On Monday we drove to Schull and parked by the old broken down church and graveyard on the Colla Road. On the wall around the graveyard Cork County Council had put up a sign warning against the dangers of illicit digging of graves. The sign made it clear that the Council would accept no liability for any injuries caused by grave digging activities and that for the avoidance of doubt this included those engaged in voluntary grave digging.

Helpfully guidance was given as to how one should go about having a grave dug and who one needed to contact for the digging of a lawful grave where there would be no danger to life and limb.

Inside the church rubbish had blown in with the wind, and trees and ivy grew through the rusted metail railing that made up some of the old graves.

We moved on from the pier down the road and the sea and the stretch of water that separated the mainland from Long Island. As we turned the corner to start walking along the coast heading west the wind was behind us cold and blustery. The water was choppy and grey and the white houses that clustered on Long Island looked alone and somewhere away from the world.

At Colla Pier there were a few boats which had a collapsed look about them beaten up by winter and the weather waiting for the heat of the sun. They were streaked with brown and the colour was bleached out of them. We followed the walk round cutting back through the hills. In their shadow some of the force of the wind was diminished but as we got to the top of the hill overlooking the church and Schull harbour it came at us in full force blowing the air out of our lungs. The harbour was empty of boats. At one point I looked back and through the shadow of the hills there was a glimpse of The Sheep’s Head grey in the distance.

We walked quickly down the hill and bundled into the car to be off for lunch. Hackett’s was open and we sat down at the large table opposite the bar and set about ordering our food as pints were poured and bottles of Coke put on the table. I have been to Hackett’s a few times over the years and somewhere I have a t-shirt to prove it. I don’t think I have ever seen the same person behind the bar but whoever it is they seem to own the place and there will be a conversation about the night before and how late it was before the doors were finally closed.

There was a sign behind the bar spelling out the opening and closing a times over the Easter break “We are open when the door can opened otherwise we are shut.” The barman wore a very fine Captain Haddock t-shirt and I was tempted to ask him where he had got it from.

The food was a good if not better than ever. I had a BLT sandwich made with thick slabs of Gubbeen bacon and a great pile of salad. The others had bowls of soup and toasties and in the case of one another bowl of soup as he was still hungry. Two of the children did not want there salad so I ended up polishing off three great portions.

Having finished lunch we spilled out onto the Main Street and walked up and down. Two thick slices of steak and a bag of potatos were bought for supper and almost an hour was spent choosing books in the bookshop.

At this time of year Tommy catches prawns. They are langoustines, Dublin Bay Prawns but Tommy just calls them prawns. He catches them in pots similar to a lobster pot but lighter and with a smaller hole. He keeps his catch in the water until he has enough to put in the back of his van for the drive to Inniswiddy where they are quickly shipped off to France.

Over the last few weeks he has lost some his catch to the fresh water coming down into the bay from the hills. The rest are packed into small individual containers so the don’t kill each other. The containers are about the size of a large cigar tin just under an inch square and five perhaps six inches long. Just big enough for a prawn. They are slipped in tail first claws uppermost and then stacked in small crates all held together with rubber bands.

The crates are a mix of colours and sizes. On the day I watched him come in it was a low tide. He put his boat Freedom at the head of the pier and Joe climbed the ladder and opened up the back of the van. Tommy stayed in the boat and had to stand on a crate so as to be be able to pass up the boxes of prawns to Joe.

‘Hardest work of the day,’ he said.

Once all the crates were loaded onto the pier Tommy climbed up the steel ladder and started to sort them in the back of his van.

‘They’ll die if they’re out of water too long,’ he said. There was a man watching and he suggested that Tommy could fill the back of his van with water. ‘Feckin’ hell,’ he said.’ I could try that but I don’t know it would hold all the way down to France.’

‘Will you be getting some more?’ I asked him.

‘Well I’ll be in on Monday or Tuesday about 5.00 and there should be a bag I can pass over.’

Then he was off backing his silver van down the pier to get his prawns to Inniswiddy so they could be shipped off to France still alive and good.

He wasn’t out on Monday but on Tuesday morning we could see his boat out in the middle of the Bay. He came in as I was walking up to the pub for a lunchtime pint and I wandered down to talk with him. We started on the weather.

‘Feckin’ hell its cold,’ he said. Although the sun was out the wind still whipped in from the East scouring the water and leaving it a pale bright blue.

‘It is getting better next week but you’ll be gone by then but it should be right for the summer. The weather it’s not been so bad this year and the fishing has been good but feck on a day like this it is cold on the hands out there. Here these are for you’ He reached into the front of his van and handed me a white plastic bag full of prawns. He took E10.00 for them and I carried them back to The Cottage. They were still alive and fresh from the sea a bright pink against the white of the bag.

