JandalsnAll

Greetings, and poge ma hone to you all. I have much news of little consequence.

Last week as I walked along MY beach I found a decaying baby horse. At first I thought it was a decaying baby cow but I thought about it and decided no, its a decaying baby horse. I made this decision based on the half revealed bone of the skull which was long and straight like a baby horses would be and not as much like a baby cows would be, and because it had hooves that weren’t cloven and I think a baby cow would have cloven hooves. If it still had more hair on it and if I felt like pulling its bottom out from under some rocks so I could see if it still had a tail, I might have had more evidence of it being a baby horse but I was quite happy with my decision not to touch it and to just trust my assumptions were correct.. though speaking of horses and their related cousins we all know why you should never assume. It was definitely dead though. And it definitely smelt like it was dead.

Well I went back a week or so later to see if I might retrieve its skull but it was gone. The smell was gone too. Maybe someone else beat me to it. But I think it most likely was washed out to sea as the swell was quite big and had pushed all the rocks up into a steep bank. So maybe it is buried under the rocks. Maybe one day it will rise again from its watery or stony grave and I can have its skull.

MY beach is my chosen haunting place of late. Its a stony little bay
I found round to the left from the pier and beneath the beginning of the cliffs. At first I was disgusted by all the debris I found washed up onto shore and lying among the stones, and the field directly behind it you need to walk through to get to MY beach from the road that has been used as a dumping ground at some time. Now however, since my baby horse find, Im intrigued by what I may stumble across. Ive found an old rusted metal shopping basket, a vacuum cleaner hose (actually several), an old chair leg, an old dolls leg, wheels, plastic buoys, one of those round red and white rings that hang on boats, a big rusty spring and shoes. So many shoes. Somewhere out there are alot people looking for a shoe and they really should come visit my odd shoe graveyard. You know the black hole that odd socks disappear into never to be seen again? Well there’s one for shoes too and MY beach is where it ends. Ive seen them, the shoes, falling from the sky.

So every so often I go down to MY beach to see what else I might find. More dead animals? Treasure? A human hand? I know I’ll always find shoes. Maybe one day I’ll find a sock aswell but I think thats fairly unlikely. Ive started sorting some of the interesting things(wheels, legs, dead animals) from the mundane (cans, bottles, shoes) with the view to possibly create some sculptures in my spare time. I wander over the stones with my stick I found, which is the perfect height and has a bend in it just like a walking stick and I poke at things like a crazy woman. Occasionally I’ll see someone come over the hill behind the beach or standing above at the edge of the cliffs but they never venture down for fear of the crazy hobo with her stick. But I leave my stick at the beach and bike back to the village and resume my ‘normal’ facade and the locals will never know Im really the crazy hobo stick lady. Ive met a few more of the locals. This week I met Heidi the SouthAfrican who works at the Village Craft Store and Joan the Dooliner who works there too and is Carol’s sister-in-law. But none of them will ever know about my secret hobo stick lady life.

On the 23rd of June, the day after Midsomer’s Day, Doolin lights its bonfires. Im still not sure why, I think its something to do with St John? Or maybe just a good time to burn stuff. Robert the hostel owner lit a bonfire in the field behind his house and he, Carol, Karl, some of the hostellers and myself sat around it leaning against piles of freshly mown hay, watching things burn and passing around a guitar. Its fun to burn things. For the record, hay and haybales are NOT delightful. I retract all my previous comments regarding the joys of haybales. They are evil poisonous things and have smote me down with hayfever of the most literal kind. Everywhere you look here there’s hay. Hay in the back field, hay in the front field, hay moving up the road on the back of a tractor. Its one giant hay conspiracy to make me sneeze and never stop. And when you sneeze your heart stops so I would die. Or maybe its just that its summer and people like to mow hay in the summer.

The last few days have been so hot, so sunny that I was convinced summer had finally arrived. I really could not stay outside for longer than 20 minutes the sun was so searingly hot, and I wandered around in jandals and a singlet. Alas it was all a cruel joke and this morning I awoke to see familiar grey drizzle out my window. Of course it will continue to rain over the next few days as these are my days off. If anyone is coming to Ireland and needs a weather report I can guarantee come Sunday and Monday it will be summer again and I can guarantee Tuesday will bring rain. The good weather made for some amazing sunsets though. One night I walked down the road that passes the hostel about 20minutes then over a couple of fields (past a sign saying Beware of the Bull) to the coast. There was absolutely nobody around and I walked for about an hour round the rocks to the pier while the sun began to set. At the pier there were too many people so I carried on round to MY beach (hoping I might find the skull this time) and up on to a hill to see the whole of Doolin and the cliffs lit up by the fire in the sky. Bright oranges and pinks and more subtle purples further out. It was amazing – and I didnt have my camera.

I recently acquired a fiddle practice partner to join me in making a variety of the most hideous of sounds known to man. Sarah from France, has also recently purchased a fiddle and as she is staying at the hostel long term we will together endeavour to produce a sound that is bearable to the human and animal ear. Our first practice we struggled through several songs, assuring each other it didnt sound so bad while wincing in pain with every stroke of the bow. Sarah has had a few lessons when she was young but my fiddle is better than hers so it all evens out. I can play two songs – Merrily We Roll Along and German Polka which may come in handy as we always have plenty of Germans staying. When I say I can play those songs, I mean to me they sound like songs, to everyone else I would imagine they sound like Roberts donkey when he’s harrassing the cows across the road.

Last night I went out to McDermott’s pub for the first time in ages. There was a band called The Caley Bandits playing who were very good. The unusual inclusion of a double bass along with the usual bouron, bousouki and fiddle made for a great sound. Sarah and I studied the very accomplished fiddle player’s (Yvonne) technique intently with the hopes of picking up some secret quick fix but unfortunately I think the only cure is many years of practice. Many many years before my fiddle sounds more like a fiddle and less like a donkey.

Tomorrow morning I head to Galway to bank my meagre savings so far and spend much more on a night at the movies (Batman Begins), stocking up the food cupboard, and the elusive Saturday market sushi – the only sushi in Galway. They also have great crepes and olives and handmade chocolates and vegetarian takeaways at the markets so I think I may have to spend the day there for breakfast, lunch and dinner….and morning tea and afternoon tea – I’ll start saving next week.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Ah Sweet Doolin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.