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.’

Second Friday in and we were all back at Bantry Market. It was less busy than the previous week but every year there seem to be more stalls finding space for themselves amongst the displays of ancient farm equipment, pub paraphernalia  and dodgy DVDs.

We made our way slowly to the corner where the food stalls are and bought bread, olives, small mozzarella balls in olive oil and sun dried tomato and cheeses, including a great hard chunk of Desmond cheese. I was particularly pleased with the Desmond as I thought they had stopped making it.

I bought salami and chorizo from the Gubbeen stall and a small round smoked ham

After a dispiriting trawl round the SuperValu to make good on essentials there was time for a quick couple of pints for which we chose to go to Ma Murphy’s. It is a shop pub with a room at the front with shelves for bottles of beer and chocolate and then through an old and battered yellow door into the bar.

As we sat drinking the owner came in and thanked us for our custom as it now meant he was able to buy the two new wheels he was needing for his car. He let slip that he really needed a full set of four so it seemed churlish not to order another round.

We had some difficulty placing his accent and so we asked him.

‘Swansea. South Wales I am from and now you will be asking how I ended up here. Well my parents were from Cork. They were both born on Clear Island and they moved then to Swansea. When we were children we came back for the summers. Can you imagine it then for a seven year old. There were no cars on the Island but for one taxi. There was no electricity and the toilet was outside and mostly we got about on a horse. But we spent all our time on the outside there and it was a place to spend time when growing up. Then I married a girl from Dublin and we came here to live and I worked the bar here for six years until I had enough money to buy it. That was thirty two years ago and I am still here. So there you have it.’

With that he thanked us again for our custom and walked into the back of the pub.

We ate our lunch outside in the garden watching the weather come in down the bay. We could see it in great sheets of rain and we took bets on if it would pass or if we would have to run inside. There were moments when a small break would appear in the clouds and the sun would shine on a patch of water and one of the kids told us that that was where Jesus should appear. The rain then came and it came in great heavy drops that were so thick they soaked us to the skin even as we ran the short distance to come inside.

After it cleared I went fishing for mackerel. They came as soon as I put the line into the water. There were six on the one line all fighting against each other and the pull of the hook. As I hauled them into the boat a couple of them got looses and slapped their way across the bottom of the boat. I unhooked the rest and then took each of them in turn in my left hand and with my right holding the priest I tapped them still on the back of the head. Holding them so tight I could feel through my fingers the press of blood through their bodies.

I then had another four as soon as the line went into the water and in the space of fifteen minutes I had twenty or so fish in the green bucket.

We had some of them on the beach that evening cooked on the barbeque together with a plate of prawns, split and cooked in garlic and olive oil.  That was then followed with a paella cooked by Hugh on the fire on the beach.

As we ate we watched gannets over Kitchen Cove. They were close in diving between the boats to get at the fish.

Writing this now in the café in The Heron Gallery to whom many thanks should go for their good coffee and the use of Wi-fi!!