With my rear doors wide open, I nourish the gentle warmth of the low morning sun. Since yesterevening I'm back from Holland, and just in the quick of time, as it was snowing there. On the road, after a night full of coughing myself from sleep I feverishly woke up to a Lucy in the Sky-like weatherscape with living light oozing out in bewilderingly pure colours. I hailed the sun after oh so cold a night for the splendour that reached beyond the horizon. Which was were I went. On this Aire near Rouen I had to scratch eyes in the ice on the windscreen. But other than that, I could keep Jack Frost at bay by the buzz of the van heater and later, awaiting the ferry, under my mega-down comfort. How wonderful warmth works in sub-zero windchill.
Upon arrival at the boat, I comfortably idled for a little longer behind the wheel. Just for letting go the intense attention to the road. I let my eyes rest on the bespattered windscreen. The world behind it began to move, unmistakably to move. I glided forward slightly askew, but when I cast my eyes elsewhere I stood still again. It very much looked like the Ken Burns-effect in a slide show. This was phantom-driving. On my nightmares I rode through many helpless accidents this way.
The ferry from Cherbourg to Rosslare takes eighteen long, deadly boring hours as the spirit of travel is deadlocked in the lethargic monotony of look-alike waves. So utterly unlike their familiar caprices at the meadow. All-night television screens stare out hosts of photo-shop made-over mercenary models mercilessly moving merchandise mile after marine mile. And soccer shots, always scoring or showing brutal fouls, too short-lived to be partial to. The teeth of time gnaw fatiguing on the emptiness of the unprepared traveller. But I socketed my Mac and embarked on a resolute Bruce Willis ('Tears of the Sun') and on the natural beauty of an early Sandra Bullock ('When the party's over'), in between checking my emails and scribbling memos in return. Very accomplished.
For an aqua-maniac like me this is an ordeal as the volume to my need is untransportable, moreover becomes lukewarm flat after a few hours and the ship only provides in a taste fit for hand washing.
The more blissful was my arrival. At the passport point in my snotty confusion I could not readily produce my ID. But it did not matter, I was welcome anyway and likewise I rolled through customs. What a relief to be trusted at face value again. And at the filling station everybody held the door for each other, casually informed after general health and said 'sorry' and 'thank you', even superfluously. Weeping, I threw myself to the ground and embraced a pothole.
The sunset was an extraordinary recurring treat, I remembered from way back when in my Dingle days, when I also travelled this route. Due to the hilly trajectory the sun, veiled in royal orange, went down more than half a dozen times. Ever stronger a jet-black frown crowned the tenderly blushing downs of heaven, underlined by a mushroom cloudlet farawayscape.
As in Ireland all motorways lead to Dublin and I drove towards Limerick, I cut through the night along two-lane roads with so many oncoming cars shining time and a half blinding headlights that upon arrival at the meadow I was developing tapetum lucidem, eyeshine, cat eyes.
But just before that I swung by at the Kilshanny well and filled both of my brand new 20 liter jerrycans with gorgeous water. What a delight after three tap-slobbering weeks of chemically manipulated abundance.
From Willem I learned that Dusty is still pregnant but also that my 12 month gestation period calculation after October 15th last year was way off birth date. Either she got pregnant later or the little one is taking intra-uterine courses in solitary survival and will in good time effectively assist its mother in her friendly wild activities.
This morning the 'Prue Ester', a lobster pot boat from Ballyvaughan, chuchachuched by, which I intensely binocularised, but no Dusty near her. Normally she swims along, though of recent in her wake instead of in her bow wave.
Could it become a Christ-child after all? A Chris or even a Christina? Complete with three Wise Dolphins from the West, its very own star and a crib of stray waves? And would there have been an immaculate conception?
But it has taken over 2,000 years since the last saviour, so we have to exercise a liiittle more patience. And hope this one does better.