EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALOctober 21, 1998
Near Ballyferriter
Dingle Peninsula
Four Letters Of Love spends a lot of time on the weather.
Everyone is described as having a wet face with wet hair stuck to it. These farm roads are
empty, but the odd pedestrian is indeed wet-faced and licked with pointy strands. The road
is lined with fushia bushes. The bushes are taking part in an exorcism. The freshly shorn
and spraypainted sheep stand in their usual formation. Rich is right. They must not feel a
thing and must just steady themselves when the gusts blow in.
The man in the Ballyferriter Post Office is shaky, with a slurred and
drooling mouth. He’s a bit hard to understand. He is curious about us. He gives
me an envelope and carefully watches me address a letter to my Grandmother. He looks
at the return address. "Suantra Cottages, just up the road, then?"
The Gallarus Oratory is a 1200 year-old unmortered stone structure
shaped like an upturned boat. It was used for private prayer in prehistoric times
and is in almost perfect condition to this day. The Oratory is perfect with a
pristine and organic shape. It is masterful in its construction, and there is no finer
example of the corbelling technique used in beehive hut construction.
Every stone is placed magnificently, like hundreds of tiny inukshuks, only tightly
packed so as to make a perfectly weather-tight and very dark room with a slightly sinking
gabled roof.
The wind blows madly. I am thinking about Four Letters and how
the wind plays in a man's trousers. My trousers are having a panic attack. I
am a standing wind-sock. They are magnetically stuck to my legs one minute, and then
pulling me sideways the next. The wind holds us back from reaching Alfi until it is good
and ready to hurtle us up to the little damp car. It is funny and we laugh, because the
wind is not too cold, and it isn’t raining.
We take the long road, one of the narrow hedge-lined roads we now feel
we own, towards Smerwick Harbour, looking for the remains of the Dun An Oir Fort.
During the 1580 rebellion in Munster, an international brigade of Italians, Spaniards and
Basques held the Fort. 600 were eventually killed after surrendering to the English
troops. There is a modern monument there now to commemorate the deaths. When one walks a
little further down the derelict and pot-holed puddle-road, and out onto the muddy
outcrop, one can see a cliff-mound of grass and rock where the Fort once stood. The view
and topography of the cliff is ideal. It looks out into the Harbour from all sides; the
beach, the farms, the sea, and the cliffs. The neighboring sheep walk up the puddle-road,
too, to inspect us. They don’t realise they have cornered themselves against the
cliff until they try to make a run for it. We head back to the car. It is an uncertain
moment for the sheep.
We load up with more briquettes and haul them back to The Love
Hovel. The protocol on the narrow road is "Hug and Hope", as in Hug That
Hedge And Hope You Don’t Sideswipe The Guy Who Is Gunning It Towards You. I am
growing more comfortable with the bushes now, keeping my window rolled up and my shoulders
tight. There's a pothole the size of a bird-bath on road out of Dingle. Rich is
growing impatient. Every exodus finds him bottoming on the gaping pavement
followed by a scream and slap on the steering wheel, "Is anybody going to fix that
thing?!"
I have discovered the instructions for the briquettes printed on the
side of the display that houses them at the petrol station. The secret is lighter fluid
sticks and piling the briquettes in obscene quantities. I am keen to get home as soon as
possible to try out the new knowledge, but first we drive into the fog, past our cottage
up to the town of Dun Quin. We look into the fog. We can’t see Blasket Island. Sybil
Point doesn’t exist either. The cows across the street don’t exist today.
There is a tunnel of space through the back door. The wind is playing a
high Dflat with perseverance. It sounds like a penny whistle. We dry our
never-drying towels on the kitchen chairs in front of the Peat Victory.