Having put them in the fridge I carried on with my walk to the pub and picked up a pint to drink as I cooked them.

To do that I half filled the large steel pan with sea water and put it on to boil. Once it was at a rolling boil I took the prawns out of the fridge and tipped them into the pan. They were cooked in the time it took me to have another two sips at my pint.

Once they were done I drained them and arranged them neatly on a large plate.

We had them cold for lunch pulling apart the hard shells to prise out the nuggets of firm white meat within.

Later that afternoon the sun came out and it was almost not cold enough for me to write some of this outside looking over the bay.

It had been raining all day. A thick incessant rain that gets under your collar as soon as you go outside. The sky was grey and unyielding apart from a few minutes in the morning when the sun seemed to scratch at the top of the clouds trying to peel them away and then gave up. On the circle of concrete around the top of the pier the water puddled and turned murky before slipping down the drains.

All around the bay flashes of white caught against the light, streams flush with the water from the hills. Up close on the road from Durrus the streams disgorge themselves over the pebbles and stone and in that small distance from hill to water the colours change. Behind the road they are brown and of the earth almost invisible with peat and moss and then there is that last few yards into the sea over black rocks and seaweed and there is a churn of water white and excitable.

It was a good day to go out for lunch at The Good Things Café. The clocks had gone forward  which meant that the two o’clock came round more quickly. This was unlike years ago when we made the mistake of putting our watches back instead of forward and arrived for lunch at Heron’s Cove just as they were starting to close the kitchen at 3.00. Fortunately they felt sorry for us and managed to fit us in.

Lunch at The Good Things Café was from a fixed menu of three courses. The starters were either a Jerusalem artichoke soup with cheese or a salad also made with Jerusalem artichokes with some green leaves, shavings of hard cheese and a dressing of anchovies, garlic and oil.

The mains were pan fried hake with mashed potato and braised fennel, roast lamb with roast potato and aubergine with a yogurt dressing and a growers plate of local seasonal vegetables with a beetroot risotto.

Pudding was either meringue, rhubarb fool and stem ginger or a chocolate chilli fondant. The chocolate fondant came piping hot and molten with a small pot of cream.

Everything was plate licking good.

The following morning there was a Great Northern Diver on the water white throated for winter dipping its head in the water before tipping under diving deep for fish. On the beach two grey hooded crows were picking up shells in their beaks flying up about ten feet in the air then dropping the shells onto the rocks on the beach.

Goode would finish his pint satisfied with the limit of his conversation and walk back down to his cottage and the men would be left in the pub with their note on his anticipation for the weather. Most evenings then there would be a few more men that would stop by the pub.

It was Paddy O’Donovan who would normally keep the note and so it would him that would start the book. ‘You heard what he said. It’ll be raining tomorrow and then clear in afternoon. Feck any man can say that. Just look at the sky there. If he’s right I will buy in a pint for whatever man is in here. And if he’s wrong  and if there is a drop of rain that falls after midday well I won’t expect to pay for a pint until next time that man is in here.’

The pub was busier than usual the next day. There were thirty or so men sat in here and some of them had brought their wives and children. The day had started wet with the rain coming in with the wind off the sea and looking out from here you could see great sheets of it as if the clouds were letting go of a tap and it came down so hard that it had settled the water. But by 11.00 in the morning it had cleared and there was a blue sky all over. So the pub was full of the men who were going to take their pint off Paddy O’Donovan. Paddy he was late down to the pub that evening but he came with a pocket full of notes and be bought those pints.

It was a week before Goode was back in the pub and the same men were sat there by the bar and in their corner and when he walked in it went quiet for some minutes whilst his pint was poured and the men waited for him to start talking about the weather. Well he did once his pint had settled and then men took a note when he told them what he had worked from his radio.

Once he had gone, walked back down the hill to his cottage, Paddy O’Donovan sat back in his chair then took a sip at his whiskey and said ‘Now you heard what he said. Dry tomorrow and no wind but cloudy until late afternoon. You all and some you frinds and their children had a drink from me last week here is my wallet.

‘Mary’ he called over the bar ‘ Mary you know its good. Which of you men here will say that he is right  and if he is wrong then my wallet here will be good for that man’s drink until he is in here with his talk of the weather.’

Well John Holland took him up on that and he got his drink bought for him for two weeks until the man Goode was back in here with his talk about the weather.

So the man Goode had his talk about the weather and gave no offense and the men there in the corner would take their pints as they come off the back of it.