First Sunday in and the sun has broken through and now there is more than enough blue sky to make up a dozen sailors’ trousers.

With the sun and the air still there was nothing to do other than go out in a boat to try and catch some mackerel for breakfast.

I took the small grey dinghy motoring out to the spot between Luke’s place and Owens’ Island from where you can see the bay opening out and the line where it ends and then the full sweep of the Atlantic.

I cut the engine and threw over the line. There were new feathers on it, tassels of bright silver, just right for catching the attention of the fish.

The tiny boat drifted slowly out into the bay. I pulled in the line and let it out again through my fingers the sea water spraying off it into the light.

It took me five minutes to catch four fish all on the same line. They were all the right size, about nine inches long.

An hour later I had two of them with bacon. They were filleted down by the rocks surrounded by seagulls.

The bacon was the last two rashers of Gubbeen streaky bacon left from the weekend. I cooked it in butter until the fat started to run and then turned the fillets of fish in the hot oil until they were just done the skin starting the break away.

We ate the rest of the mackerel for lunch, cooked on the barbeque, with potato salad and more of the first sunshine.

The idea is that in 24 hours time the car will be packed and we will be ready to leave first thing Friday morning to get the ferry leaving Holyhead at 8.00am to get us into Dublin Port.

Here on the ground there is precious little to show what is being done in readiness for all this. 

But I have been doing my bit. I stopped off in the supermarket on the late journey back from work to stock up on cat food for the two weeks we will be away. As I was walking round I remembered the need for a bottle of Pernod.

I got the last bottle and it is now safely stashed in the back of the car. 

I will be using it for fish soup and flaming lobster in butter. Licking lips as I write!

Jerry O’Malley was thinking and so he could hold the thought he held his finger in the air in front of his face.

‘Jerry are you going to say something to help break this deadlock?’ the chairman asked.

Jerry kept his silence for the moment if he was to say something then the thought would be broken and lost.

The chairman waited and then cast his eye over the committee.

‘Does not one of you have an idea of what we could do for a big competition for the afternoon. There are any number of villages in the country that are able to organise a good clean competition that neither involves cows nor chickens and their backsides. We have been entrusted to deliver a festival worthy of the name, to draw in the crowds and send them home happy having spent their cash. And I’ll give you some of the ideas have the populist vote and notwithstanding the objections from some quarters I am sure that if we had the luck to be able to combine the mess that the lads ended up with in Ballycotten with a full house watching then we will have made our mark. But that was luck and that we can’t conjure.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen and Jerry it is time for pint and unless someone has anything else to add I propose that we all walk to down the hill.’

Jerry put down his finger and smiled. The chairman scowled. He was going to have to wait a few minutes more for his pint.

‘I have it now’ said Jerry. ‘We have had it the wrong way round. We have been debating the odds on when a chicken will lay its egg when what we should have been spending our time on is when that egg is hatched.’

Jerome “Jerry” O’Malley had the floor.  He was speaking and had Edith Towmey in his eye.

‘There has been a lot of talk this afternoon about cows and their pats but what we need to remember is that there other animals in the farmyard that can provide an good afternoon’s worth of entertainment. Have you not thought about chickens?’

Edith Towmey drew herself up and sucked in her breathe. ‘I’m not spending an afternoon with the children stood round some grass waiting for a chicken to do its business’ she said.

‘Now Edith you are missing the point. Don’t go worrying about me suggesing that we should spend an afternoon waiting for a chicken to take its shit. No I have a more subtle game we could play. It’s the laying of a chicken’s egg that we are waiting for. Have you not ever waited for a chicken to lay an egg.’

‘Now Michael Hegarty tells me that the hens that his mother keeps are such good layers that each of them will deliver up to at least two eggs in a day. Now I am not going to suggest that we have the one hen on a patch of grass but we could put two or three of them out there and the odds will be such that we will be bound to have at least one egg in the space of an afternoon.’

Patrick Tobin took up the theme now. ‘Jerry I’m not going to argue with you over the laying ability of Mrs Hegarty’s hens. They are each of them fine birds and their ability to lay is all but down to the care that she gives to them but if you think that those birds can be taken away from the comfort of her loving hands and put on a patch of grass away from all that they have that is comfortable and be expected to lay an egg for a crowd then you know nothing about hens. You’d be better off waiting for one of those hens to take a shit in those conditions than wait for it to lay an egg.’

Edith Towmey drew in her breathe again. ‘Will you stop on the subject of chickens and their business and can we not settle upon a more pleasant theme for the day.’

But Patrick Tobin had more to say on the topic. ‘And Jerry have you not thought about the lack of excitement there is in watching a hen lay an egg? Have you not done your homework? Have you not spent time observing what goes on. I had cause once to watch a hen lay an egg and I can tell you that nothing happens. The hen sits down and makes itself comfortable and twenty minutes later it picks itself up, shakes a few feathers, and the egg has been laid. None of this, Jerry, makes for an entertaining afternoon.’

But Jerry liked the idea of the hens and their eggs. ‘Michael I think you are determined to knock back a good and worthwhile idea. The lack of excitement you complain about will for many be part of the attraction. Do you not think that we are too caught up with the whizz, bang need for excitement. The kids,’ and here he nodded at Edith,’ the kids are all for the the flash and something rude but it’ll do them good to settle down and watch a couple of hens on their backsides to see which one stands up first and leaves an egg behind. And if you are worried about the possibility of some of those hens being shy then I have an answer to that too. We could set the grass with some boxes for the hens to lay their eggs in. Now Edith there can be no objection to that, the boxes will ensure that anything unseemly will be covered from view.’

‘Jerry are you suggesting that one of the highlights of this years festival should be a field with some boxes in and the crowd waiting to see out of which box a proud hen emerges having laid its egg. Jerry, the crowd will not be baiting its breathe for this entertainment.’

The committee lapsed back into silence for a few minutes more. The tea which had been tepid cooled further.

Jerry did not let the silence go to waste. He continued to think on the theme of the hens until he came up with another idea.