Enjoying a Fermanagh retreat
AT dinner, the man opposite was in late middle age, immaculate in sports jacket, shirt and tie, pressed trousers and gleaming brogues.
It was a Tuesday evening, and he was tucking into vegetable soup, lamb chops with chips and mushy peas, then sherry trifle, washed down with two glasses of wine, after which he settled down to read his newspaper.
He was either a bachelor or a widower keeping up appearances as an antidote to despair, or a man whose wife couldn't cook.
Possibly the latter, since women who couldn't cook were a theme in Fermanagh if the conversation about Christmas menus at the next table was anything to go by; apparently a blind date between a glamorous blonde and a balding, portly man with a gentle way about him.
"Och, I never know what to do with Brussels sprouts," she said.
"They're lovely stir-fried with bacon, pine nuts and a bit of lemon," he said.
"Och, that sounds lovely," resting a tentative hand on his forearm. "There's a lot of work in a turkey, though. I tried a recipe once with stuffing and lemon zest, but it didn't really work."
"Aye. The best bet is just to buy the crown."
Silent in failure, she gazed down at her glass of Chardonnay as the sound system played In the Summertime, When the weather is fine.
Oh well. If they made it to Christmas, he'd cook her a lovely meal, and that would get them started, I thought as the waitress brought the bill.
"It's 31 quid, but 30'll do," she said.
"It will not. Here's 35," I said.
Before I went to bed, I made a note of our plans for the morning, since we had managed to get the boat stuck fast on a sandbank as we moored at the jetty in Kesh:
a) Stick shower head out of boat's bathroom window to raise water level and float it off.
b) Attach helium balloons to boat.
c) Pray for rain.
In the end, we woke to find the river even shallower than the night before. Although we managed to back off the sandbank, we had to reverse half a mile back up the river, passing on the way an early morning fisherman.
"It's all right, we always travel this way," we said, waving cheerily as we reversed past him. "Puts a whole new perspective on things."
"Quite," he said.
After finally finding a spot wide enough to turn, we eased into the mouth of the open lough.
"Freedom!" I said, opening the throttle.
I should have kept my mouth shut and remembered what happened to Mel Gibson when he said the same thing in Braveheart, for the next instant we ran at full speed into another sandbank.
Reversing off it, we tried to find another way through. And another. An hour later, I gave up and phoned Emerald Star.
"It's only sand. Try brute force and ignorance," said the man on the other end.
Reversing back as far as we could to get a run at it, we took a deep breath.
"Ramming speed. Make it so," said Cate, who watches too many Star Trek movies.
We ploughed through the sandbank at full speed; only to get stuck on the next. We tried again, and cleared the first and the second, then got stuck on a third.
And this time we really were stuck: neither full throttle forward or reverse would budge us an inch.
I scratched my head for a second, then tried full forward while alternating the bow thrusters to wiggle out a clear passage.
We began to move, inch by agonising inch, then leaped free with one mighty bound.
“A genius, my husband is,” said Cate generously.
By now it was almost lunchtime, so we motored to Lusty More, moored and got the pan on.
Ah, the bacon and mature Cheddar buttie. Forget the Sistine Chapel and the Space Shuttle; this is man’s finest achievement.
By teatime we were in Belleek, a village so pretty that even the bookie’s looks attractive.
As we finished tying up, the rain began, each drop on the flat calm water creating a mesmerising ripple that was born, then blossomed, faded and died.
Some connected with other ripples before they disappeared, and others died alone. I looked at them, and became suddenly melancholic, thinking of the lives I had connected with, and the several women I had loved.
Where were they now? I was only sure of the last, who was sitting outside in her new purple fleece, sipping a glass of wine and watching the raindrops fall.
An hour later, we were snugly ensconced in The Black Cat Cove, a pub full of both character and characters, tucking into Irish stew and Guinness.
I was up at the bar buying another pint when a man walked in and sat down, looking mildly out of sorts.
It turned out that he’d been given a Protestant dog by his neighbour, who’d warned him that her regular haunts were the Orange Hall and the Freemasons’ Club.
“I thought she’d be all right if I took her down to the Parochial Hall to be blessed by the priest,” he said.
“But then my wife left the radio on at six for the Angelus, and she hid behind the sofa.”
“Never mind,” I said, buying him a drink. “These things take a while. Like 300 years.”
The next evening, our last, we tucked into fabulous food in Cafe Merlot, the cellar restaurant of that excellent pub Blake’s in the Hollow, where we told the waiter of our Kesh adventure.
“You weren’t so bad. A month ago two fellas were so busy looking at the map that they rammed an island at full speed and left the boat halfway up it,” he said.
Having a nightcap in a front bar dark with history, we got chatting to Paul Blake, the grandson of the founder, fresh out of Dundee University and serving behind the bar while he planned a career in the diplomatic corps.
At that moment a tourist walked in, and turned out to be the father of a girl who’d been one of Paul’s best friends at university, but with whom he had lost touch.
“I’ll call her now,” said the man, and handed Paul the phone.
And that was how we left him; with his grandfather’s photo on the wall behind him and a diplomatic career in front of him, and in the meantime cossetted in a sanctuary of serendipity.
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Weather for Belfast
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
