I wasn’t sure what to buy at the Farmer’s Market this morning. I would get a chicken but given the recent complaints from the children that would go in the freezer to be had for lunch next week on Sunday.

I thought about some lamb but as I walked around none of the butchers seemed to have what I wanted. Then I spotted on top of the counter of the Welsh butchers who sell Welsh Black Beef two dark packages wrapped in clear plastic. One was marked Ox tongue £3.50. I picked it up to feel the weight of it and then put it back. I had read recipes for the cooking of tongue and had vague memories of it being served for dinner at school. I was not sure how good an investment it would be.

Next to it the package was labelled Ox heart £2.50. This was more like it. Again I picked it up. It  was  heavier than the tongue and dense with black blood. As I looked at it a sharp voice over my left shoulder said “That’s mine and I have paid for it!’

I looked around and there was a smartly dressed lady stood there pulling a plastic bag out of her pocket.

The woman behind the counter said “That’s right I’m afraid she’s paid for it and all.’ I put it back onto the counter. I wasn’t sure about what to with it anyway.

As the smart lady took it to put in her bag I asked her “How are you going to cook it?’

“I’m going to stuff it and roast it.’ She said it with such certainty that I was instantly sorry that it was not me who was going to be doing the stuffing and roasting. What could be as straightforward as that and I was sure the kids could be talked round.

I carried on my walk around the market but still did not see anything. As I walked past the Black Beef counter again there was another Ox hear on top. I’ll have it I thought and I forked out my change and bought it. If anything it was heavier and darker than the first.

It is now sat in the fridge downstairs ready to be stuffed and roasted tomorrow.

There are two pubs in Ahakista. Most of time is spent in Arundel’s. It is closer and close enough for us to be able take the odd few pints back down the road 100 yards to the Cottage. In fact quite a lot more than a few pints head down that way. All you need is to be careful of are fishermen on the pier who will eye your pint greedily as you walk past and you might be compelled to hand one over.

Christy Moore spotted me one year. He was driving past in a black Lexus and I was carrying a tray of pints. He slowed down, put his head out of the rolled down window and told me to be careful with my precious load.

The other pub is another few hundred yards up the road The Tin Pub next door to Ahakista House. It does what it says on the tin seemingly knocked together with pieces of corrugated iron and wood. It has been given a lick of paint over the last few years but it can still be a dangerous place late on a Saturday evening when there is singing going on in  the the corner and dancing outside.

I was in the bar one mid afternoon in summer. It was hot outside and the front door was open to the road. The pub nestles amongst trees and their shade kept the bar cool. I was by myself apart from the dog. Patrick had been working behind the bar  but he was outside now sorting bottles from the night before.

The man with a black bear walked in. He nodded at me shortly before putting his arms on the bar. We waited a few minutes and listened to the clink of bottles outside.

‘Patrick’ he shouted ‘I’ll get one myself.’

He went behind the bar and took down a glass and started to pour. ‘Do you need another,’ he asked me. Before I could answer he’d taken down another glass and started to fill that. The glasses were almost filled and he left them to settle. As they did that he went to the corner and put on some music. He then went back to the glasses and filled them until the white head started to spill over. He wiped at the drips with his fingers before lifting the pints up. He put one on a mat in front of me and the other went to where had been standing at the bar.

“You leave it a while’ he said. ‘Let it quiet down. It’ll be better for a few minutes more rest.’.  He came back from around the bar and stood next to me.

‘You need to leave it to settle. Its been in that silver barrel and on the back of a lorry from Cork. Now its out in the air give it some time to breathe before you drink it. It will be gone soon enough and then we can bring out some more to air a while.’

He put his arms back down on the bar and set down to wait.

Is there any more brutal sound than Led Zeppelin in excelsis. A few years ago they released an album culled from various shows they played on the West Coast of the US in the early 1970’s. It was probably overdubbed to death but it doesn’t really matter because in parts it contains some of the most overwhelmingly loud music you could ever hope to get to listen to on a cold Friday night when there are very few other people in the house (sorry neighbours!)

The third CD starts with a 23 minute version of Whole Lotta Love, which here is a good thing, at least for the opening four or five minutes particularly when it appears that Jimmy Page is playing his guitar with a sledgehammer. That is then followed by a more concise (at 3:56) version of Rock and Roll on which Jimmy and his sledgehammer is joined by John Bonham playing his drums with sticks as thick Mike Tyson’s neck.

So I pour myself a beer and clear the head for a few minutes putting to one side the knackered laptop, bills and my ever diminishing bank balance. The head has been cleared and there is a lump of pork in the oven with crackling, stuffed with garlic, fennel, chillies and sage.

I will have to go talk to the man with the black beard.

‘The man Jones he lived up in an old stone cabin by the copper mines at Gortavellig. You’ll only have been there when its summer and the sun has been shining and even then there can be a tough wind that blows in from the sea. But you be there in the winter and although you may be a hundred foot up from the bottom of the cliffs the sea will still get there it hits so hard. The wind it comes in, it has nowhere else to go and it can be bleak up there and hard. You need a particular mind to stay there for long when its dark and the wind is up. The old mines, the holes in the rock Christ it can howl through there and the noise it makes can be heard for good miles round.’

‘Jones, he scrapped out some ground from the rocks and grew his potatos and greens. You know the pond there. The miners they built it up from lumps of rock and plugged it with moss and a hundred years it has been there. Filled with rain mostly but you could hardly call it fresh water given what gets blown in from the sea but it is enough to live on I guess. But you know how salt water will send a man mad. I’m not saying it was enough to send him mad but the spume and foam that blows up there would weaken the mind. Feck you’d need a weak mind to live there.’

‘You can’t see it now but he had a tidy piece of ground. And in the summer he would walk back from there to Bantry on a Friday for the market. He’d not much to sell but they say he’d set himself down with a bag of leeks or onions and he’d sell enough for the day.’

‘Now I know its a long walk but you can do it in a day you get off early and be ready to get back late. The road down the northside well its always been there and it runs straight if you let it down by the sea.’

‘But what he had up there was goats. He got two of them on a Friday, the market in Bantry, and he walked them back that night. And goats being goats soon he had a small number of them up there. They say he talked to them and he had a path to take them down to the rocks at low tide so they could eat at the seaweed. A goat will eat at anything if you let it. He drank their milk and made a bit of cheese and every year he would sell some of the young goats at market.’

‘The cheese he’d wrap in small leaves he found in the hills and he’d let it go old and hard in some small cut he had in the rocks there. It’d break your teeth my grandfather said but it kept Jones going when there wasn’t much else to be eaten.’

‘Have you ever eaten goat now. I heard they eat it places but not often here. He said they had them at home where he came from in Wales. Now my grandfather said you never ate anything as good as those goats. It was the legs that were best. They had to be cooked slow but get it right they were the best piece of meat he ever had.’

‘There’s goats up on the top by Seefin still if you look quickly enough and I reckon they still eat at the seaweed. Now some there’s been they’ve tried to follow the path Jones took them down  to the sea but he hid it up well. I say we should leave well alone and Jones’ goats can carry on as they are.’