‘By now it was the Wednesday evening after the festival and the conversation in the pub had moved on from the weekend. The Cow Pat competition had been put to one side for a few weeks and the men in the pub were now troubled by hens.’

‘There had been a batch come into Bantry Market that were being sold by a boy who set the cages up on one of the islands around the roundabout just down from the pedestrian crossing. They had been beautiful birds with a bright blue feather but the eggs laid wrong. A week or so before the men had been congratulating themselves on the birds they had bought. But Tom Cronin had mentioned that his yolks had been pale and watery and they all agreed that there was a problem with the hens as they all had it.’

‘Having alerted them men to the problem Tom Cronin settled that it would be him that would put the boy on the traffic island under some questions that coming Friday to get to the source of the hens and the problems with their yolks.’

‘That issue settled a quiet descended over the men as they waited for some other spark to give them another issue to chew over. They only had to wait the length of time it took Michael O’Hanratty to walk from the field of the Competition to the pub.’

‘Michael O’Hanratty pushed open the door of the pub and walked in. Behind him a weather raged. The rain was coming down in great welts of wet and a wind was whipping at the water in the bay. The quiet in the pub continued as Michael O’Hanratty asked for his pint water dripping off him at the bar. He was going to wait for his moment now.’

‘There were five men sat with Tom Cronin and they included Brendan Daly. Curly Fitzpatrick was stood at the bar and Dennis O’Driscoll and Tom Hayes were sat in the corner still drinking the pints that Michael O’Hanratty had put behind the bar for them.’

‘Once Michael O’Hanratty had his pint in front of him he allowed a pause before he took his first sip. The silence was now starting to play on the men but they chose to ignore it, waiting for Michael O’Hanratty to speak.’

‘Michael O’Hanratty drank at his pint and then he turned to face the room.’

‘“I have it now you bastards,” he said and as he spoke it was clear that his ire was not so much with Brendan Daly and his winnings but the men who sat in front of him and his failing to win.

‘He then spilled the story out producing as he went along the empty crisp packet in one hand. He was triumphant as in his other hand he produced the scraps of damp fried potato he had been able to pick away from the grass and announced that these same soggy feckin’ remains had been found in square B4 the very square that the cow had taken its shit in late on Saturday afternoon. ‘

‘Tom Cronin, having taken the initiative with the hens spoke now.

‘“Yer a feckin fool”, he told Michael O’Hanratty. “You’ve spent your time thinking on how to get a cow to a square and to put down its head to eat but there is a good six feet between a cows head and its arse and that’s enough to take its feckin’ backside out of any square that it may chose to chew in.”’

‘“Do the maths now. There’s the one square you say the crips were positioned. That is the square where the cow’s head will be but there’s another eight squares around that one square where its arse could be. The odds are too great. It could not be done.”’

‘Michael O’Hanratty mind fumbled for an answer. The evidence had been conclusive, the empty packet and the pile of crisps it had to point to a nobble. His mouth worked to get out an answer but no sound came out. It was then that Curly Fitzpatrick turned from the bar and in his left hand he was holding a half eaten packet of Cheese and Onion Tayto’s Crisps. Michael O’Hanratty mouth stopped working. He had been undone.’

‘He turned then back to the bar and finished his pint and he left the bar without another word being said. But there was plenty of talk after he had gone and there was a consensus, helped along by the second bottle of Powers’ produed by Brendan Daly that the Cow Pat Competition should be put to one side for a few years.’

‘Michael O’Hanratty went back to his brooding in his car. He knew that he had picked out two thirds of the conspiracy which now included all the men in the pub that night but no matter how many pints he drank he could not get his mind round how a man, even Brendan Daly, could get a cow to orientate itself to lay a pat in a square by way of reference to where its mouth should be.’

The man finished talking. There was still a third of a pint and he drank it down. The sun was still out and it had stopped raining. The air was clear across the bay.

‘O’Hanratty was a fool. If he’d spent less time thinking over pints and spent more time looking the direction of the wind he’d have got it. There are two things to have in mind when a cow deposits it pat; the direction of the wind and if the cow is on a slope. Get those two things right and you’ll have it. A cow likes to have its face to the wind and looking up hill. The competition was late in the afternoon and with the sun shining as it was the wind would be blowing in from the sea. Now knowing that and getting the cow to put its head to eat from a square you’ve shortened the odds as to where its pat should land.’

The man smiled and looked down at his glass. I offered him another and he accepted. As I walked back to the pub a dirty green Mini Metro pulled up and a man got out.

Yesterday I made the long early morning drive to Cork Airport. Leaving the house at 5.30 there was a drizzle in the air but the sea was calm. The rain started to come down more heavily on the way back and all the way from Drimoleague it hammered in great welts across the windscreen. It was not going to be a day for water sports.

So we decided to drive out past Bantry to Ballylickey and try get some lunch at Manning’s Emporium. It was probably ten years since we had been there. On that occasion we had been on a walk in Glengarriff Woods which had ended in a torrential downpour. We had stopped off in Manning’s on the way back to Bantry for lunch.

This time we would do it the other way round and take the walk after lunch. Part of the attraction of Manning’s was that I had heard about a sherry bar. Salty dry sherry on a wet day seemed like a good idea.

