One way or other Miriam Black-Fore owned and lived in the Cottage for 43 years before she sold it in 1978 to Lenny and his wife. She was responsible for the creation of the lawn that runs down to the stone beach and the sea. Before that the Cottage stood on its scrub of rough rock raised up slightly above the pier. There times when with a high tide and a wind coming in from the east the water would be pushed up high enough so that it almost reached the split yellow door.

A low wall was built up from the beach and rocks and stones were crushed and filled in the space behind to form a smooth surface up to the Cottage and it was then filled it with good top soil brought down from the hills. They were able to pack it deep enough on the western boundary to the sea so that a few rough trees could be planted and fix down their roots. Grass was laid out over the soil and to everyone’s surprise it took quickly and formed a thick green apron from the Cottage down to the sea.

There was a wall running against the run of the road and a thick fuchsia hedge was planted so as to allow the lawn some privacy. Once that had grown the only way to get a view of the back of the Cottage was from out over the water.

The work was done by men that Miriam brought over from the family’s big house in Bantry. She oversaw their labours giving directions from the door of the Cottage in a pair of rough blue trousers.

When it was done and the grass had settled she bought a small round metal table and two metal charirs. These were placed on the grass outside the yellow door and she could sit there watching the water with half an eye on the iron gate and the world has it passed slowly on the road.

Before Miriam lived there the Cottage was down in the books as a farm but no-one was quite sure what was grown there or if there any animals apart from a few chickens and a cow in the field opposite. Being so close to the sea and on the back of the pier there was an assumption that there must be some connection with their activities but the books were clear, the place was a farm and only farmers lived there.  Some of the ground in the field opposite was good and maybe there was enough there to grow a crop of potatoes.

There was no heating in the Cottage apart from the open fire but the walls were, and still are, eighteen inches almost two feet thick and they kept the heat in during winter and cooled the place down in the sun. But the place was full of damp and she would take herself away to friends in London for two months at the start of the year to give herself a chance to clear her lungs.

Her friends in London were arty types that she had met and kept in contact with after University. They were artists and poets, writer and dreamers. They in turn would come stay in the summer arriving in a smart car driven up from Cork. If they were bored they would stay for months at a time filling the Cottage with their talk and laughter. Miriam’s cook and housekeeper lived in the Butter House across the road and the food would be driven in from Bantry, cooked and carried across the road to the Cottage no matter the weather.

For an evening they would sometimes walk up to Arundel’s Pub where they would drink pints with the men, the farmers and fishermen, and the talk would go on deep into the night.

But the friends from London would eventually go and Miriam would have the Cottage back to herself and her housekeeper across the road. Over the years the visitors from London declined and Miriam would spend long days sat in her metal chair by the small round table. She would wrap herself in rugs and blankets and quietly watch the sea and the sky. If you had asked her she would say it was better than any church or cathedral. She kept herself still and the air was sepulchral around her.

The silence was empty and then filled again, the layers of grey cloud rubbing at the landscape until all that was left was a white wall of air as if the bleached wall of some ancient church had come down and enveloped the bay.

Mackerel are one of the best fish for the barbeque.

The fact that they need to be cooking so soon after they are out of the water lends them to the impromptu nature of the barbeque. Ideally they need to be eaten in the open air and with your fingers.

There is no magic or science in the barbequing of mackerel. All that is required is the fish out of the sea and the coals dusting down with white ash.

Usually I will put a few slashes down each side of the fish with a sharp knife. If to hand I will then allow it to marinade for half an hour or so in lemon juice and whatever herb or spice might be to hand. Something hot always goes well with mackerel. Perhaps it is the heat cutting through the fatness of the fish. Garlic as well. So if I have it a combination of lemon juice, garlic, paprika and perhaps some cumin.

There is of course something Middle Eastern to these flavourings and I wonder how a teaspoon of honey mixed in with the spices would work with the fish.

Fennel grows wild in and around the garden of the Cottage and before putting the fish on the barbeque I like to pick some fronds and put them on the rack to heat through. It probably makes little difference but it is there and when else are you going to have the opportunity to do that.

