DIARY: Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
2nd June - Summertime!
Boy but I love the summer! Yes, yes, I know: the crunch of frost on a
winter day - it's OK - but not a patch on warm summer days when you realise anew
why you are born.
I can't sit in the sun. It's too hot. But to
wander in and out, doing odd jobs, 'footering around', as we say in the North of
Ireland, is magic. It feels good to be in your skin.
And then there's eating out - al fresco. Fantastic!
Something primeval about it. It's the one thing I love
about warmer climes, in southern Spain, Italy and France - in the Canaries, in
Africa, Australia - yes, I've been there in the past - sitting in the open,
eating and drinking in the warm coolness of a balmy evening. I wish we
could have more of it in Ireland.
So when it happens, as it did on June 2nd , for the first time this year, I really enjoyed it.
This was the scene, late in the evening, around 8 pm.
A plate of new potatoes, ham fresh cut in Milligan's shop down the street, a
glass or two of excellent Chilean wine. (Sauvignon, from Lidl at £2.95 the
bottle.) A simple evening meal involving no cooking apart from the
spuds.
Great! - Warm sun still shining over the Mourne Mountains to my right.
.
And this was contentment at the end - smoking pure Golden Virginia
tobacco hand rolled in a liquorice paper. Plate cleared except for hard
skinned tomatoes, which I did not like. Hard to get good tomatoes today,
unless you grow them yourself, which I don't do. I do not do
gardening. I simply do not have the time.
God, I remember the musty, tomato smell in my grandparents'
greenhouse long ago, and the delicious softness bursting in my mouth. Not
nowadays. All the tomatoes I buy seem to have thick, hard skins.
Never mind. The world is not perfect.
However, it's great to raise one's glass against a backdrop of beautiful
trees .......
......... raise a toast to almighty God and the wonderful blue sky He has
created - brilliant blue. I can't believe it! It's 10.30 at
night.
This is the kind of weather I am made for.
........
....... feet at rest.....
....... and no worries about who is the real Mick O'Shea.
Life is great - in the summer time.