The Cottage - Day 12
Rain. Beating on the roof. Cold sloppy drops, without pattern. The ones you want to come in to a hot whiskey to. With somebody. But I haven’t even gone out. And I’m alone. I should probably have breakfast before whiskey.
I need a coat stand.
The helicopter again. Once, twice, to the island and back, and then it is off down the coast.
“No growling at sheep”. It’s a house refrain now. I feel bad because growling is what I ask Dog-dog to do when she’s barking. And there’s nothing here to bark or growl at but the sheep. I just don’t want her to ever threaten sheep, not even verbally.
Curse myself when I go to pour the tea out. It is my first time in my new home to forget to put the cosy on the pot. It’s so cold in here that the pot is useless already, not even one good cup out of it. But I drink it anyway as punishment for my mistake. And while a new kettle is on I hug the pot for what little warmth it has left, as if it were a hot water bottle which I suppose it is.
The helicopter goes off again. Follow it all the way to the island. It’s quite small and not one you can see from that distance with the naked eye.
Walk to postbox and to check dumped rubbish. Pick up wood. It shouldn’t be this cold. It is September. My fingers hurt. The dog doesn’t argue when I lie suggesting it will be warmer back at the house. Why on earth did I go walking in my sandals?
A Wintry sky. A sheet, more than a blanket, a pale grey sheet of no features, and beneath it are casually thrown around a handful of small white clouds. Winter white that is, not your summer fluffy variety.
Somehow, and I can’t figure it out, the most distant mountain is the most illuminated. As the sun is shining on it alone you can see its rocks and bumps and crevices and colours. Normally it is so far it is dull uniform brown if visible at all but now, extracting sunlight from a hole in the sky that I can’t even find, it is the glorious highlight of all that I can see.
The sea is split in two. This side of the near islands it is dark and scary. Beyond the islands it is very light, and scary. And off towards the far island it is the kind of sea that swallows communities.
I see a boat. Where I’ve never seen a boat before, between the near island and me. It will have to go between two islands to get to land, avoiding the rocks and cliffs of both islands. But I’m sure it knows that more than a non-seagoing stranger at a distant window. As it crosses from the dark sea into the light, it is swallowed by the mist.
The rain is coming in those familiar sheets across the bog. It will be here in a couple of minutes.
When it arrives the islands are but barely perceptible smudges.
On the floor of the porch, my unused studio, there is a piece of charcoal that I keep not picking up. Finally when I go to pick it up it walks on, being some sort of flat matt beetle specifically designed for artists’ studios. I’m so impressed I leave it alone, as does the dog who is disinclined to come out from under her blanket.
The problem with not having a back door is that you don’t get to choose the sheltered side of the house when you go to empty the tea leaves from your pot. The house is too small; a back door would make no sense. It does however have two front doors, because that does make sense.
The bathroom was added on to the house you see, at the end. And it has an outside door as well as an inside door. When the weather is nice there is no better place to sit and ponder the world than on that special seat with the door wide open.
I could of course open the kitchen window and empty my used leaves out there, but in this wind I fear I may never see the window again. Is this the weather for the next 6 months?
The dog comes in to ask me for dinner and then she asks me to take her blanket from her bed and follow her into the porch where I am to cover her as she sits at the window on the world. I’m not making this up; this is exactly what Dog-dog does.
While we were having our respective dinners it seems the farmer came and moved his sheep a further field away. At the window on the world, covered in her blanket, the French Lieutenant’s Dog then growls at the one sheep in the world that she can see.
-I’m going to get some wood. Don’t look at me like that, it is too cold; I am lighting a fire.
Yes you can come but leave your blanket inside.
As I walk over to the stone building where I keep our turf and our swallows, I see that some sheep are over by the side gate. While I’m saying something about not to bark at sheep Dog-dog runs at the gate. The fencing I put up in the first couple of days does its job. I scold the dog as half a dozen sheep in the side field scamper to join the rest of the group on the small hill, 2 fields away from the cottage, practically beyond growling distance.
