I am conscious that it has been a quiet few days from here. We have had friends to stay and time has been taken up getting ready to go back to Ahakista for a few days over Easter.

There was one point this afternoon looking out of the window and watching the thick flakes of snow come down that I wondered if we would make it. But the snow did not stick and for a while the sun came out. On the drive along the A55 the snow was banked up at the side of the road. It would have been an interesting journey over last weekend.

We are now on the ferry and it is underway taking on a gentle roll as we move out of Holyhead. There are flurries of snow outside and my mind keeps going back to the last few words of James Joyce’s short story The Dead and the snow being general over the west of Ireland. Words to be read as my ashes are dumped in the wind over Dunmannus Bay.

We should be in Dublin just past midnight and then it is the 5 hour drive across country so that we arrive in Ahakista in the early morning as it starts to get light and the sun rises over the hills around Dunmannaway. Hopefully I won’t fall asleep.

Apart from Sunday linch in The Good Things Cafe we have nothing planned. there will no doubt be a few pints drunk at the bar in Arundel’s and at a push we may make it to Schull for lunch in Hackett’s and a BLT sandwich made with Gubbeen bacon. There will be more bacon for breakfast with black pudding and dollops of brown sauce.

On Friday we will go to Bantry Market and stock up on Gubbeen cheese to take home with us and fresh fish from the fish stall to cook in the evening. Hopefully Tommy will still be fishing for scallops and I will cook those with chorizo sausage and somewhere we will pick up some prawns.

The weather forecast is cold but dry. It should be a good few days.