Ireland Day Two
DAY TWO
CLIFDEN 10.30am
After my usual restless first night in a new bed, a little personal foible of mine that I have always had an issue with since childhood, we heard the first sounds of life in the house around 7am as my dad descended the stairs to make his morning cup of tea. Rising this early was a normal occurrence for my dad whilst away as for many years he has got up early for work and it is a habit that he finds hard to break, even when on holiday. With him usually being up and ready for work at 5am most days, 7am is, in effect, a lie in for him. Shortly after my dad had filled and fired up the kettle, any semblance of continued peace was shattered as two things happened; firstly the children woke up, began to chatter amongst themselves and then proceeded to almost demolish the wall between them and the hallway, under the pretence of playing some game or other. At least that is what it sounded like to my wife and I as we lay dozing in bed. Josh and his elder cousin Kris were sharing a room together and were excitedly discussing their plans to get on the windswept beach as early as possible. The sudden outburst of noise and activity could only mean that they had been joined by Jessica, who was sharing a room with Alex, and for whom volume control is an alien concept. Secondly my dad finished making his tea and began stirring it with a spoon. My Dad is the only man on the planet who can stir a tea louder than a 747 taking off. “Ting/ting/ting/ting/ting” as he bashes the spoon at supersonic speeds against the side of the cup. It was no use, whether by hook, crook or vigorously rattling teaspoon, the house was now awake.
Shortly after the commotion, everybody was milling around in the two main rooms downstairs, a large living room and a larger kitchen-cum-dining room. Whilst we were shopping in Clifden yesterday we had bought the items needed for a filling full English breakfast, and so Katharine and my mum had begun cooking, while I broke eggs into a bowl and whisked them, with a little milk, to make up some scrambled eggs. There is a reason why I do the eggs. This is because for many years, my children assumed scrambled eggs must contain hundreds of blackened and charred bits of albumen. This was entirely the result of my wife deciding that you can only make scrambled eggs properly if you turn up the hob to at least match the surface temperature of the Sun and then cook them so that any semblance of liquid is blasted out of the resultant gritty mix. I, foolishly, choose to cook them slowly and make them so that they don’t burn and have some resemblance to the actual dish they are supposed to represent. This caused great consternation and confusion to my children initially, who accused me of ‘not making scrambled eggs properly as it’s missing the black burnt bits and we can actually taste something.’
As we consumed this hearty breakfast between the ten of us, we decided whilst chatting around the dining tables, that a group of us would need to head back into Clifden to pick up some of the items we now knew that we needed for our stay and also to pick up some items for meals and whatnot during the week. It wasn’t really fair on the children or dogs to drag them into Clifden so we could all donder around the supermarket and as such the half of the group said they would remain at the cottage, allowing the children and dogs to play without being forced back into the car once again. Alex, Ian, Jon and my dad decided to join me making the journey to Clifden while my mum, Katharine and the three kids would remain behind with the vacationing pooches.
Driving into Clifden in the morning sunlight (for once it wasn’t raining, but nobody had mentioned the fact for fear of jinxing this momentously rare occurrence) you were struck by what a pretty little town it was but also how it was almost entirely reliant on the tourist trade. There were a large number of pubs and bars, several touristy shops selling all kinds of Irish regalia, some borderline tasteful, some obviously ditching taste and going for pure outrageous vulgarity, and a few tea rooms and cafeterias, as well as a number of small independent bookshops and jewellers. All of these shop fronts, instead of the drab dreary greys and browns I am used to in the back home, were painted bright, vibrant colours and you could not help but feel your spirit lifted as you wandered amongst them, as we did browsing nosily through the windows of the shops.
The town itself radiated out from the town square and it was pleasing to note that you could still park at the side of the main road in specially marked bays, a throwback to the days before the massive car parks that blight the major town and city centres across England and Wales. However my joy at this harkening back to a quainter, quieter past was tempered by the fact that the charge to park for an hour or so in the centre of Clifden cost the equivalent of three times the entire combined debts of sub-Saharan Africa.
