I'm not going to tell you now about how I was carried off by an ambulance, with an excruciating infection, to the hospital in Galway. And spent a week in wait and fear for even worse. But rather, how I woke up on the meadow again.

Because I moved my towel curtain aside and what a fortunate timing, a quilt of birds landed like elevated patchwork. They were dressed as if the sunlight broke upon their feathers through a ripple of water, with long, bent beaks, a bit slimmer than a silver gull, very shy, with a shrill cry. Curlews. What a treat! More fetching than fiction. Epicuriously pecking they sauntered against the wind, then turned around and ran very busy into Funny Lane. A screech and there they go again.

A low sun turns the full fat green grass into woolly cosiness, then it's flattened by fierce gusts.
A cow between the rocks. I read all about it, girl, spelled the papers on my sickbed, about the fodder crisis in Ireland, you too! Come in to have a tasty graze here, as long as you drop it on the other side of the wall. Last month's pies still haven't dried out.

Over the sea hangs a jet-black sky under which an army of bitter white waves in battledress, all heading my way. I pity the flowers, new-born in the flapping wind.

Above the mountain the sun has gone and the sky has gone grey as if ironed with the side of a pencil point. The wind is changing, the circles on my streamer eclipse.

I parked the van tonight right next to the tent. Even though I flattened it the storm wind has moved the loose end over a meter aside and the sail flared up incessantly. Yesterday I had bailed out a week's weight of rain water for a repair and the gale took little else for an answer. Of all bucket loads I just kept one for dishwater. Hellter shelter.

When it doesn't rain and at the height of the tide, the meadow is sprayed with the drift of the breakers. When you toss a fresh peanut in the air it falls back salted.

Hey, I got the all clear from the doctor to go swimming again and the water hasn't been this clear for at least half a year. Dolphin time again!