We all knew we were going to be without water for a few days. There was plenty round the corner in the sea but nothing coming out of the tap. The well had run dry and try as we might and no matter what buttons we pressed there was nothing coming out. If we turned a tap on there was a conciliatory grunt of air but nothing further. The water was done.

It took a breakfast and its dirty dishes for us to start missing it. The smell of milk could not be scrubbed away with hot water from the sea. It needed hot fresh water and soapy suds.

The pump in the orchard was working and Joseph Holland had shown us the screw to turn that sent water gushing our around our feet as we stood by it. The water was coming out of the ground but it wasn’t making it the few hundred yards from the pump to the Cottage.

Having talked it over in the pub we had called the number on the big sign on a wall on the drive through Drimoleague

Harte Bros Water Divining

& Well Boring established 1929

The diviner’s hand patted the air as he spoke. He had a pitched voice.

‘We’ll need a feckin’ hole’ he said looking at the distance between the pump house and the Cottage.

‘A feckin’ long hole. If we dig enough we’ll find the leak and then we can patch it up. We may not need to punch you a new well. Digging holes is the best way to do it.’

‘There was a man thought he could do it with food dye. He had more water than he knew what to do with coming out of his well. It was like a feckin’ great fountain so tall it went into the air. All he needed was one of those stone statues and he could have made something of his garden. But as soon as he connected the pump to the pipe to take the water to the house the water disappeared. So he should have dug a hole. But this man the feck didn’t want holes in his garden he had enough of that with the moles and their little black mounds on his green lawn. So he put a pot of purple food dye into the water to see where it came out. Well all of his pipe was fecked and the water was leaking all over his garden and in a week all his green grass he was so proud of had turned purple. And we still had to dig up his lawn to find the leak.’

‘So we’ll dig you a hole and we’ll find you your leak.’

He paused and looked at the ground.

‘And don’t you be thinking that I will be walking up and down here holding some sort of forked stick.’

‘They did a test with diviners. Put pipes with water in under a field and sent them out with their sticks and they walked up and down and dug holes to find where the water was. Then they covered up those holes and they sent some other men into the same field and just told them to dig some holes to see if they could find any water. Well the men who just went into the field to dig and carried no sticks with them found as much water as the men with their forked sticks. So why feckin’ bother I said to myself. Why carry a stick and try and pretend I know what I am doing when all I have to do is dig some holes to find water. A diviner see is a man who finds water. Well I find water by digging holes.’

‘So let us go to the pub and have a pint and see if there is a man there with a digger and we can start at the digging.’

Today I have been cooking a vat of chilli con carne. There is a sixteenth birthday being celebrated in a few days time and the celebrations consist of a dozen lads camping in a field a few miles outside of Chester. They will need some light supervision and sustenance so chilli it will be. If I get it right they could all try and re-enact the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles.

The meat in the chilli is 7 lbs of prime mince from Edges all cooking through with vast quantities of onion, garlic, red pepper, red chilli and tomato. I flavoured it with cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper. I bought myself a good piece of steak whilst I was in Edges although it seems I may have to wait a day or so before I get to eat.

I have also started making some rhubarb schnapps. We have been dilatory with the rhubarb in the garden this year. It has come up faithfully again but we have not done anything with it. Hopefully steeping it in sugar for 24 hours before copvering it with vodka and leaving it in a dark cupboard for a month will make amends.

There is a slight autumnal air in the garden although when the clouds clear and the sun comes out it is hot. I have emptied the potato bag and sorted through the dark earth picking out a couple of dozen pink pototoes. I will have some of those with the steak when I get round to eating it.

In the veg patch odd tomato plants have been popping up. I must have dropped some seeds somewhere along the way. I certainly didn’t plant them. They are heavy with fruit. Hopefully there will be enough sun over the next few weeks to turn them red.

For a place that has so much of it either coming out of the sky or just there is the sea water can be a mighty rare commodity in the Cottage.

All the water comes from a well dug down about 70 feet deep at the back of the orchard. There is a pump in a breeze block container with a rotten wooden roof and the rest we leave to chance. When we arrive we press the green button to turn it on and when we leave we press the red button to turn it off. Once it is on there is a reassuring whir as the water is sucked up and pushed through the a long pipe down the length of the orchard to some indeterminate junction outside the Cottage from where it makes its way inside when a tap is turned on.

For most of the last 14 years that has been the extent of our involvement with the water supply and it has always worked. If it wasn’t working that was because it had managed to turn itself off and all that was required was a press of the green button and service would be resumed.

If the summer was dry then there might be mutterings about the well being low and there being a need to conserve water. Generally all that meant was that I took even less showers than usual and kept myself clean by putting a different t-shirt (not necessarily unworn and very possibly stained) on each day.

But this year there have been dark rumours around the lack of water and a week after we left it stopped altogether. It was off for around ten days before many stroked chins were able to locate the lie of the pipe from the pump to the Cottage and the point where it had come apart.

Time to call Harte Bros Water Divining & Well Boring established 1929 and situated in good sight on the road through Drimoleague.

Miriam Black-Fore’s round metal table is still at the Cottage. On the moment it is tucked up round the back of the garage wall. Although it is bent and rusty it has retained its shape. The last layer of paint is starting to peel. We use it to put things on until they are needed. One day it will collapse and the broken pieces will be put away in a dark corner of the orchard to finish their slow disintegration back into the ground.

The chairs that Miriam sat on are long gone. She would move the table and its two chairs round the garden to follow the movement of the sun. Morning, and they were positioned on the grass outside the split yellow door the view of the sea framed by the fuchsia hedge on the left and the tall trees that used to run up the right side of the garden separating it off from the pier.

From midday she would have them moved to the far left hand corner where she could sit and look out over the full spread of the bay, mountains in the distance and the black rocks with their seaweed in front of her. Sat there under the hedge she could hear the traffic passing on the road and more particularly the clank of tractors with their load and people walking their voices caught for a moment directly behind her.

She knew the sound of each of the tractors and some the cars and could measure out the activity of the day with their movement.

Sat at that same seat she watched as the weather came in up the bay. She could be sat in bright sunlight and spits of rain would drift in on the wind from a black  cloud half a mile away. The weather mostly came in from the west. Great banks of cloud gathering over the hills of the Mizen not so thick as to obscure it but their shapes would soften into shades of grey with Carberry Island floating black in the bay.

She would be able to see the sheets of rain coming down and how thickly it fell on Golleen and Toomore and she would judge if the rain was going to miss her or if there was going to be a shift and quickening in the wind, a change in the waves as it came in off the sea. She could see where the rain started and where it finished and there times the difference was so fine she could cross from one side of the garden to the other to be out of it.

An afternoon could be spent waiting for the clouds to clear and if it had been raining then as the sun came out every piece of rock and exposed stone over Rosskerrig would flash silver in the light.

Her day would be done as a heron made its way across the bay flying low over the water. Once it had gone she would gather her things and fold up the rug that was draped around her shoulders and make her way back into the Cottage.

Inside her mind was bright and clear and she would sit down in one of the soft chairs by the fire and try to sketch out with pen and paper the trail of thought that had crossed through her head over the day as she sat looking out over the water.  She would be able to make out a few words and get them down on the page and sleep would then take her and she would fold her hands on her lap and close her eyes for an hour or so before waking and going upstairs to bed.