One of the more unusual items that we had been asked to procure was a wetsuit for my nephew Kris. My children had been to the Lake District last summer and despite foul weather (yes, again) we had spent a very enjoyable and soggy time out on Lake Ullswater in our friends canoe. However my children seem to have a preoccupation with falling into every conceivable body of water that they can find, and given that the ambient temperature of Lake Ullswater at the time was absolutely perishing, we decided that rather than throw a swimming costume on them and risk possible hypothermia and a visit from the NSPCC, we would follow our friends Karen and Gary’s eminently sensible approach and buy the children a wetsuit each. We were delighted to discover that we could pick these up relatively inexpensively from a shop in Keswick, where we paid a little over £20 for two wet suits that would fit them now, but also give them room to grow into over the next year. We had brought these wetsuits with us from England to the cottage in the knowledge that the Atlantic sea was not likely to be anything other than freezing cold at this time of the year and that despite that, trying to keep the children out of it would be entirely futile and a little mean-spirited. Kris, however, did not have a wetsuit and our short walk on the beach the previous night, followed by a tentative dip of the toes in the onrushing waves washing on the shore, was more than enough to convince us that if he was going to go into the sea for any length of time, he required a wetsuit, either that or psychological help.
On our walked through Clifden’s centre towards the supermarket, we were busily window shopping and we came across an outdoor pursuit’s shop, which proudly proclaimed that it sold wetsuits. We sauntered casually in, trying to project the confident air of experienced wetsuit buyers, and we were met by the friendly face of a young shop assistant who enquired what we were after and who then led us cheerily to the wetsuits that were on display at the back of the shop.
“Sure, take a look at these ones, I’ll be over there if you need me.” She smiled leaving us to look through the small selection of wetsuits.
We began to hunt through the many wetsuits on the rack to try and find one that fitted Kris based on our collective approximation of his size. My dad is particularly inept at this and grabbed one that may have fit Kris about two weeks after he was born. My sister and I ignored him and we didn’t initially find one to suit his size by looking at the ages the wetsuits were supposed to be for. He was 13, but a big lad for his age, so he needed at least a small adult size. We moved onto the rack with the larger adult wetsuits and found one immediatelt that looked like it might fit him and held it up to appraise its size. It was only then that I glanced at the price and wished I hadn’t.
“Jeesus!”
They were wanting over 100 Euros for the wetsuit. My jaw fell and my sister quickly grabbed the label.
“Feck-ing-hell!” she stated.
“Any luck?” chirped a voice from behind us as the sales assistant walked cheerily into view.
We wriggled out of it by stating that we were not sure of the size we needed for Kris and that we’d have to bring him along with us to try a wetsuit on, which was entirely true as we were busy debating amongst ourselves what size he would be and could not reach agreement. Sensing a potential sale about to leave the shop, the young assistant did offer to run upstairs to search through other stock for us, but we politely declined and said we may see her later in the week when we had Kris with us. A cowardly lie of misguided kindness perhaps, but perhaps it did more for Anglo Irish relations than stating “Why don’t you just wear a mask, ride a horse, hold us at gunpoint and do it properly? I’d no more pay 100+ Euro’s for a wetsuit that I’d varnish my wedding tackle and polish them up with an orbital sander.” Besides we had noted another Sports shop at the top end of the street and felt that they may well sell wetsuits markedly more within our price range, certainly at a price where only two of us would have to sell a kidney to afford it.
Having been foiled in our wetsuit search and deciding against buying any of the touristy tat that was on offer in many of the other shops, we decided to head to the supermarket to pick up as many of the items on our lengthy list as needed. I pondered whether to put my bank manager on speed dial for this moment, should the need arise to arrange a second mortgage when we reached the till.
As we walked up to the supermarket, a lone busker had situated himself at the entrance and was gently singing a standard set of Irish folk songs. He had a gentle Irish lilt in his voice that seemed to add lustre to his otherwise rather plain singing. It wasn’t unpleasant listening to him and a small group of American tourists had sat to listen appreciatively on some garden benches placed outside the supermarket. The busker seemed unaware of a small group of schoolchildren who were sat on a bench behind him, mimicking his singing and generally being mischievous. We left him singing melancholically about Galway bay and walked into the supermarket.