The three glasses of Fino sherry I had worked a treat. I drank them with plates of local cheese, charcuterie and hummus. I should have paid more attention to the naming of the cheeses but I know they included Old Smoked Gubbeen. It all came with hunks of bread, chutneys, olives, tiny gherkins and dried tomatoes. There wasn’t much left. We got into the car with a box filled with pasta, brown sauce and apple juice from the shop.

The walk in Glengarriff Woods was a wash out. We arrived to find signs warning about floods and the car park under a metre of water picnic tables just about poking out through the surface.

Fortunately we were able to find a small dry corner to park the car near Lady Bantry’s Lookout and so we hauled ourselves up there. The river was in full spate and the woods an impossible green covered in mosses and water and wet everywhere.

At the top the hills roiled with cloud.

We stopped off in Bantry on the way back to get more food and spotted Tommy picking up fish heads from the fishmongers.

Last night and this morning the rain has been Biblical. It has come in great blasts up the bay. Slacking for ten minutes or so and then reaching new heights of intensity. The streams that lay quiet and dry a few weeks ago and now spilling over and filling the bay with dirty brown water.

The water round the pier which was clear and bright is now murky and covered with the detritus brought down from the hills.

With life getting tight in the Cottage we attempted an walk but were beaten back after five minutes all soaked to the skin. Even the Bear Grylls jacket was not up to the weather.

Time for a good lunch.

‘Brendan Daly was a mild man. If there was time to drink two pints he would be able to fill it just drinking the one. So far as anyone knew he had never spent time with cows and he worked behind the till in one of the shops in Bantry. But he had form in the Competition and was one of the four who had shared out the winnings the previous year. There was also talk that he’d done well on a side bet on the timing and had made more on that than he had on the main Competition.’

‘He walked to the centre of the field to take the envelope with his winnings from Curly, shaking his hand, as Foxtrot was encouraged to lay down another deposit for the benefit of a photographer from the Southern Star.’

‘Michael O’Hanratty was on his fifth pint now and the cold fury that had shaken him at first had now been replaced with a conviction that Brendan Daly had cheated and had been able to get at Foxtrot so as to be able to buy an ironed on certainty as to where she would lay her pat.’

‘That night as he lay in his bed and the pints lay heavy on his stomach he determined to prove that Brendan Daly had managed to get at the cow and so force a rerun of the competition.’

‘The next day he set his mind on a course of inquiry and he started the process by settling himself down on a seat in the pub and listening to the talk so as to pick up on the consensus. ‘

‘The consensus was that there was more than luck involved in Brendan Daly achieving an outright win in the competition that year. He wasn’t a cow man and had no means of studying the form but then if a cow is going to deposit a pat there is no telling of where and when it is going to do it. So the initial talk subsided. Any further suspicions in the pub were erased when Brendan Daly bought a bottle of Power’s and the men were invited to have themselves a small glass. ‘

‘But the suspicion continued to gnaw at Michael O’Hanratty and two days later he called on Curly Fitzpatrick and asked to be able to check on Foxtrot “for after the exertions with the pats I’d like see she’s right.” She was still being kept in a stall and Curly walked him there and left him alone with the cow.’

‘Michael O’Hanratty ran his hands all over the animal and whispered in her ear for some clue. But she kept her peace, chewing quietly on her cud. He cast his eyes over the stall looking for anything out of place. He was about to give up when saw something red and blue stuck behind a bale in the corner. It was an empty packet of Tayto’s Cheese and Onions Crips. As he held the packet the cow paused in her chewing, stamped her back foot and as if on cue laid a pat.’

‘Michael O’Hanratty felt exultant. He had his first clue. Curly Fitzpatrick was a Salt and Vinegar man. There could be no other explanation. Brendan Daly had nobbled the cow with the crisps.’

He put the empty packet in his pocket and left the cow and went to say good bye to Curly determined to pursue his line of inquiry.’

‘His next stop was the pub. There he had a pint to give time for his thoughts to settle. To help with the process he had two packets of the crisps and he pondered on the taste of them for some way how the wretched Daly had been able to execute his scheme.’

‘Daly had only bought three squares. That was too few. He had to have bought himself some further certainty. He had cheated the feck! And he had to prove it! He had the piece of evidence with the empty packet of crisps and in his mind that gave him the certainty he needed. But the certainty he now knew in his heart fought against his inability to find the final piece of the jigsaw that would enable him to show how the man Daly had got the cow to position its backside and deliver its pat on square B4 so he could collect all the winnings.’

‘As he finished the pint and chewed the last crisp it came to him and he rushed out of the pub without nodding a good bye to any of the men that sat there.’

‘He made his way to the field where the competition had been held. It was raining and the field was flat with wet but the white lines of the of the squares were still clear and the winning pat still stood proud in square B4. Ignoring the wet he got down on his knees and starting to inch his way round pushing away at the grass with his fingers and then at last he found it. A small pile of crushed soggy crisps. He put his nose to them and caught the unmistakable taint of cheese and onion.’

‘He was triumphant and there in the wet field let out a quiet shout of victory. Here was the final piece of proof that he needed. The coincidence was too much. Daly had somehow got access to the cow and had been feeding it the crisps until it had developed a good taste for them. Then he must have slipped into the field on the night before the competition and after the squares were marked out and set up a small pile of the crisps.’

‘He’d then be secure in the knowledge that once Foxtrot was in the field she would make her way round it until such time as she picked up the whiff of the crisps.  She would then have been bound to show her appreciation by lifting her tail and depositing her pat. O’Hanratty had his man!’