Digging around in the back of the fridge for something to put in my lunch time sandwich I came across a small round of Millleen cheese that had somehow missed out on being eaten amongst the various food stuffs we brought back from Cork at Easter.

It was a couple of months past its best before date but that didn’t matter. It just meant my fingers carried with them a slightly more pungent smell with them after I had made up the sandwich than they might otherwise have done. It was good to catch a whiff every so often sat at my desk through the morning so I could look forward to lunch.

A few years ago I picked up via eBay a copy of The Observer Guide to British Cookery by Jane Grigson. It includes a memorable description of a trip to the farm where Milleen was, and is still, made on the Beara.

Thinking that Ireland was short of cheese, I brought one over from T’yn Grug for the Allens at Ballymaloe. They were politely grateful, but I need not have bothered. Their Sunday evening table was covered with Irish cheeses. Later in Dublin, in the cheese shop of the Powerscourt Townhouse market, the first thing I saw as I walked in was a row of them – cheese from Milleens; soft goats’ cheeses from Wendy and Brian Macdonald in Wicklow and so on.

We went to visit Veronica and Norman Steele on the north side of the Beara Peninsula at Milleens. Rhododendrons and thick greenery at first, pines and glimpses of water. At Dareen gardens, a coast road turns off right down past the cottage where the fish producing O’Connors live. A creek runs in at that point, a path goes down to their boat and in the distance their shellfish rafts rest on the sea; we thought of dinner to come at Kenmare, with their mussels, their oysters and, above all, their sea urchins.

On to Milleens. A flaming car in the middle of the road watched by the sad owner and his parents. No one in sight, village two miles away. Gradually people emerge from nowhere, ambling along, chatting, drawn to the smoke and flames. At last, we get by.

We struggle up the right stony muddied lane and we find two philosophers in Wellington boots, teacher and pupil, both young, turned herdsman and cheesemaker and not regretting it. Straight off the lane, you step up into the orderly, sweet – smelling cheese room, the dairy. Then into the living – room where cheeses were set out on a long table, with a long bench and a view over the sea, over the great inlet like some Galician ria that jags in to the town of Kenmare on this rough shredded fringe of Ireland.

The Steeles began in 1978 with one cow, three gallons of milk a day. Now they have twelve friesians, two kerries and fifty gallons of milk a day. They make two kinds of cheese, Beara which is a cooked curd cheese, a big yellowish cheese, and the flatter Milleens. They export all over the place, to Germany, America and England. With one helper, they have a business they can manage, a life they like – but they could sell ten times as much.

They are keen to spread the idea of Irish cheese. With the chairman, Patrick Berridge, they are amongst the most active members of the Irish Cheese Producers’ Association, which is now thirty strong. Veronica Steele has no craft secrets, but passes everything on that she can. 

The bread for the sandwiches came courtesy of the bread circle and very good it was too!

During the afternoon a mist had come in down the bay. The sun still shone and we could still see the hills of the Mizen and the sky was still blue overhead and the mist lay fifty yards or so over the water obscuring the shore on the other side of the bay. As the sun moved towards evening it filled the mist with a golden light and then the mist seem to roll out filling up the bay and obscuring the sky and the hills suffused with a quietening glow.

I was up in the pub for a pint. There were lobsters in the fridge in the Cottage and the great stainless steel pot was filled with sea water and coming to a slow boil. I knew from experience that it would take fifteen minutes so there was time to walk up to the pub for a quick pint and then time to buy another to take back down with me to drink as I cooked the lobsters.

There was a group of three men sat in the low bench under the window and another two sat on the other side of the table on stools. One of the men was sat tucked under the bar and he had twisted round to give a nod for another round of drinks pushing some notes and change across the wooden counter.

I waited for Mary to finish pouring the drinks for the round before asking for my pint.

I sat up on one of the tall stools by the corner of the bar and looked out through the window. The mist was thick now and the end of the pier was almost lost, the boats in the bay black shapes in the grey cloud.

The man with a black beard came in. He paused to nod hello to the five men sat round the table then stood next to me putting his hands on the bar.

I knew that the pan of water was big and although fifteen minutes was right for it to come the boil there wasn’t much harm that could come to it if it continued at a boil for another ten minutes and you never knew some one might go into the kitchen and turn it down. So I asked the man if he wanted a pint and he nodded to Mary to say that he would. He continued to stand there his back to the window and door.

‘Feck that’s a bastard fog out there. It’s getting thicker now. Soon it’ll be so thick you’ll have to feckin’ punch your way through to get back to your Cottage.’

He stood still for a while. Waiting for Mary to finish pouring the pints and to wipe clean the glasses and put them on the bar in front of us. We took our first taste of them.

‘But it’ll be good for mackerel out there now. Look how still the water is. There is no wind at all to disturb them. The fish get confused when the weather is like this. The sun and the light is gone from where it should be and the cloud is so low it gives the wrong shadow to the water and so the fish come up close to the surface. If you go out there all you’ll need to do is put some hooks over the side of your boat and you’ll get some.’

He laughed then. ‘Go out there now and you’ll not see a feckin’ thing to help you get back.’

‘But keep your boat still and just let it lie in the water and stop your breathing and put your ear down over the side of the boat and you’ll be able to hear the fish as they move through the water. There’ll be a million of those fish out there now and they’ll all have to keep moving and all that moving water around them and the thump of their tails to keep them going feck it will have to make some noise and if it still like this you might hear.’

He was quiet again but listening to the men talking in the corner I tried to imagine the sound all those fish would make and what it would be like amongst them. The men were talking over each other and I couldn’t catch what they were saying. I was still then against the flow of their conversation and the sound of the mackerel thrummed in my ears.

I’d not finished my pint and the man was asking for another. We drank in silence for a while and outside the mist started to lift and we could see a light breeze now starting to riffle the surface of the water.

‘The fish’ll be gone now,’ he said. ‘You’ve missed them this evening.’

I should briefly mention Matthew E White who some of us went to see in Leaf last night.

After the hushed reverence that was Lambchop last week it was good to see a proper band making some noise.

Given the size of the place and what sounds like a full orchestra and choir that plays on the record I was not sure what to expect. As it was there were six of them on stage including a pedal steel and a proper drummer.

Matthew E White complied with the no fiddling/changing guitar rule to the letter. When a guitar string broke he carried on playing and at the end of the song spent a few seconds retuning before cracking on with the next song.

It all brought a smile to my face and that doesn’t happen often.