Ropes Let Down to the Lost

I went down to the sea late this afternoon. The sun was setting in pools of pink gold behind me, but as I walked around the headland, the sky was a wash of early evening blues and greys and lavender, hazed with clouds, and with a vast moon rising: luminous, silver-gilt, almost full. The mountains behind the bay just lightly sketched - mist on mist.
The sea itself was pale, the way it goes at dusk, strangely colourless, but magical.

I needed some air.
I needed to clear away the weekend's cobwebs, and the dogs were only too happy to keep me company. We went in silence, just the rush of the high tide chasing itself into the bay, the clatter of dragging stones as the big waves receded. Nothing else.
It was cold, but we didn't hurry, it was too beautiful to leave.
I wished I'd taken a camera. Even my phone with its cracked screen.

The crisp breeze soon cleared the tangles in my head. Tangles, mostly, of other peoples' problems - as if my own weren't enough! Cold air is very cleansing. 

And then, into the stillness slipped Mary Oliver.
As she so often does - her words slip in so easily.
She died this week, that wonderful poet.
I hope she is even now considering her eternity 'as another possibility'.

Perhaps standing on the prow of the headland, staring into the darkening, busy waves brought her back to me:

'I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.'

Or perhaps she was in my mind anyway, having just left us.

With Model Dog leaning her comforting weight against my legs in the long, rough grass, the second thought came swiftly on the heels of the first - how could it not, while I was standing there in the gloaming, with that mauve-brindled sky and the childishly perfect moon.

'Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.'

As I put the dogs back into the car, it was inevitable that, having brought her to mind, her most poignant lines of all echoed through my head, as they often do - so very often, many a time with more than a hint of reproach:

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?'   

What indeed?

With time spooling out behind me and all.
But while I try to puzzle that one out, I can only be grateful for what you did with yours, Mary.


'...poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.'


 

The rooks were going to bed by moonlight as I got home

 

New Year's Day

We went down to the sea this morning. I say that as if it were a rare occurrence, when actually we go down to the sea most days - drawn inexorably to the water, to the inimitable smell of salt and seaweed like lemmings.
It was the softest of mornings, drippingly soft, shroud-grey enveloping mizzle.
Surprisingly beautiful.

The dogs didn't even notice the wet. They rarely do.
But Tizzy, the supermodel, saw something else.
The tide was coming into the little bay, but she stood, 'lurching' at the splay of disappearing rocks, and then skittered off across them at full tilt.
I thought she'd taken exception to a distant seabird, barely visible in the shifting spray, but a moment later a dark shape moved and slithered wetly into the sea, just ahead of her eager muzzle.
It was an otter.

We stood for ages in the rain, watching it play in the water, its head popping up like a little periscope, its body as fluid as the sea, slipping on and off the submerging rocks.

Another one ducked in and out on the further side of the bay.
Perhaps they are last summer's pups. We haven't seen them down there until today.
It was fabulous.

Happy New Year otters.

Tango-ing to Messina

Italy 4


We drove the length of the Calabrian coast after leaving the glorious cliff-top towns, hairpin bends and incredible views of Amalfi.
It was a lovely journey.
I'd looked for a place to stay half way to the toe of Italy, and came up with Maratea, a tiny seaside town that the Romans have taken to, apparently, as a weekend retreat.
I'm not surprised. It was just what we were looking for.

The harbour at Maratea

An iconic hill-top town, a winding, 5km road down to sea level and the tiny, original harbour, with a newer marina a short distance along the coast. We stopped for a drink in the old harbour. It was a sweltering afternoon - in the high 30s again. The harbour reminded us a little of places that we have loved elsewhere. We would probably have been happy to stay there, but the tiny town was deserted, half the world was still having a siesta, and we couldn't see a hotel or B&B that was open.

The old harbour at Maratea

Instead we drove round the corner and found Fiumicello, with it's little bay, village spread down the hillside, and a hotel on the beach.
Heaven.

Settebello, the hotel on the beach. The Redentore on top of the mountain is huge

We went for a swim, sat and watched the sun set over the sea from our balcony, and later drove up the mountain to eat in the hill-top town. From the streets of the town we could see up to the floodlit Redentore high, high above us. It is a massive statue of Christ on the actual peak of the mountain. Apparently it is second in size only to the one in Rio de Janeiro.