Suffice to say that we were stunned once again at how expensive everything was. The falling pound had really shown us just how much our holiday expenses are entirely reliant on the exchange rates. Several hundred Euro lighter and with perhaps enough food to feed ten people for just a few days we left the supermarket and headed off home, making a mental note of all the interesting places we had found that the others may like to visit. This tended to be either
A. A pub
B. A cafe/restaurant
C. A touristy tat shops, and finally just for Jon
D. Bookshops.
Jon is a real bookworm. His ideal job would be as a librarian for several reasons. Mainly because he loves books and being around them, there is nothing he likes more than a gentle potter around some second hand bookstore to find books that people not only thought were out of print, but perhaps are astonished to find existed in the first place. The second reason Jon would be ideal as a librarian is that he is generally a very quiet, introspective person. Even when he does speak it tends to be in such a low mumble that it is almost impossible to make out what he says. He seems to lose confidence in his what he is saying and what will start out as a strident sentence, will suddenly midway through turn into a stumbling, vague mumble that even the enigma code-breaking machine would have difficulty making sense of.
Having made a mental note of these places of interest, we headed off back to our cottage, laden with our provisions and a far greater understanding why so many Irish people now want to come to the UK on holiday to get value for their Euro.
COTTAGE : 2pm
The afternoon was spent relaxing. Despite not being able to procure Kris a wetsuit, he had decided to join Jess and Josh in the sea. This was great bravery on his behalf for two reasons, firstly because the water was so cold and all he had on was a pair of thin swimming shorts, and secondly despite it being a lovely sunny day (miracles do happen), the wind cutting in from the Atlantic carried a bitter edge which made the day feel markedly colder than it actually was. That said, he still played happily with Jess and Josh in the sea for a short time before his fingers and toes turned blue and fell off and we popped him in the microwave for six minutes to thaw out.
Jon had decided to take it upon himself to walk the dogs. Pepsi and Cookie were quite delighted at this and raced off with Jon down the beach and along a grassy pathway that led along the top of the rocky part of the beach towards the tiny fishing village of Cleggan. The dogs had already spent most of the morning chasing each other around the gardens and on the beach under the supervision of my wife and mother. Or rather what actually happened was that Cookie would bite and latch onto Pepsi’s tail, Pepsi would go chasing off across the sand, following her ball and Cookie would “sand-ski” behind her until her grip on Pepsi’s tail was loosened and she rolled into a small sandy ball of fluff. It was hard to know who this amused more; the dogs or my mum and Katharine who both found the entire spectacle utterly hilarious.
Katharine was busily ensconced in a book when we arrived back. This would probably be her second book of the holiday thus far. My wife is a voracious reader, but her busy working life means that she is unable to read as much as she would like at home, barely reading a page or two in bed at night before she’d drift off and the book would fall from her grasp, clonking her on the head as it fell. However, on holiday, she more than makes up for this by rapaciously devouring as many books as she can during her one or two week breaks from work. Almost to the point of excluding everything else that goes on around her, such as thawing children, sandy dogs gnawing at each other, or Ian going through all the leaflets about the local area telling us all the things we might like to do, forgetting that he too is allowed to enjoy himself and do what he would like to do on holiday.
My father meanwhile was checking out the fishing equipment in the hope of casting a line into the bay a bit later. He had set up his fishing rod and another for Kris, during the afternoon and was hoping to venture down to the beach a little later to see if he could catch something from our secluded little cove. The village where we were staying, Rossadillisk, was formerly a fishing village but one with a tragic past. Tragedy struck this tiny area in 1927 when a group of 25 fisherman, out fishing in the bay for mackerel, were drowned when a vicious storm struck the area without warning. 16 of the fishermen who died that day came from the tiny village of Rossadillisk. The figures sound grim enough, but when you consider that the entire village contained approximately seven houses at most, it is easy to see why the village effectively became a ghost town overnight. A small memorial to the men who lost their lives on that day lay respectfully at the end of the gravel road leading to our cottage and we were somewhat heartened to discover that our house was formerly the residence of a young survivor of that disaster, until he died in the early 1990’s.
None of us who intended fishing would face such mortal dangers. We were firmly landlubbers and will probably forever be so. My father will not even consider taking a trip on a fishing boat after an ill-fated trip whilst on holiday in Greece, where he soon discovered that he had left his sea legs back in the United Kingdom and spent the entire trip lying on the floor of the boat trying desperately not to vomit profusely over the side of the ship or his fellow paying fishermen. We would therefore only be casting our lines from the beach into the surf in the hope that the local piscine creatures would be kind enough to give us a little sport and enjoyment.
