My name is Clarence Cavedweller Passiformus V. It’s a wren thing. We are from the family Troglodytidae after all. Not a lot of people know this, but in Latin the ae at the end of words is pronounced i. Just saying. My father was a Greek scholar as well as Latin. I’m Irish and I must say I do like the Irish term: dreoilín. Nice ring to it.
I came out of the café and looked to my right, and there she was: the first swallow of the summer. The unmistakable forked tail streaming below the wire, the pale breast, tawny in the soft morning light, the hint of cobalt and burnt orange. Her mate flew by and she rose in a sweep and they both entered the open door of the barn. The swallows are here!
Two Extracts removed from a short story. A man ruminates as he watches his son play in an All Ireland Final…
“I swear by the oath of my people”, said Cú Chulainn, “I will make my doings be spoken of among the great doings of heroes in their strength” – Cú Chulainn of Muirthemne by Lady Gregory. Heavy hearted after yesterday’s painful replay defeat by Clare in an All Ireland Final, I went out of the house this morning to get some groceries and try to distract myself. When I opened the front door I heard young girls laughing, as they played hockey in the rain at Ashton across the road.
And so, we have St. Brigid’s Day. Lá ‘le Bríde. February 1st. We made it! We got battered and bruised by storms Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, Desmond, Eva, Frank, and Gertrude, but you know what? We’re still here and they’re gone. That’s what. And now we’ve Henry but that will pass too. Now we’ll see the days lengthening. Now we’ll start to feel the touch of Spring, like a girl who knows she’s going to be kissed for the first time, any moment, any moment, any moment… NOW. And summer not far behind. I can already hear the sweet shriek of the Swift in the high bright air. I see a glint in Jackdaws’ eyes as they coolly watch me cycling by. I was down in Crosshaven early yesterday (sitting outside a café, after a cycle – in January) and a young Rook was hopping around picking up crumbs. He has
I always look out to the garden (such as it is) when I’m having my breakfast (such as it is), even in the paling grey mornings of an Irish November* (such as they are). Just joking. The garden is fine, and the breakfast finer. And mornings bring miracles and the hope of renewal. And outside the window there is a patio area and a concrete retaining wall painted white by my own hand. And growing from the apparently barren pebbles on the shaded ground below a proud unlikely nasturtium flourishes each year. It appears in early Summer, full of curiosity and hope (as perennials do) and crawls its tiptoe creep along the stones and the patio slabs. One, two, three, four stems grow and thicken and seek the purchase they need to go upwards, onward, towards the bounty of light. Like fingers feeling under the bed sheets for the promise
How’s the going, like? We’re all sound here in Tuscany Downs in Cork, where we don’t have no water meters and we won’t neither. Ever. Over my dead body. I’m getting dirty looks from yerwan next door but it’s not my fault that she let the water run out on the road so that there was a sheet of ice outside her gate. Lucky nobody was killed. Tommy could have banged his head or anything. He could have an acute subdural haematoma, or something. Look what happened to Cilla Black, like. If there’s culpability, there’s culpability – it’s in the lawyer’s hands now, I’ll let justice take its course. They’ll settle anyway, they always do. That’s deadly news about David Bowie. Between himself, Lemmy and that English actor from Harry Potter, it’s getting scary. Jesus if cancer killed all them, there’s no hope for the rest of us. Especially
It’s been a terrible week here in Tuscany Downs in Cork City, just terrible. And it’s only Tuesday. We had frost and you’ll never guess what happened. My gutter was leaking and with all the rain the past few weeks, the water was flowing down my path and on to the road. Well, that froze over last night and didn’t Tommy Sullivan next door slip on it and he’s after hurting himself. I can’t get the rights of it from his mother, that little rip, but he’s on crutches and she says he has ‘severe trauma’ – whatever that is. I don’t think anything is broken, though. I wouldn’t mind but that know-it-all next door has been on to me for weeks, months, about fixing it. But I kept putting him off. I just couldn’t bear being beholding to him, Jesus I’d never hear the end of it. Of course
And so we get frost, we get frost. Frost on the car windows below on the road; frost on Hayes’s flat roof. The faint hint of it on the tips of the long grass out the back, just lightening the green to a silvery grey. But it’s a soft one – nothing on the discarded Christmas Tree on the gravel, solemnly awaiting its butchering. Nothing on the damp table top, still pristine after my Autumn varnishing. Imagine. The first frost of the Winter on the tenth of January. Jasmine flowering against the back wall. The fern still intact, only a touch of russet on its fine, kiwi-green fronds. The daffodils about to grant us new gold. And as I wander out on the landing on this Sunday morning I see cloud lining the river to the north. It’s there, above the water, and only there, behind Ashton’s new school and
You come downstairs early. The wind woke you so that’s that. Anyway, you like being down there on your own, pottering around the kitchen while they’re all asleep above. You switch on the Christmas tree lights. Somehow they’re more comforting in the pale grey dawn than in the dark of the night. Then you get a yearning for the Arvo Pärt Cantus, so you dig it out on your iPod and put on your headphones and listen to it as you wash up the wine glasses. It was good of Jenny and Chris to call even if she does think she knows it all.The state of your nails – maybe Liz will give you another voucher for that place on Grafton Street. You vow not to drink tonight when Claire comes over. How you’d manage without your amazing sister you’ll never know. You empty the dishwasher quietly, feeling the curve