The beach in front of the hotel

We watched the sun go down sitting on our balcony

I think we'd have happily stayed at Settebello for the rest of the week, but Sicily was calling, so the next day we headed for the Calabrian coast - mile after mile beside a cobalt and turquoise sea, with an unbroken beach that stretched to infinity. For once we didn't mind Angelica's choice of route.
We stopped in a little town called Diamante - well, you'd have to, wouldn't you! - and, feeling distinctly less than glamorous, I went in search of a hairdresser.
I found an empty salon (as worrying as an empty restaurant!) but an elderly chap appeared from nowhere before I could back out onto the street, and - assuring me that of course he catered for ladies, ushered me to a basin. I left him to it and emerged half an hour later, if not with quite my usual hairstyle, at least with shining, coiffed locks.

We bought a map (trusting Angelica was going to take time), had a drink overlooking the sea and headed off again for Reggio Calabria and the Messina ferry.
On the way, the traffic got less and less, the road got better and better and we saw beautiful landscapes, forest fires, yet another traffic accident (we saw six in our meagre 11 days) and miles and miles of ocean. Also lots of mile-high grass of some sort - possibly the Japanese Knotweed of Italy. It is everywhere.

Grass taking over Italy

The ferry from Villa San Giovanni to Messina leaves every half hour, so we drove straight onto one.
The In-Charge was particularly interested in the Straits, as he had sailed through them with #1 Son only a few weeks before, when they'd been packed with swordfish-fishing boats performing some unfathomable ritual.
We saw no other boats at all that afternoon, so made our way to the forward deck instead, to watch Messina drawing closer.
I'm glad we did. There was a group of musicians sitting to one side playing various instruments, and suddenly a whole lot of people got up and started to dance.
We stood - along with half the ship's passengers - and gawped as, brow to cheekbone, they tango'd all over the deck. I'm not a 'Strictly' fan, but I could have watch these people all night. They were graceful, beautiful and danced as if it came naturally.

'Well, you don't get that on the Dover to Calais,' the In-Charge said as we headed back to the car deck.
You certainly don't.
I think it was truly one of the best moments of our whole trip.

Tango-ing to Messina

Wonderfully, the AirBnB we had booked at random for that night turned out to be in yet another hilltop town in the mountains behind Messina.
To be honest, I was wishing it anywhere else as Angelica forced us up narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper streets. I had reason to be worried. She had taken us down streets in Sorrento that were so narrow we had - literally - had to stop and pull the wing mirrors in on both sides in order to fit through, and even then it was touch and go.
She's probably one of those women who think they're much thinner than they really are - isn't that what they say about the women/cars/space conundrum?
Anyway - Montforte San Giorgio was proving to be even more hair-raising than Sorrento's alleyways.
At one point we had to stop on practically vertical, slickly-shiny cobbles at a red traffic light - because the gateway into the town's tiny 'main square' was so narrow that only a donkey cart could comfortably pass through, so it was definitely One Way. When we got into the square, there was a wedding in full swing in the church and the place was jam packed with cars, old men sitting around, and small children racing about.

The main square in Montforte San Giorgio later that evening. The wedding had moved on by then

We did eventually find our B&B - no thanks to Angelica, who gave up at the Church. It turned out to be an entire town house on three levels with a stable/storeroom on the ground floor and a roof terrace above - all for us. There was no one living there.
Before he left, we asked our host to recommend somewhere to eat, and the somewhat surprising answer was 'Fort Apache'. Sicily aka the Wild West.
We wandered back into town, but actually finding Fort Apache proved slightly more difficult.
We did find a couple of vehicles that I'd gladly have packed into my luggage, though.

Another vehicle I'd like to have brought home

And this one as well

Eventually, we stopped at the old mens' bar back in the square to ask where Fort Apache was, and spotted a priest chatting inside. He was that beautiful, bluish-black of many African people, and not only spoke French but offered to take us to the restaurant in his car. He wasn't, he told us, the local priest as we had assumed. He had been adopted as a child by a family in the town and was on a visit home. He was delightful.
So was Fort Apache, which was a little way out of the town.
The place was full to bursting, the food was delicious, and the olives were the best we'd had anywhere.
We sat out under their vine-covered terrace, drinking and feasting and loving every moment.
It had been a very good day.
(Alas, we didn't find out until later that the mossies were also feasting. On rare Northern meat. Us.)

A war memorial in Montforte San Giorgio

A view from the town

This is the 4th part of our trip to Italy.
You can read the first part here: See Naples and Die
Part 2: Sipping Limoncello in Sorrento
Part 3: Amalfi: The Road More Travelled
The last part: Sicily: Hot on the Heels of Montalbano

Amalfi: The Road More Travelled

Italy 3


It was stunning, the Amalfi Coast.
It seems that everyone thinks it's stunning, so all in all I'm glad we weren't there in July.
It's probably like the M25. Or the Ring of Kerry on super-steroids.