We’d certainly been encouraged by our walks on the beach as the tide descended, revealing rocky pools and seaweed strewn outcrops that were festooned with thousands of marooned immature sand eels, a favourite food for many fish species. Whilst walking we’d also come across several large severed fish heads, which must have come from the local fishing fleet and which the dogs had shown an unhealthy interest in. We assumed they’d been thrown off as detritus from a fishing boat, but I suppose it could have been the confused Rossadillisk mafioso warning us to be careful, leaving fish heads on our beach to let us know that if we don’t behave we’d be swimming with the horses. The size of these fish were well beyond the scale of the tiddlers we caught on the River Mersey back home and had filled us with as much hope, as initial disgust.
My sister, Alex, was pottering around the place and in between watching television and reading was frantically texting her friends and posting to Facebook via one of her two mobile phones. Ian meanwhile was still looking through the house’s leaflets picking out possible activities to keep us all amused that perhaps may not require us robbing a bank to cover the cost of. I had opted to cook tea for the evening and was in the kitchen dutifully making it when I heard the sound of what appeared to be a cup of tea being emptied onto a wooden floor , followed by the unmistakable sound of Jess screeching;
“Ewww! Pepsi’s been sick!”
As if on cue, Pepsi appeared through the door, tail between her legs with a pleading but unmistakably guilty look in her eyes. She had barely reached the door to the kitchen before she was baulking again and throwing up there too. I decided to take this as a sign that the dog had perhaps ingested too much sand while playing on the beach, or had drunk seawater, or chewed grass (all things that Pepsi, being the dim dog that she is, has done several times in the past) or a combination of all these to cause her puking performance, rather than a general comment on my culinary capabilities.
For the rest of the evening Pepsi continued to baulk and be sick, whereas Cookie on the other hand seemed positively full of beans and quite bemused as to why Pepsi was no longer the life and soul of the party. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for Pepsi to be sick after a day out on the beach, so we weren’t too concerned and we felt she’d feel better in the morning. The poor animal lay down in the corner looking very unhappy with her lot in life, only really moving to go outside to puke, poo or pee.
Sometimes being on holiday with the family can get you like that.
CLIFDEN 10.30am
After my usual restless first night in a new bed, a little personal foible of mine that I have always had an issue with since childhood, we heard the first sounds of life in the house around 7am as my dad descended the stairs to make his morning cup of tea. Rising this early was a normal occurrence for my dad whilst away as for many years he has got up early for work and it is a habit that he finds hard to break, even when on holiday. With him usually being up and ready for work at 5am most days, 7am is, in effect, a lie in for him. Shortly after my dad had filled and fired up the kettle, any semblance of continued peace was shattered as two things happened; firstly the children woke up, began to chatter amongst themselves and then proceeded to almost demolish the wall between them and the hallway, under the pretence of playing some game or other. At least that is what it sounded like to my wife and I as we lay dozing in bed. Josh and his elder cousin Kris were sharing a room together and were excitedly discussing their plans to get on the windswept beach as early as possible. The sudden outburst of noise and activity could only mean that they had been joined by Jessica, who was sharing a room with Alex, and for whom volume control is an alien concept. Secondly my dad finished making his tea and began stirring it with a spoon. My Dad is the only man on the planet who can stir a tea louder than a 747 taking off. “Ting/ting/ting/ting/ting” as he bashes the spoon at supersonic speeds against the side of the cup. It was no use, whether by hook, crook or vigorously rattling teaspoon, the house was now awake.
Shortly after the commotion, everybody was milling around in the two main rooms downstairs, a large living room and a larger kitchen-cum-dining room. Whilst we were shopping in Clifden yesterday we had bought the items needed for a filling full English breakfast, and so Katharine and my mum had begun cooking, while I broke eggs into a bowl and whisked them, with a little milk, to make up some scrambled eggs. There is a reason why I do the eggs. This is because for many years, my children assumed scrambled eggs must contain hundreds of blackened and charred bits of albumen. This was entirely the result of my wife deciding that you can only make scrambled eggs properly if you turn up the hob to at least match the surface temperature of the Sun and then cook them so that any semblance of liquid is blasted out of the resultant gritty mix. I, foolishly, choose to cook them slowly and make them so that they don’t burn and have some resemblance to the actual dish they are supposed to represent. This caused great consternation and confusion to my children initially, who accused me of ‘not making scrambled eggs properly as it’s missing the black burnt bits and we can actually taste something.’
