the steps of a dog on wood wake me.

Well, not a perfect blue square; it’s a rectangle.

Out the windows it confirms it’s a beautiful day. I see huge frothy waves that should be on television with surfers on them.

We walk outside in the sun but the sun isn’t there. It’s everywhere but the cottage. Payback for yesterday I suppose. The sun has yet to come up over the mountain to reach the cottage.

So we walk into the sheep field, not used by the sheep since our second day, just to stand in the middle of it for the sun. At the edge a robin sings from the highest tip of a hawthorn.

-Oh Dog-dog, we’ll have to go down to the gate. Look how beautiful the mountains are in this sun. And look at the far mountain especially.

Dog-dog hangs on every word.

I go back to the house for the camera. The dog is still in the field. She runs. In the wide open space of long wet grass she runs. Not since Dublin has she had that sort of space to run.

Walking to the gate we get wet as the wind blows rainwater off the trees and bushes 15 feet to one side. At the gate I remember that we are quite a bit lower than at the cottage and so the far mountain has its bottom half obscured by the bog that is also higher than us. We walk around on the road for 10 minutes and then we go back.

I go back to the centre of the sheep field, where there used to be a stone wall, and standing on the rocky grassy mound take a photo of the far mountain. When I leave the field, looking down all the time to make sure I evade the mines of sheep poo, I turn back to Dog-dog to encourage her for another run. She is upside down dancing and I know no matter how loud I shout that my dog is already the wrong shade of green.

Cleaning a dog means hot water. While I take showers, they’re of the drencher kind with no flexible hose to clean dogs. I can use the bath tub, but I need, oh I have a headache trying to work out the permutations available with a kettle, an immersion, almost no containers and, god I need a cup of tea.

At least my nose is still blocked.

I don’t want to do this every day, but now that the dog has dicovered that field and all its lovely poo, what do I do? I could simply close off the field whenever the farmer takes his sheep out, but I have the feeling that would upset him as he probably expects it to be open for when he brings the sheep back. He’s not going to do it but really when he plans on walking the sheep past my front door, he should at least check with me so I can ensure the dog is inside.

The landlord said he’d tell him to do that, because I have a dog. And if he did then he could open the field and bring the sheep through while he’s at my door. But these are likely fanciful notions from a non-farmer.

Outside the window the sun moves like a slow spotlight along the cliffs of the middle island.

For 2 weeks I’ve struggled to talk to people using Skype. The signal is rarely strong enough long enough. So for a friend in England I redirect my Skype phone number to my mobile. It works. We finally have a conversation. For the call my friend pays to call America from Britain, and I pay to call an Irish mobile from the computer. After 15 minutes we are cut off when my credit runs out.

The bin. Yes. Use the bin for Dog-dog’s bath.

Sit outside in the sun.

Hear voices. Voices? From behind. You never hear voices. The dog starts barking. On the mountain behind the house at the very top are 2 figures. Turning my monocular away from the birds I see that it is 2 men. The wind is dropping their voices in our laps.

Rescue a bee from a web on the way out of the cottage. It’s walk time. For 3 miles. On tracks in the bogs. We ford streams, I on the stepping stones and Dog-dog splashing on through. The dog seems especially happy. Sometimes we go off the track to explore a grassy mound or large rock.

We come to a crossroads. A crossroads of tracks. The track we are crossing is a former railway track. We walk on. Another junction. Why are there so many tracks in this wilderness?

I see a sign in the distance. From behind it looks like a roadsign. We’ll walk on to there, I decide, dying to know what could be on the other side and who it could be addressing. Ah, I think. It should have been obvious. No dumping, says the sign. By order of the County Council.

On our way back the old farmer on the far side of our mountain is still out in his field. He is moving cut grass around because I guess the tractor left it in the wrong places.

We are only back in the cottage minutes when a car comes up the drive. It is the landlord. After exchanging quick niceties he asks me where the porch leaks from. As every support beam has its own leak I point to each in the place of the leak and to the big hole where the porch roof joins the house, as well as to the sides. The wood is all stained from the leaks so my pointing is unnecessary.

The landlord then tells me that he is not going to get the roof fixed. This throws me. It’s a bit of a bombshell and I meekly remind him that it was only because he was said he would fix the roof that I moved here. He says he never said he would get it fixed, only that he’d try and fix it but that he was afraid it wouldn’t work as it hadn’t the 2 previous times he tried.

While I should be concerned totally with suddenly finding out I will not now have the space I need to live and paint, I am thrown into confusion by his denial of our agreement.

I feel cornered. I wouldn’t have come if this was the situation; I had been very clear on that. But now I’m here. I can stay, with less than I was promised and need, and a soured relationship with my landlord into the bargain. Or I can leave; leave everything I’ve come to love about the place, and the promises it held, and pay to have everything moved back to Dublin and put back into storage.

Into the bargain there I would have lost a couple of months’ searching for a home and if I did find one now I’d be looking at moving in winter.

-People come here, they look at it and they take it, he says, adding that it’s not perfect.
-I’m not looking for perfection, I respond.

He tells me he has a couple from Mayo who are very keen on living in the cottage and have driven here and looked all around, and he has another couple also interested. He wants his answer as to whether I am staying.

Before I can respond he says he has no problem with me leaving so I tell him I don’t want to leave but this situation has thrown me. He offers to repay me the month’s rent I have given him, but he needs to know in the next couple of days if I’m taking it. I tell him I’ll talk with the people it will impact on if I leave, and give him his definite answer on Monday, which is 2 days away.

Through the porch window I see Dog-dog sitting on the lap of the passenger in his car, happily being stroked.

The landlord goes up on the roof and puts more strips of flashband on top of the earlier bits of flashband that didn’t work. They themselves were additions to an even earlier flashband attempt at a repair.

Before he leaves he comes to tell me that I shouldn’t stay if I’m not happy. Again I point out how happy I am, with the cottage, with its location, and that the only issue is the porch. I wasn’t expecting this but now that I’m here I have to think about it and see if I can make the space work.

The disappointment I’m sure is visible on my face as he says that it might be best for both of us if I left, that I shouldn’t try and make it work, that the cottage just might not be for me. I tell him I’ll contact him on Monday. We both know that will be by email.

When he’s gone I go up on the ladder and look at the roof. The main hole is still not covered.

2 hours later I open my notebook and, on the blank page opposite where I noted down the electricity meter reading, I draw a line down the centre of the page and put a plus sign at the top of the left side, and negative sign on the right.

After nightfall out the window for the first time I see the stars, and for the first time in 6 weeks I go online and once again start looking at houses available to rent.

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More from The Cottage:
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   • 12 Photos of Scenery Around The Cottage
   • 12 Photos not all Mountains and Islands

Read: The Cottage - Day 14 »