Every hairpin bend brings another wonderful view. Buildings perched on sheer mountain sides, rocky peaks towering above, boats strewn haphazardly on a jewel coloured sea far below.
It's enough to cause a traffic jam - everyone stopping to take photos.
You can't blame them. We did the same. It's a place where you can capture Italy (the south, anyway) in a single shot.

Southern Italy in a single shot

We didn't stop in Positano. I'd love to have pottered around the town, but it was too full of visitors for comfort.
We stopped further down the coast instead, at a tiny inlet the In-Charge spotted from our lofty height on the road. We wound our way down and happily paid the extortionate parking fee so that we could sit under an umbrella in the blazing midday sun drinking Prosecco. And watch some lads loading crates of beer onto a boat to deliver to a bar a few inlets along. Apparently, the only other way for them to get their beer is to tote it down a thousand or so steps.
There'd be none left by the time they got to the bottom.

We did stop in Amalfi. It was €5 an hour to park, which was even more expensive than the little inlet, but we found a vacant slot right on the front, so we did a lightning tour of the town.
It was beautiful, but to be honest, an hour was enough.
The place was packed and the locals in the shops and bars had obvious tourist-fatigue. Hardly surprising.

Amalfi

The town was packed

Everyone photographing everyone photographing everyone

I had the most expensive ice cream in the world, and then we sat looking over the sea and yacht-gazing while we had a drink before heading along the coast to Ravello.

We sat under the iconic umbrella pines overlooking the sea

A spot of yacht-watching is always fun. It reminds us of #1 Son

It was, thankfully, a good bit calmer in Ravello, despite the town's illustrious catalogue of earlier visitors.
The list of people who have visited the place, or written famous books or operas there, or just stayed with other famous people is endless.
In a more romantic era these included Ruskin, Grieg, most of the Bloomsbury Set including Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell, Vita Sackville-West, DH Lawrence and TS Elliot. Wagner wrote Parsifal in Ravello, André Gide wrote L'Immortaliste, Churchill painted and Escher drew.
And in more recent times the tiny town has been host to Paul Newman, Rod Stewart, Harrison Ford, Roger Moore, Nicholas Cage, Mel Gibson, John Malkovich and Pierce Brosnan - amongst others. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shot parts of Mr and Mrs Smith in the town, Gary Lineker got married there and Woody Harrelson's daughter was born there, so he named her Ravello.

The view down from the old town

Inside one of the hotels. Who knows which celebrities might have been lurking within?

None of those people were in the streets on the day we visited. In fact, we didn't spot any celebrities - though to be honest, I wasn't really looking.
I got waylaid by several shops selling pottery and the maiolica typical of the area.
I loved the spotty-ware, and some of the maiolica pieces were stunning. I was very taken by an interesting platter fixed to the wall, but in the end I settled for a much simpler (and smaller) memento. A Christmas tree decoration with a bird on it.

Lovely spotty pottery

An interesting platter stuck to the wall

I bought a little Christmas tree decoration. I like birds

We decided to drive back cross-country, through the mountains, and reluctantly roused Angelica. She'd had a day off.
It was a good decision. Angelica rose to the challenge and we hardly met anyone, beyond a flock of goats, the goatherd and his dogs.
We'd loved the stunning views, the towns clinging to the mountain-sides, the yachts and the jewel coloured sea - everything.
But we were ready to head further south to quieter places.

On duty

This is part 3 of our travels in Italy
You might also like Part 1: See Naples and Die
Part 2: Sipping Limoncello in Sorrento
Part 4: Tango-ing to Messina
And the last part: Sicily: Hot on the Heels of Montalbano

A Pet Evening

Last week, while the Godson was here, the Silver Beast decided to break down.
She's been very good this last year or two, living quietly in her kennel-yard and going everywhere we've asked, with no complaint. But no longer. She went from moody to recalcitrant to point-blank refusal in just 4 days.
The started-motor had died.

Happily, the Godson drove us hither, thither and yon, bless his heart, but alas, even he finally had to go home, and still the garage hadn't been able to get to her.
It was my friend DodoWoman who stepped into the breach, as ever.
'I need to ask you a huge favour.' I said - hesitantly.
'What?' She sounded slightly anxious, but when I asked if we could borrow her small car, her response was immediate and generous to a fault, as always. 'Of course,' she said with verve and vigour. It was only afterwards I wondered what she'd been expecting me to say.

