Last Saturday in Ahakista and we had three lobsters from Tommy Arundel. This time I thought I would do something different with them. On the two previous occasions we have had lobsters we had them boiled with a garlic butter sauce. This time I thought I would have a go making a soup.

In preparation I had taken a bag of fish bones and heads off the fish stall at Bantry Market.

So I started by putting these into a large pan in which I had sweated two chopped onions, garlic and a bit of chilli. I poured in a couple of pints of water and pushed in a bunch of fennel from the pier patch and seasoned it all with salt, pepper, paprika and some Pernod I found in the cupboard.

Once the stock was made I boiled the lobsters in sea water for about twenty minutes. I took them out to cool and started work on a tomato sauce; olive oil, another large finely chopped onion, loads of crushed garlic, more chilli and two tins of tomatoes.

As that bubbled away I split the lobsters picking out as much meat as I could and putting it all to one side, cracking the claws with a big heavy knife and teasing out the nuggets of pale pink meat.

I put the heads to one side and poured most of the stock into the tomato sauce. I found just the one strand of saffron in the cupboard and I put that in.

In another pan I heated some olive oil on a high heat and threw in the heads crushing them as best I could with a wooden spoon. As they seethed and spat in the heat I poured in a glass of the Pernod and flamed that off before adding the remaining cup full or so of the stock. That cooked through for five minutes and was then drained through a sieve into the tomato sauce.

I was left with a thick, unctuous, aniseedy tomato sauce which was left to bubble gently for fifteen minutes while people were assembled to eat. When all was ready the lobster meat was stirred in with some finely chopped parsley.

Eaten with croutons flavoured with Desmond Cheese.

I listened the The Allman Brother’s Band whilst making it all.

We then went to the pub. And then to another pub. In fact we went on a pub crawl. It was another late night. I wore a skirt but I am not sure that anyone noticed.

Saturday morning and there is a Murphy’s tanker parked outside Arundel’s Pub refilling the tanks and even though the sun is out and it is past midday people are still sleeping in their beds trying to piece together those parts of the night before that have not yet surfaced in the memory.

So last night was the opening of this years August Bank Holiday Ahakista Festival and it started with a quiz night in the marquee behind the pub hosted by our famous neighbor Mr. Graham Norten. Tickets went on sale four weeks ago and they were gone in a few days. For the last two weeks whenever we mentioned we had tickets for the night there were gasps of envy. They have been like gold dust on the Sheep’s Head.

We started the evening by eating most of the food we had bought at Bantry Market that morning including a great chunk of smoked ham from Gubbeen, small mozzarella balls and a large plateful of cheese. I am not sure how I managed to avoid buying a Tractor DVD – but I did.

We then walked the hundred yards to the pub for a quick pre-quiz pint to help steady the nerves. There was a buzz of excitement when the evening’s host arrived resplendent in a rather fine blue jacket. People gathered around for photos and autographs. We should have brought with us the tattered copy we have of his autobiography to get that signed as well.

We were then called into the marquee for the main event. Names were carefully ticked off the list and phones confiscated at the door. Demand was such that extra table were set up in the pub.

Each tabled was named and numbered and had in its centre a hollowed out pineapple filled with pina colada. That went before the questions started and so we put in our order for pints and white wine.

The quiz then started the questions being relayed to the pub by walkie-talkie. Needless to say our ability to answer the questions started to deteriorate as the evening went on and pints were consumed. The highlight was knowing which band Richie Sambora had helped form and the low point getting wrong the largest island in the Med.

There were eighty questions in all with a break in the middle for comfort and more pints to be consumed. The noise level rose in the second half and when were asked who narrated Thomas the tank engine there was a collective muttering of Ringo Starr. There is only so much you can do under your breathe when pints have been drunk.

Out host slugged his way through the questions, chiding us over the easy ones and being suitable rude when required. By the time the questions were finished the evening had turned raucous. A crowd spilled into the tent for the announcement of the winners. The prizes appeared to be three glass vases in diminishing sizes. It was questionable as to whether the largest was first price or for the team that came third.

We did not win. The winning teams came from the pub. Presumably there was something in the way the questions were flashed over the walkie-talkie.

Having failed to dismally to get in the running there was nothing for it but to repair to the pub and a conciliatory pint or two with all two hundred other people who had failed to win.

Writing this now Friday afternoon sat at the table at the bottom of the garden the view looking out over the bay. The sun is bright enough for it to be difficult to find the icon on the screen of the laptop. The sea in front of me is silver with light but there are black clouds over Rosskerrig and I guess you would describe the weather as mixed.This time yesterday we were driving home from lunch in The Good Things Café. It was still raining although it was not as intense as it had been earlier in the day. Every stream that flowed out into the bay was engorged with water, brown spumes driving down from the hills and spilling out over the rocks and into the sea.

The Good Things Café has been going ten years this summer. I am not sure that we went the first year it opened but we have been there at least twice over the last nine years. Part of the enjoyment of it has been taking the kids there and watching how they have grown into the menu. When we first went we would quietly ask for a plate of pasta and tomato sauce to keep them happy. This summer they have been asking if we would be going to lunch there and yesterday they were tucking into the fish soup, gazpacho and pizza.

I had a starter of crab tart and then a squid stew with red wine. The squid was great, a deep dark intense with squid that will have been cooked for many hours. The family had to restrain me from licking the bowl.

After that it was a chocolate mousse, meraungues and icecream and then goodbye until next year. Unfortunately I seem to have bought myself out of the books that they have on their shelves.

When we got home we sat out the rain for another half hour and then it stopped and we were left with a warm hard breeze coming in from the sea. The water around the pier was coloured a rust red now from the soil brought down from the hills. Some of the boats were lying low in the water and we could see the water sloshing around in their bellies.

Galen and I motored out to Montbretia. That was at least two inches of water in the bottom of her and we spent half an hour pumping her out.

Some of the buckets in the garden were almost full with water so hard it had come down the previous two days.

‘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.