Soft Rain......

The spuds are being harvested along the coast road that looks across the bay at the Mourne Mountains, a site where dozens of flint arrow heads and scrapers were found years ago. Below the road, the rocky beach is frilled with a silky green scarf, churned out of the sea on each returning tide.  Diving gannets and terns have the men thinking that the mackerel have begun to arrive. A single motor sailer unties its moorings to be there first to catch the seasons prize, such sons of men who laboured hard once on giant schooners which they owned and filled with coal to carry from liverpool back across the Irish sea to the now broken up pier of a merchant family called Jones. The occasional salmon breaks a flooding tide to begin its journey back from where it first begun.  Gusty westerlies have me thinking summer is over, until a brief spell the sun appears, just enough to make the rolling sea change your mind about lifting the boat for another little while at least, 3 months will be enough for the boats first outing, bleached and haggered from the weather. I look forward to oiling it up once its home. Beneath its hull, crustaceans have begun to grow on the wooden skids, I use a leeboard to slide in under to follow the footprints of an old harbour rat whose tooth marks make for fine cave art as it slices off the white tallow that coats the underbelly of the craft. I hope he has had his fill and returns to eating seafood soon. A barrel of lanolin has arrived from the factory to seal off the rawhide seams from within its weeping hull. But for now I am content to make another size of sail from the green glossy canvas and the brass coated eyelets to find out which size sail best suites our slow moving cow still on her way home to the dairy with the herd.......