The fish should only take a few minutes to cook.

Any flame should have died down and as you pass the back of your hand over the coals you should feel the hairs start to tense. Put on the mackerel.

You will need to be careful as you turn them. Try not to let them burn. But if the fire is at the right temperature it is difficult to stop them as only a few seconds away will have them blackening up. No matter. You won’t be eating the skin just the moist wet flesh underneath.

Pile them on plates and eat them with your fingers tearing the fillets away from the bone.

They can be done just as well on a fire on the beach and of course there is a bit more romance connected with this. Piling carefully chosen stones into a small circle, collecting driftwood and kindling from the beach, trying to keep a match alight for long enough in the wind so that its flame will catch on the screwed up balls of yesterdays paper. You will need a good rack-probably from the barbeque and you will need to be more careful with flames and them burning. But it will feel more elemental and if it goes right you will taste the best fish that there is at its best.

Eating from the fire on the beach is best done in the evening so that the fires heat can make up for the warmth lost as the sun goes down. As it goes dark if there is a full moon a glow will start up behind Mount Gabriel as the moon rises.

If you need some form of relish too go with them I have a feeling that horseradish would work well perhaps with some beetroot. The beetroot boiled in its skin until soft, allowed to cool, then peeled and finely sliced.

At the start of every holiday at the Cottage there is a moment of arrival, the opening few minutes usually late at night, the family, children, asleep in the car, pulled up past the gate and nestling under the low eaves of the kitchen. So low you have to be careful against catching your head on the guttering around the corners. There is a moment whilst the smell, texture and atmosphere of the place is still unfamiliar after months away. The orange glow of the streetlight rises over the garage on the opposite side of the road and getting out of the closed environment of the car, the clean air thickens the lungs; the iodine, clean oyster smell of the sea or, if it has been raining, a damp curtain that needs to be pushed open until the initial surprise gives way and this new different oxygen starts to become familiar.

There is the metallic clank of the grey metal gate handle, pushed and catching against the concrete as the gate swings open, like a familiar piece of background noise or a scratch on a record, completely familiar, but heard only behind the surface of the music; seeing how the honeysuckle has grown back from the cutting back of winter, turning from the house over the lawn already wet with the morning dew. Feeling the slight night time chill in the air, the dampness through my thin shoes and walking down the garden to the sea.

Half a mile across Dunmannus Bay the black lumps of the Mizen rise in the night and from beyond that the pale ghostly light from the Fasnet Rock flashes every few minutes, a faint periodic glow and although it is late the gulls on Owen Island are still calling to each other, their noise rising to a crescendo of bad temper and then quietening down until some other disturbance from the dark sets them off again. There is a feeling of exaltation, of release and escape back to a place and time that moves to a different rhythm, something closer to how it should be, something darker and quieter, a sensation of falling back in the cocoon, gathering around the wisps of fancy.

Walking down from the wall onto the smooth stones on the beach and seeing its shape has altered from the previous year. The sky black and scudded with grey clouds lit by the moon, pricked with stars, their light dimmed by the streetlight and the lights of the pier but still bright enough to see the grey wreath of the milky way arching over. Still feeling the heat of the day radiating from the rocks held in. The smell of the sea is thicker here, softer and rubbing against my skin and hair.

Inside the Cottage another family is sleeping, one of my two sisters. They have been there the previous two weeks, shaping the place to their rhythm. We will have a day together tomorrow.

But then I hear noises from the car and have to turn back. Those few stolen moments maybe the best part of being there, that moment of arrival, that shedding of a skin, sloughing of the old world and its tight schedules and constraints and entering that lucky world of the Cottage.

Someone else is getting out of the car now. Walking back across the lawn I look over towards the orange lights along pier; there is a difference in the familiarity of something seen every day and something seen year after year. It is all still there but the differences are noticed more quickly and so the order of boats, the height of the tide, things half forgotten flooding back.