I have fallen in love with her Hyundai. It goes like a dream, is incredibly comfortable, and when asked if it wants a drink responds with an astonishing, 'No, I'm good thanks.'
It was - as with all the lends of her cars over the years - a godsend for which I am forever grateful.

The Silver Beast, having had her moment of cosseting and one-to-one attention, is now safely back in the yard, happy and  full of well-being, so yesterday evening we set out to return DodoWoman's car to its own cosy nest.

Unlike the rest of the British Isles and Ireland, we have not been basking in unalloyed sunshine all week, despite all promises and expectations. We have skulked under grey skies and dismal-ness.
I think there were a few brief hours of fitful sunlight on Wednesday afternoon, but that was it.
However, yesterday, although the clouds sat heavy on our shoulders the entire day, it was blissfully warm and even more blissfully still.

'Let's take the dogs and go to the beach on the way,' the In-Charge suggested, just when the sun would have been dipping over the yardarm. ''It will be low tide.'
So we drove both cars over to DodoWoman's house, left her Hyyndai to await her return from forrin-parts and moseyed down green, summery lanes to our second favourite beach. We passed lazy amblers, dogs and companionable horse-riders on the way.

It must have been about 7.45pm when we got to the beach. The tide was at its lowest ebb.
There were sandbars showing all across the bay, the sea pooling around them like silk, the sky pearling softly into the water, and everything the shade of sophisticated dresses, neither silver nor grey nor quite lavender.
And on the spit of land behind the beach, harebells, wild scabious and white heather spread in drifts through the grass.
We walked along the beach in our shirtsleeves, not a breath of wind, the air balmy and gentle, the only sound a heron hurrying home to Culleenamore.

It's not often that we are walking the beach on such a pet evening. It's not often that we are on the beach as the day melts into night.
But the combination of the two sent me tumbling through a mindfall of years, walking a beach on the far side of the world, saying goodbye to my childhood, the night before I left that tropical island forever.
It is strange, what ghosts walk in the gloaming.

Christmas Holidays

We've had a real Christmas holiday day. We got up late, had breakfast and then set out for our favourite beach. We've been wanting to go, but it has either been too stormy, or just so windy and wet that we haven't felt like going near the sea.
But today dawned blue and still - a rare treat at the moment.

Unfortunately, the rivulet on our favourite beach was in such flood that we couldn't get across to the sands beyond, so we went on to our second favourite instead, which turned out to be a Very Good Decision.

Pocketfuls of dog treats

Wandering along the stony sand, we picked up fragments of sea glass to add to our huge collection, listened to a warbling bird that we couldn't see or identify, admired the patterns the water leaves behind, and waved to a fisherman pottering on his boat, bobbing at anchor just a stone's throw out into the bay. The air-sea rescue helicopter droned in, low over the water on the far side of the bay and hovered over Strandhill for a while, but it was too far away to see anything except the constant line of breakers creaming in from the Atlantic.

Sand patterns like armies of woodlice

It's a wonderful beach. It has a long spit that curves out into the bay, and nestled in on the land-side are mud flats, some sheep pastures and sometimes fishing boats laid up for the winter.
But today the tide was in across the mud flats, and the dogs went crazy, chasing each other in and out of the shallow water.

An inland sea

 Model Dog practiced being a fish.

The TeenQueen practiced being a 3-legged dog.

 And we all practiced wading.


From the long arm of the beach, there is a wonderful view of Knocknarea, Sligo's No 2 mountain just across the bay, but you can't see the huge neolithic cairn on its summit from this angle, even though it's one of the largest in Ireland (and dates back to 3000 BC). The grave belongs, they say, to Maeve, the ancient Queen of Connacht, who was buried standing up so that she could keep watch over all her lands. By the time she died, her lands were extensive - due, no doubt, to her Lucretia Borgia approach to the acquisition of power. On a clear day you can see across 5 counties, I guess, as well as Sligo Bay and Donegal Bay. On a bad day, you are battered by the four winds of heaven and may see nothing but the vast tomb - 10 metres high and 55 metres wide.

We didn't mind not seeing Maeve's Lump (as it's affectionately known), as we see it from the road all the time. Instead we watched riders on the far beach beneath her. They were having a lovely time, with their dogs streaming in front like outriders.

We inspected the skeleton of a boat left to commune perpetually with the wind and the tides.

And we stopped at the pile of stones that always looks - from a distance - as if it started life as a beehive dwelling for a lonely hermit. When you get up close, you realise that it is, probably, just a pile of stones.

We decided that we'd round off our lovely, seaside morning by stopping at The Beach Bar for a drink and maybe a toasted sandwich or something for lunch, but then we discovered that although we had lots of dog treats, neither of us had so much as a brass farthing, so we went home instead. 