As we consumed this hearty breakfast between the ten of us, we decided whilst chatting around the dining tables, that a group of us would need to head back into Clifden to pick up some of the items we now knew that we needed for our stay and also to pick up some items for meals and whatnot during the week. It wasn’t really fair on the children or dogs to drag them into Clifden so we could all donder around the supermarket and as such the half of the group said they would remain at the cottage, allowing the children and dogs to play without being forced back into the car once again. Alex, Ian, Jon and my dad decided to join me making the journey to Clifden while my mum, Katharine and the three kids would remain behind with the vacationing pooches.
Driving into Clifden in the morning sunlight (for once it wasn’t raining, but nobody had mentioned the fact for fear of jinxing this momentously rare occurrence) you were struck by what a pretty little town it was but also how it was almost entirely reliant on the tourist trade. There were a large number of pubs and bars, several touristy shops selling all kinds of Irish regalia, some borderline tasteful, some obviously ditching taste and going for pure outrageous vulgarity, and a few tea rooms and cafeterias, as well as a number of small independent bookshops and jewellers. All of these shop fronts, instead of the drab dreary greys and browns I am used to in the back home, were painted bright, vibrant colours and you could not help but feel your spirit lifted as you wandered amongst them, as we did browsing nosily through the windows of the shops.
The town itself radiated out from the town square and it was pleasing to note that you could still park at the side of the main road in specially marked bays, a throwback to the days before the massive car parks that blight the major town and city centres across England and Wales. However my joy at this harkening back to a quainter, quieter past was tempered by the fact that the charge to park for an hour or so in the centre of Clifden cost the equivalent of three times the entire combined debts of sub-Saharan Africa.
One of the more unusual items that we had been asked to procure was a wetsuit for my nephew Kris. My children had been to the Lake District last summer and despite foul weather (yes, again) we had spent a very enjoyable and soggy time out on Lake Ullswater in our friends canoe. However my children seem to have a preoccupation with falling into every conceivable body of water that they can find, and given that the ambient temperature of Lake Ullswater at the time was absolutely perishing, we decided that rather than throw a swimming costume on them and risk possible hypothermia and a visit from the NSPCC, we would follow our friends Karen and Gary’s eminently sensible approach and buy the children a wetsuit each. We were delighted to discover that we could pick these up relatively inexpensively from a shop in Keswick, where we paid a little over £20 for two wet suits that would fit them now, but also give them room to grow into over the next year. We had brought these wetsuits with us from England to the cottage in the knowledge that the Atlantic sea was not likely to be anything other than freezing cold at this time of the year and that despite that, trying to keep the children out of it would be entirely futile and a little mean-spirited. Kris, however, did not have a wetsuit and our short walk on the beach the previous night, followed by a tentative dip of the toes in the onrushing waves washing on the shore, was more than enough to convince us that if he was going to go into the sea for any length of time, he required a wetsuit, either that or psychological help.
On our walked through Clifden’s centre towards the supermarket, we were busily window shopping and we came across an outdoor pursuit’s shop, which proudly proclaimed that it sold wetsuits. We sauntered casually in, trying to project the confident air of experienced wetsuit buyers, and we were met by the friendly face of a young shop assistant who enquired what we were after and who then led us cheerily to the wetsuits that were on display at the back of the shop.
“Sure, take a look at these ones, I’ll be over there if you need me.” She smiled leaving us to look through the small selection of wetsuits.
We began to hunt through the many wetsuits on the rack to try and find one that fitted Kris based on our collective approximation of his size. My dad is particularly inept at this and grabbed one that may have fit Kris about two weeks after he was born. My sister and I ignored him and we didn’t initially find one to suit his size by looking at the ages the wetsuits were supposed to be for. He was 13, but a big lad for his age, so he needed at least a small adult size. We moved onto the rack with the larger adult wetsuits and found one immediatelt that looked like it might fit him and held it up to appraise its size. It was only then that I glanced at the price and wished I hadn’t.
“Jeesus!”
They were wanting over 100 Euros for the wetsuit. My jaw fell and my sister quickly grabbed the label.
