The Cottage - Day 9
Misty morning. Or, if you prefer, rain without wind.
Hey, the smell is gone. The kitchen/living room/dining room no longer smells of dead rodent or water damage. Oh no, my nose is just blocked. I’m glad I didn’t buy any medication to clear it.
The porch has new leaks and new drip spots. 3 unfinished paintings are sitting in pools of water.
I hear a car pull up outside, and carry on working. Wait a minute, cars don’t pull up outside my house; who is that?
It is the postman in his van. He looks aghast.
-It’s a smile not a growl, I tell him of Dog-dog’s approach.
Oh, says the postman with his own smile. He has a parcel for me from Dublin. It is the attachments for the bicycle that I’d forgotten. Now Long Grass really can carry anything.
It feels colder today but my American digital travel clock tells me it isn’t really. The dog doesn’t believe the clock and goes back to bed.
With the rain obscuring all views, and the damp making it a waste of time to go looking for them, it’s a perfect day for a big fire to warm the house up. A perfect day for it but it’s not going to happen. I’m not about to burn up so soon what little fuel I’ve managed to collect.
Thinking of the houses I’ve walked past in the last week with big piles of turf outside, I make a sandwich and stick the kettle on.
Hey, I can see a JCB. Going away from the house. I wonder where it’s coming from?
Go for a 3 and half mile walk. A gamble really because I choose nothing appropriate for rain, wearing my best trousers and a big woolly jumper. It is raining, and I’m not sure it had ever stopped. It’s that soft Irish rain that just sits motionless in the air and you wade through it.
Behind us the clouds cover the mountains. In fact I think they are sitting on the cottage. It might be the clouds we are wading through.
After half an hour we move off the road to let a tractor pass. There is a dog up there by the driver. My dog and the tractor dog look at each other. Both seem confused.
In the distance a headland is, however improbably, in sunshine. The green among all the grey of the surrounding landscapes is fairytale like. As a bull bellows, the smell of peat fires is warming and comforting for some reason. Whatever that reason might be it’s not the fact that I have no turf to speak of for burning myself.
Despite the darkness, the spider webs in the gorse all glimmer in the rainwater. Twice the man in the little white van passes us. Unsurprisingly at this stage he is going the same direction both times.
A van in America was a large spacious vehicle with lots of windows. They were driven by mothers, and in the back were lots of children. In Ireland a little van is a cramped vehicle with almost no windows. They are driven by single men, and in the back is a pair of pliers.
We walk on to the crossroads. At the crossroads you can go straight ahead for the main road, or left for the main road, or right for the main road. As main roads go, it’s a fairly main one.
A large black dog comes to greet us but stands off waiting for an invitation. When I issue it he gallops like a pony moving in all directions but mostly forwards. And then of course he won’t leave us. I don’t really mind except I don’t want him to get knocked down on my account.
Or knocked down at all off course.
He follows us for a mile though, with Dog-dog being unconcerned. But then we are in sheep country and he races at them, albeit on the road on the other side of the fence from then. They scatter of course and before we get to a point where he can easily leap the fence I turn and chase him back down the road. I do this in a Moses-like stick-waving fashion - for I walk with a stick for such very purposes, you see.
It takes a couple of pulpit style rantings to persuade the dog to stop following us, but it works and the sheep are safe for another day. And all the time my own little dog trots along nonchalently on the end of her leash.
We pick up the pace because ahead of us the gap is enshrouded in cloud and it is time for the midges to feast. In the door with few bites our routines are well established. The dog goes straight to bed and I go straight to the kettle.
That’s the thing about going outside when it’s cold; it makes inside that much warmer. It also, however, makes the smell in the kitchen stronger.
Through the window I watch a raincloud move over the far island and do what’s been done to the island since before legends began.
It is some hours later with only a snoring dog and the light of the lighthouse for company that I am listening to the rain on the roof and realise as bed beckons that I forgot to have any dinner today.
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
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