‘Michael O’Hanratty drove an old green Mini Metro. When in drink he claimed it was the last Mini Metro still on the road in County Cork “and if it wasn’t then it was the last feckin’ green one!”’

‘The green was indistinct and murky and had about it a shade of goose shit but the colour was difficult to find under the rust stains, mud and silver gaffer tape he used to hold odd parts of the bodywork together. He kept a pile of old newspapers and magazines on the back seats for when it stopped and it needed a time of rest before starting again.’

‘He liked to take his lunch over pints in the pub which meant spending time waiting for it to open. He spent that time with the car parked and stopped on the concrete skirt at the top of the pier looking out over the boats and the water. He preferred it when it was quiet and there no people and he could wait watching and counting the seagulls move from the lampposts.’

‘He lost the car one year somewhere in the hills behind Durrus. Because of its colour it took him 6 weeks to find so well disguised it was against the rocks and the heather and the course grass.’

‘“Started first feckin’ time,’’ he said. “And if I lose it again I will have a radio fitted and keep it playing so I can find it again.”’

‘Before he bought the car he was a stockman and he had worked with cows for most of his life. He had even spent time working with Curly Fitzpatrick and he knew his cows and the fields that they lived in. He had never worked with Foxtrot but it was no secret that she was the cow chosen for that year’s competition and so Michael O’Hanratty had time to study the form. He took time to observe her in a field and watched as she went about her business.’

‘He took careful notes and with all that preparation he thought he had a pretty good idea where Foxtrot would pause to lay her first pat.’

‘He had been putting the work in because he needed new tyres for his car. With its scarcity value he saw the car as an investment and if it needed new tyres he would have to invest further and the Cow Pat Competition seemed the perfect vehicle for him to do so. Provided he studied the form and made good and proper use of the knowledge he had built up over the years as to where Curly Fitzpatrick’s cows laid their pats.’

‘So with the help of Dennis O’Driscoll and Tom Hayes, who fronted some of the buying for him, he bought up a total of fifteen squares, as no man was allowed to buy more than five, all picked on the basis of his carful observation.’

‘So having invested  his forty-five euro plus the pints that he had promised to Dennis O’Driscoll and Tom Hayes he settled himself with a pint at the start of the competition confident that when Foxtrot came to lay her pat it would be on one of his squares and the winnings would be his. His nerves were rattled a few times as the cow passed over one of his squares but he remained sure that she would stop for her business on one of his.’

‘He was cheered as he took his second pint and passed out two more to Dennis O’Driscoll and Tom Hayes. Time, he thought, was on his side and the more that Foxtrot delayed the more confident he became that one of his squares would be the winner.’

‘When at last she deposited her pat he was not able to place, from where he was standing, the exact spot that it had landed. He studied the scribbled notes he had in his hand and for moment was sure that the pat had landed right. But doubt started to creep in as Curly Fitzpatrick walked out to the spot and a cold fury rose in his chest when the name of the winner was announced, “Brendan Daly has it this year.”’

We had three lobster this evening and eight last week.  I thought eight was going to be a challenge to cook and in particular I had some doubt as to whether we had a pot big enough. In the event I worked it out by cooking five of them first. They just about fitted it in. Once the five were done I fished them all out and put them to one side and put the other three in the pot.

By the time I had split the first five lobster the last three were done. So that could give you some idea of the timings for boiling lobster. I would say about ten minutes at a rolling boil.

So that is eleven lobster done and with each one there was slight tightening in the stomach as I pushed its head into the boiling water.

Doing eight in a row there was an assembly line feel with the splitting. It helps that there is now a good knife that is heavy enough and sharp enough to do the job.

They were still hot from the boiling water and so I had to handle them with one hand of the oven glove. First thing to do was snip at the elastic bands holding the claws together and try catch at the small clips of elastic as they shot off around the kitchen. Then there is a thrust through the back of the head, taking the blade down between the eyes then turning it round to complete the job through the tail.

Having lost all the metal crackers I cracked the claws dropping the knife down heavily until the juices leaked clear.

As each one was done I added it to the plate until they were finished. By the time they were all split the slab of butter I had put into a pan with crushed garlic was done. I poured this over the lobsters.

Be it eight or three we ate them with relish and glasses of white wine held in our fists.

Last night I dreamt of mackerel. They were being chased into the bay and were jumping out of the water to get awau from whatever was behind them.

We caught about twenty mackerel on Thursday last week.  I had spent some time sorting out the lines and tying up new sets of feathers. The kids kept asking if I was going to piss on them but I left them clean.

We took two lines out late in the afternoon in Montbretia to the point between Owen Island and Luke’s Cottage. There was another boat out there and I motored past them before stopping the engine.  Having spent that time sorting the feathers another five minutes had to be spent in the boat untangling the two lines. Once they were free they went over the side and immediately we felt a tug on one of them and we hauled in four mackerel.

They were all a good size and almost as soon as they were in the boat they had freed themselves from the hooks and were in the bottom of the boat as I got the line over again. In the mean time Ben had found another line in a bucket in the boat and that went over as well.

So we had three lines over the side of the boat and over the two hours we were out there almost all of the fish were caught off the one line and its set of feathers.

I filleted the fish down by the rockpools. It seems that every year the gulls are getting braver in how close they will get to pick off the bits. There will be a competition as to which comes first, being able to get a gull to take something from the hand or have one come behind me to whip a fresh fillet off the plate.

That night I smoked the fillets and we ate them with spaghetti and cream.

