We had contrasting weather during our five days in Ahakista last week.

We arrived late at night and in the dark and woke up on Sunday morning to clear blue skies and still air. We were able to eat our breakfast outside sat round the green plastic table, drinking coffee and then more coffee, as the children drifted awake. It was warm enough to go out on the water and kayaks were taken out to look for seals.

Monday was grey and damp and good for a trip to Schull and lunch in Hackett’s, six of us, squeezed up to and around the small table in the back. The table is not much wider than a bench for sitting on and our plates and glasses pushed up and against each other and we were elblow to elbow eating our soups and stews and toasted sandwiches. Even in Schull there are familiar faces and at the bar I bumped into Wally who normally works the Olive stall at Bantry Market on a Friday morning.

Two of us went for a walk that afternoon up in the hills near were Curly lived. The rain came down in a thick mist that covered my glasses and reduced everything to a blur of colour.

On Tuesday afternoon we went for a walk at about the same time in the afternoon. It wasn’t raining but there were heavy clouds in the sky as we left the Cottage. We went up the road that leads up from Ahakista Stream and which carries on up to the hills that lie beneath Rosskerring. I had done the walk a few years before and could remember a loop that crossed over an old path to lead the way back down to the Cottage.

As we walked up the clouds cleared and the sun came out and we found ourselves taking off layers to cool ourselves down. I managed to avoid making any wrong turnings until we came to a place where the road ran out and we had to turn left down a green covered track that soon dissolved into a small covered path that run along and over a muddy stream.

Back on a road we walked past a field with some nosy bullocks ho came over curious to see who was passing them by.

Although it is not yet on the shelf at home it is possible I may have found my new favourite cookbook.

Two weeks ago The Observer Food Monthly had an article in it on a book called Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour. There was a picture of a plate of aubergine, cooked on a grill with black ridges and dressed with yogurt coloured with saffron with red chilli and coriander. There was a recipe for tomato salad with pomegranate molasses and another for seafood stew with saffron.

We had the tomato salad a couple of days later and it was particularly good.

This evening we had a Spiced Vegetable Soup from the same article. I fiddled around with it a bit; keeping the potatoes and chickpeas whole rather them blitzing them in a blender with rest of the ingredients and making up a second bowl with pieces of chicken.

Each bowl was garnished with a mixture of caramelised onions and chickpeas, feta cheese and a sort of pesto made with parsley, dill, coriander and pistachio nuts

We ate it with bread made to look more interesting by punching the rising dough with a sharp knife.

In the week that we have been away the garden has expanded. The trees are now overhanging with green leaves and every bed is drunk with bluebells.

At the end of the garden the laburnum is about to burst into yellow against the yew tree through which it has grown. There is no greater sense of time moving on as there is now. A few weeks ago I was talking about the first days of spring and now the daffodils are almost gone, each flowering lasts only a brief moment before being taken over by another. By the time the laburnum is over we will be into midsummer and the dahlias that I potted a few weeks ago will be coming into flower.

In the meantime the rudder is brooding and propped up in out hall waiting for me to find something to do with it.

One of the casualties of the storm at The Cottage was the made wooden bench at the end of the garden just behind the sea wall that overlooks the beach. It was put together about eight years ago from two stumps of wood and a thick plank which was screwed into place. Perhaps the surprising thing is that it managed to last so long.

It sat just above a corner of the beach that leads round to the pier patch and where in the summer evenings we build our fires. Over the years people have sat on it wrapped up in rugs to keep warm, played guitars from it and it has been used as a tray for plates of food and drink.

It went in the storms although the plank survived and was found washed up against a wall of The Cottage. It was put to one side to be used in a new bench.

Having spent an afternoon splitting wood and filling the wood shed I came across a couple of lumps of wood that were just too heavy, wide and thick to split. I pushed them to one side. Maybe another year or two of weathering would brittle them up and make them easier to crack.

The storms had also washed in another piece of wood. It was about seven foot long, a foot wide and six inches thick. It had been pushed into a corner of the garden in the expectation that it could be cut up for firewood. But then looking at it I realised it would fit well on the stumps of wood that were too thick to split.

I took a wheelbarrow up into the field and manhandled the stumps of wood into it and brought them down into the garden. The length of wood was too big to lift and I manhandled that onto the wheelbarrow and was just about able to manoeuvre it onto the two stumps of wood. And there we had it. A new bench overlooking the water.

That evening we ate a whole turbot that I roasted in the oven. All I did was chop up an onion into the bottom of the terracotta dish and put the trimmed turbot on to. I seasoned it with olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper and it then went into the oven for about 45 minutes.

The turbot had come from Central Fish in Bantry. we were there for a few hours in the morning. it felt strange to be there and the market not being on  but it was good to be without the crowds. unfortunately Ma Murphy’s was closed and I was not able to refresh myself with a pint there.

We left the next day to come home but not before i was able to manhandle the old wooden rudder I found last year into the back of the car. it is now stood against the wall in our hall, smelling vaguely of the sea, and there is some debate in the family as to what we should be doing with it.

An open fire in The Cottage means that there is an insatiable thirst for new wood, especially outside of the summer months, when there is not enough sun to be had in the day to take off any chill in the evening.

There is plenty of wood to be had. Trees grow quick and tall and need to be cut back on a regular basis and if they are not cut back there they run the risk that the wind will take them down.

Last summer the wood shed was running on empty and we had to pick away at whatever could be turned up from its corners. There was some benefit to this as last summer I found under the last pile of logs an old boat’s rudder. It must have been put in there years ago and left until someone had the time to chop it up. I firmly believe that it has a home in Birkenhead and with luck I will be able to fit into the car this time.

Over the course of the last few months the woodshed has been filled back up with the wood that has come down over the winter. But a lot of it has been great thick logs too big for the fire so there has been a need to chop some of it down to size.

We have been doing that this afternoon using a heavy axe and grenade. The grenade is a hard lump of metal in the shape of an arrowhead. This is knocked into the log until in place and is then taken to with the flat end of the axe until the log is split. The older logs go quickly and are split in two or three blows. The new green wood is far harder and can be unyielding as I try to drive the spike of metal through.

No matter how unyielding all the logs go until the last which is almost two foot wide. The spike goes in an inch and then moves no more. I drag Galen out to have a go at it and we can feel the metal heat up as all the energy we put into each blast on the top tries to find somewhere to go. It is clear the spike is not going to split the wood and so we try tease it out, tapping it out at an angle, until it is slowly released.

We are left with a pile of logs to go back into the woodshed. No doubt they will be burnt out by the time we are back next summer.