And this afternoon I finally put out the last of the compost.
The long border and the Moon Garden are officially bedded down for the winter, and I can go away with a clear conscience. They are done and dusted, and already the merry-go-round is bringing spring closer with every passing day. Even so, I put extra handfuls on all the little blades of green poking out of the soil. It is much too early for bulbs to be pushing up.

Oh what a lovely sight

And my reward for all the hard work?
A little posy of winter roses from the two bushes I cut back.

Winter roses

Equinox

Today is, I believe, the spring equinox.
It was calm and sunny when I got up at 7am.
It is now equinoctial, with rain flinging at the windows on an east wind honed to razor-sharpness.
The In-Charge had warned me, so I took the precaution of walking round the garden this morning, bidding adieu to all my lovely, upright daffodils.

I don't ever pick daffodils for the house because they last so much longer in the garden, and I'd rather see them there. Instead, I rescue odd handfuls of fallen ones every day..

There have been a lot of casualties this spring, thanks to the TeenQueen and Model Dog racing through the orchard every morning, not to mention the hens, who are extremely thoughtless where my flowers are concerned - despite my stern lectures - so between them all, my kitchen windowsill is generally full of broken daffodil heads stuck into little jars.
I expect there will be a big rescue-operation tomorrow as well, if this wind is anything to go by.

Down on the headland, I felt like Scott in the Antarctic, hat crammed on, earflaps firmly tied down, fighting my way into the wind. The dogs like the wind. They have the delicious sensation of being chased without being able to see who is about to grab them. They run so fast that you can't actually keep your eyes on them because it makes you dizzy. When they eventually slowed down I managed to get a - rather fuzzy - picture of them.

I think the horses like the wind too, although I felt rather sorry for them, having no shelter from it, especially the two tiny foals. They came running after us today, which they don't normally do, and for a brief moment, the TeenQueen thought of joining them for a mad dash around the lumps and bumps, but then she thought better of it.
Even she can count, and the odds weren't stacking up at all well
And they're bigger than she is.
And just a tinsy bit scary.
(I'm glad to say.)

So she high-tailed it inland across the rough grass, throwing out a challenge that Model Dog can rarely resist, and zig-zagged away like the hares she dreams about.
Then, on the far side of the headland, she spotted a flock of oystercatchers and managed to get them airborne in a flash, which was deeply satisfying.
It will be another exhausted evening on the fireside rug, I guess, and let the wind and rain do their worst.
Once the shutters are closed for the night, who cares?

Passing

The little bay

I took the dogs to the headland this morning.
The tide was right out, the little bay awash with seaweed, the water thick with seagulls.
The smell of the sea was so intense, it caught me in the back of the throat and sent me spinning through the years, to other days, other beaches, other dogs. Memories of another lifetime, it seemed, way back when time wasn't measured because it didn't matter.
Those days didn't feel like thirty years ago, but they did feel as if they'd slipped beyond reach.

Time changes as you get older. It is no longer a haphazard, generously proportioned patchwork, a kaleidoscope of shifting possibilities, an empty frame in which you are creating the picture.
It becomes mean and sly and penny-pinching. It stands at your side, licking the end of its pencil and noting everything down. Nothing slips by unremarked, and one way or another, everything must be paid for - even though the hours it measures out to you slip through your fingers like water.
But it's only when the past comes swooping back to grab you, that you realise how much everything has changed.

I found myself walking through the rough grass aching for days and people - for eras - that will never be again.

But it was a blue morning, calm and quiet, the sun warm on my back.
The headland horses came to say hello as we passed on our way to the lumpy dunes where the dogs love to race, or lie in the grass and ambush each other.

The headland horses come to say hello

It's probably the miniature hills and dells that make the headland so exciting for them. Whoever is playing the hare can never quite tell if she's about to be caught.
And it was only when I got to the top of the highest lump and looked back, I saw that one of the mares has had her foal. The tiny, dark creature was standing close to her, still wide-eyed at this world of mornings and evenings, of sunlight and starlight - too young to realise that all these things are just marking the passage of time.

Later, the tanker-man came to deliver heating oil. We stood in the sunshine and exchanged news. He always knows far more of what is going on than I do.
He was looking pensive as well, despite the spring weather.
'Someone up the road killed himself, this morning,' he told me.
I'd seen an ambulance, going past our gate - a rare sight in this quiet place.
Shocked, silenced, I didn't know what to say.
Tragically - in this quiet place - it seems to happen more and more these days.
'You never know how it is with people,' he said, eventually.

You never do.