As the sun goes down the mist brings the world in. By hiding the sea and the mountains it gives the world outside my window a simple and near horizon at the edge of the bog. It makes the bog seem vast because for all you know it could go on for ever in that mist. Except of course you know it doesn’t.
The few lights of homes in the mist are magical as you draw imaginery hills and mountains to house them on. The village itself is nothing but misty lights, no buildings visible in the grey softness.
Apologise to the dog and light a fire. After 3 long hours of torment with her stump of a tail between her legs, and most of it trying to get out into the cold night, she finally goes to bed when the fire is out.
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:
Hi Eolai, I was away cycling in the Burren last week, still not fully recovered ( knees okay, it’s my dam coccyx), anyway, whilst noodling home (from Galway to Kilcolgan to Kinverra to Ballyvaughan to Lisdoon to Lahinch ), it occurred to me again that it was your walks and pots of tea and musings which I was sorta looking for. And there’s nothing like a big fucking granite hill on a gray day to inspire.
Of course I have a couple of pints of an evening or/and a late night glass of vino noodling on tinterweb. You haven’t mentioned that you visited the village pub, there is a pub, there must be a pub near. Or maybe that’s not your intention.
You know that story about the scorpion and the rabbit ( or some such fluffy loveable creature), and they’re trying to cross a river and the scorpion promises not to harm the fluffy creature if he carries him across, and then stings him dead on the other side, cause it’s his nature. Well your dog and the sheep !
There’s a stripped downess, a bareness about your cottage diary, which I believe is one of the better blogging things today.
Hey, might be time for a pint.
Sniffle, I counted 6 pubs in the village, and I’ve been to just one. That was about 2 weeks before I moved in, when I came to view the cottage.
When moving in I decided that I wouldn’t go for a local pint until after I’d sold my first painting whilst living here. It’s a combination of a cashflow thing and a treat reward system that the dog taught me.
There are other pubs a couple of miles further away, and one includes a session on a Monday night which I’ve had my eye on.
Thanks again, and look after those bones.
I love this blog you write in a way that I feel like I am actually there, seeing what you see. I especially love your conversations with Dog-dog.
thanks for this. with money tight as it is…my 40th birthday trip to ireland had to be put on hold. your blog seems to give me some of what i long for.
Roxanne - Thank you so much. You should hear the conversations between the dog and the bicycle.
Stephanie - Ooh, your kind compliments are laden with taglines I could borrow!
Eolai, so…How much do you want for that first painting? And is it done or have the drips washed it away? You’re a man who ought not deny himself a pint arbitrarily.
Love and many figurative tennis balls to Dog-Dog.
You’re living in an idyll. A freezing cold idyll. And that’s the North Atlantic you’re dealing with there; not to be taken lightly, especially in a few months down the line.
Take care of yourself, Eolai. Feed yourself well and use draught excluders on the doors and windows. What heating have you in the cottage? And there’s a leak in your studio? A good breakfast and a brisk morning walk will set your body up for the day to keep warm. My granny was born in a Lewis blackhouse and that’s what she said worked. That and about seven million cups of hot sweet tea a day, plus about 5000 calories in mutton, fish and potatoes!
Martha - Ah, the piece of string question. Numbers are floating around my head, but it all depends on which painting comes out first. I rarely know myself. Arbitrary pints? That’s crazy talk! Dog-dog thanks you more than you know.
PCB - In fairness to the North Atlantic though it does keep things kind of temperate, what with the Gulf Stream and all. I’m told that actual freezing is rare enough here, because of the coast I presume, but yes winter is a lot harder than September.
Heating comes from either an open fire or through radiators which are run from an oil-fired range. For testing purposes I lit the range the night I stayed to view the cottage a month or so ago but I haven’t bothered lighting it since moving in. I’m all out of oil, and oil costs. Plus in fairness I do cold well.
I think I have the tea angle nailed down, and mutton certainly sounds good - but japers today’s rashers were only heavenly.