The next day, Friday, I went out alone. Everyone else had gone to Doneen. I fancied a quite couple of hours on the water watching the weather. I took with me the same line that had caught all the fish the previous day. There was no great pressure but as soon as the line went in I was hauling out fish and in the space of fifteen minutes or so I had about 25 of them in the bottom of the boat. The last few I threw back in. After that I came back in because if I carried on fishing I would have too many fish. We ate those fish on the barbeque.

Two days later we went out again. This time there was a boat full including boys anxious to catch their first mackerel of the holiday. I parked the boat on the same spot I had caught all the fish two days before and past out the line that had caught all the fish to the boy most keen to catch some. I left for myself a thin reedy line on which the feathers were mostly torn off and the hooks were rusty.

The lines went over the boat and we settled down to wait. I soon felt the haul and tug of fish on the line and pulled in three. The orange line was so thin it look as if it would snap with the weight of them. The line went back in and I quickly hauled in another that fell back into the water before I could grab it. In the meantime the other lines were still in the water. The line that had caught all the fish the previous few days was doing nothing.

We moved the boat to another spot and still all was quiet. There were gannets in the bay dropping into the water just in front of us. We moved close to where the gannets had been and still there was nothing.

There was a burst of activity when we saw a fish dart out of the water as if something had tossed it into the air. A seal’s head then bobbed out. Clearly there were fish in the water but we weren’t catching them. By now we were off Owen Island and I suggested that we should let the boat drift until we could see the Cottage and we would then have to come in disappointed.

My line then trembled again and I passed it over so Tom could pull the fish in. We got it in and in the bucket and the line went over again.

And then the two other lines went at once and were pulled in at the same time and all at once there were another six fish in the bottom the boat and we were all grabbing at them to give them a tap and the lines went back in again. Almost immediately they twitched again and there were another six fish in the boat.

Over the next ten minutes or so we caught another four fish and so came in with twenty in all for our two hours work.

We had some of them for lunch on the barbeque and ate them with our fingers sat on the grass at the end of the garden watching the weather come in. We sat in bright sunshine as rain came down blown in from a cloud on the back of Rosskerrig.

I smoked the rest and we ate them as part of a kedgeree.

It was the weekend before the festival and we were stood on the grass across the road from Arundel’s Pub. We stood in bright clear sunlight blue sky in front of and it was raining. Great drops being blown in from a cloud that hung over the hill behind.

‘Are you here for the festival?’ the man with the black beard asked me.

‘We are,’ I said ‘And I guess it is going to be busy this year?’

‘Oh it will be, it will be. There’s your famous neighbor doing the pub quiz on Friday night and there will be all sorts on Saturday and Sunday. But you know for the eighth year running they won’t be holding the Cow Pat Competition.’

We both drew on our pints. The rain had stopped now and I could feel the sun prickling against my skin where it was wet. The man carried on.

‘There had already been a disaster that year. Bridget Cronin’s Jack Russell had eaten the crabs for the crab race. It didn’t have name at the time. She was so angry she could hardly talk to herself again. Three of her grandchildren had spent a day catching the little green fecks off the pier using her best bacon. Then she herself used her best pink nail varnish to write out their numbers of their backs. Thirty of them he ate in less than five minutes. She could only call it That Feckin’ Thing after that.’

‘The Catching the Duck went off okay although by the time the poor feckin’ duck had been caught it was near enough drowned and someone had to blow some air through its beak before it revived.’

‘The Cow Pat Competition was to finish off the afternoon. The field was marked out with squares about a yard across and then each square was marked so that it has its own number. The cow needed to be a good cow and the man whose cow it was had to be sure it was fed up well. The game was played by letting the cow into the field and waiting for it to drop its first pat. As most men will tell you if a cow goes into a new field it likes to start manuring it early as it starts to eat the grass but there is normally time for a couple of pints before it completes the business.’

‘Now the competition is in paying your five-euro for one of the marked out squares and when they are all sold if the cow drops its pat on your square then you take all the money. There was some money to be won even if you marked the field out with a hundred squares. Of course there were also various side bets to be had on the squares and the timing of her dropped pat. There were a lot of notes that would be passed around before she was done. There was even two men who liked to bet on how many pints they would drink before the game was finished.’

‘Now this year a cow called Foxtrot was chosen for the job. She belonged to Curly Fitzpatrick. As the owner of the cow he was excluded from the game in case he should tamper with her or have a better hold of her habits.’

‘So Foxtrot was led down and once the bets had concluded she was given a prod on her arse and into the field she went and then the men settled down with their pints. All was quiet for a while, Foxtrot sniffed the air, and the only sound was the pints going down and the soft grumble from the men as they settled their feet on the ground. Having sniffed the air the cow put her head and pulled at a few tufts of grass and she chewed on those for a while.’

‘There was a release of air from some of the men. Those who had bet on a longer time were still in the money and she was not going to drop an early pat and spoil the chance for a second pint.’

‘Foxtrot made her way round the field, sniffing the air and chewing at the grass and as she did so there were murmurs of encouragement from the spectators for her to move towards their particular part of the field.’

‘Into the third pint Foxtrot paused for a while and a sense of disquiet settled over the spectators. If she was to sit down and start chewing her cud then it could be a long evening. There was talk of more pints.’

‘But there would be no need for floodlights, Foxtrot lifted her tail and dropped her pat. She was in the middle of the field and people were craning their necks to see if it was a clean hit and which square it was. The previous year her pat had been on the corner of four squares and after some discussion the winnings had to be quartered.’

‘Curly Fitzpatrick walked into the field to claim back his cow and declare the winner. He had with him a list of the squares with the names against them and it was then that the trouble started.’