“Feck-ing-hell!” she stated.
“Any luck?” chirped a voice from behind us as the sales assistant walked cheerily into view.
We wriggled out of it by stating that we were not sure of the size we needed for Kris and that we’d have to bring him along with us to try a wetsuit on, which was entirely true as we were busy debating amongst ourselves what size he would be and could not reach agreement. Sensing a potential sale about to leave the shop, the young assistant did offer to run upstairs to search through other stock for us, but we politely declined and said we may see her later in the week when we had Kris with us. A cowardly lie of misguided kindness perhaps, but perhaps it did more for Anglo Irish relations than stating “Why don’t you just wear a mask, ride a horse, hold us at gunpoint and do it properly? I’d no more pay 100+ Euro’s for a wetsuit that I’d varnish my wedding tackle and polish them up with an orbital sander.” Besides we had noted another Sports shop at the top end of the street and felt that they may well sell wetsuits markedly more within our price range, certainly at a price where only two of us would have to sell a kidney to afford it.
Having been foiled in our wetsuit search and deciding against buying any of the touristy tat that was on offer in many of the other shops, we decided to head to the supermarket to pick up as many of the items on our lengthy list as needed. I pondered whether to put my bank manager on speed dial for this moment, should the need arise to arrange a second mortgage when we reached the till.
As we walked up to the supermarket, a lone busker had situated himself at the entrance and was gently singing a standard set of Irish folk songs. He had a gentle Irish lilt in his voice that seemed to add lustre to his otherwise rather plain singing. It wasn’t unpleasant listening to him and a small group of American tourists had sat to listen appreciatively on some garden benches placed outside the supermarket. The busker seemed unaware of a small group of schoolchildren who were sat on a bench behind him, mimicking his singing and generally being mischievous. We left him singing melancholically about Galway bay and walked into the supermarket.
Suffice to say that we were stunned once again at how expensive everything was. The falling pound had really shown us just how much our holiday expenses are entirely reliant on the exchange rates. Several hundred Euro lighter and with perhaps enough food to feed ten people for just a few days we left the supermarket and headed off home, making a mental note of all the interesting places we had found that the others may like to visit. This tended to be either
A. A pub
B. A cafe/restaurant
C. A touristy tat shops, and finally just for Jon
D. Bookshops.
Jon is a real bookworm. His ideal job would be as a librarian for several reasons. Mainly because he loves books and being around them, there is nothing he likes more than a gentle potter around some second hand bookstore to find books that people not only thought were out of print, but perhaps are astonished to find existed in the first place. The second reason Jon would be ideal as a librarian is that he is generally a very quiet, introspective person. Even when he does speak it tends to be in such a low mumble that it is almost impossible to make out what he says. He seems to lose confidence in his what he is saying and what will start out as a strident sentence, will suddenly midway through turn into a stumbling, vague mumble that even the enigma code-breaking machine would have difficulty making sense of.
Having made a mental note of these places of interest, we headed off back to our cottage, laden with our provisions and a far greater understanding why so many Irish people now want to come to the UK on holiday to get value for their Euro.
COTTAGE : 2pm
The afternoon was spent relaxing. Despite not being able to procure Kris a wetsuit, he had decided to join Jess and Josh in the sea. This was great bravery on his behalf for two reasons, firstly because the water was so cold and all he had on was a pair of thin swimming shorts, and secondly despite it being a lovely sunny day (miracles do happen), the wind cutting in from the Atlantic carried a bitter edge which made the day feel markedly colder than it actually was. That said, he still played happily with Jess and Josh in the sea for a short time before his fingers and toes turned blue and fell off and we popped him in the microwave for six minutes to thaw out.
Jon had decided to take it upon himself to walk the dogs. Pepsi and Cookie were quite delighted at this and raced off with Jon down the beach and along a grassy pathway that led along the top of the rocky part of the beach towards the tiny fishing village of Cleggan. The dogs had already spent most of the morning chasing each other around the gardens and on the beach under the supervision of my wife and mother. Or rather what actually happened was that Cookie would bite and latch onto Pepsi’s tail, Pepsi would go chasing off across the sand, following her ball and Cookie would “sand-ski” behind her until her grip on Pepsi’s tail was loosened and she rolled into a small sandy ball of fluff. It was hard to know who this amused more; the dogs or my mum and Katharine who both found the entire spectacle utterly hilarious.
Katharine was busily ensconced in a book when we arrived back. This would probably be her second book of the holiday thus far. My wife is a voracious reader, but her busy working life means that she is unable to read as much as she would like at home, barely reading a page or two in bed at night before she’d drift off and the book would fall from her grasp, clonking her on the head as it fell. However, on holiday, she more than makes up for this by rapaciously devouring as many books as she can during her one or two week breaks from work. Almost to the point of excluding everything else that goes on around her, such as thawing children, sandy dogs gnawing at each other, or Ian going through all the leaflets about the local area telling us all the things we might like to do, forgetting that he too is allowed to enjoy himself and do what he would like to do on holiday.
My father meanwhile was checking out the fishing equipment in the hope of casting a line into the bay a bit later. He had set up his fishing rod and another for Kris, during the afternoon and was hoping to venture down to the beach a little later to see if he could catch something from our secluded little cove. The village where we were staying, Rossadillisk, was formerly a fishing village but one with a tragic past. Tragedy struck this tiny area in 1927 when a group of 25 fisherman, out fishing in the bay for mackerel, were drowned when a vicious storm struck the area without warning. 16 of the fishermen who died that day came from the tiny village of Rossadillisk. The figures sound grim enough, but when you consider that the entire village contained approximately seven houses at most, it is easy to see why the village effectively became a ghost town overnight. A small memorial to the men who lost their lives on that day lay respectfully at the end of the gravel road leading to our cottage and we were somewhat heartened to discover that our house was formerly the residence of a young survivor of that disaster, until he died in the early 1990’s.
None of us who intended fishing would face such mortal dangers. We were firmly landlubbers and will probably forever be so. My father will not even consider taking a trip on a fishing boat after an ill-fated trip whilst on holiday in Greece, where he soon discovered that he had left his sea legs back in the United Kingdom and spent the entire trip lying on the floor of the boat trying desperately not to vomit profusely over the side of the ship or his fellow paying fishermen. We would therefore only be casting our lines from the beach into the surf in the hope that the local piscine creatures would be kind enough to give us a little sport and enjoyment.
We’d certainly been encouraged by our walks on the beach as the tide descended, revealing rocky pools and seaweed strewn outcrops that were festooned with thousands of marooned immature sand eels, a favourite food for many fish species. Whilst walking we’d also come across several large severed fish heads, which must have come from the local fishing fleet and which the dogs had shown an unhealthy interest in. We assumed they’d been thrown off as detritus from a fishing boat, but I suppose it could have been the confused Rossadillisk mafioso warning us to be careful, leaving fish heads on our beach to let us know that if we don’t behave we’d be swimming with the horses. The size of these fish were well beyond the scale of the tiddlers we caught on the River Mersey back home and had filled us with as much hope, as initial disgust.
My sister, Alex, was pottering around the place and in between watching television and reading was frantically texting her friends and posting to Facebook via one of her two mobile phones. Ian meanwhile was still looking through the house’s leaflets picking out possible activities to keep us all amused that perhaps may not require us robbing a bank to cover the cost of. I had opted to cook tea for the evening and was in the kitchen dutifully making it when I heard the sound of what appeared to be a cup of tea being emptied onto a wooden floor , followed by the unmistakable sound of Jess screeching;
“Ewww! Pepsi’s been sick!”
As if on cue, Pepsi appeared through the door, tail between her legs with a pleading but unmistakably guilty look in her eyes. She had barely reached the door to the kitchen before she was baulking again and throwing up there too. I decided to take this as a sign that the dog had perhaps ingested too much sand while playing on the beach, or had drunk seawater, or chewed grass (all things that Pepsi, being the dim dog that she is, has done several times in the past) or a combination of all these to cause her puking performance, rather than a general comment on my culinary capabilities.
For the rest of the evening Pepsi continued to baulk and be sick, whereas Cookie on the other hand seemed positively full of beans and quite bemused as to why Pepsi was no longer the life and soul of the party. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for Pepsi to be sick after a day out on the beach, so we weren’t too concerned and we felt she’d feel better in the morning. The poor animal lay down in the corner looking very unhappy with her lot in life, only really moving to go outside to puke, poo or pee.
Sometimes being on holiday with the family can get you like that.
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