I MUST report a handful of intriguing natural events occurring around Courtmacsherry Bay during the festival and regatta held last week.

Damien Enright reviews a chronicle of an Ireland fast fading.

Damien Enright on West Cork’s vast variety of wildlife.

I’D WRITE about the weather we’ve come home to but I imagine my readers are heartily fed up with it.

WHAT marvellous tranquillity and other-worldliness we experienced last Sunday as 19 of us Enrights cruised down the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire at duck pace.

IT WAS another hot morning at the Cortijo El Jabali and the jay birds wuz stealin’ the cherries.

Damien Enright on the slow giants seen off our coasts

TODAY IS pleasantly cool, here in the Sierra Nevada, good weather for walking.

THESE DAYS the rabbits seen from our first floor windows hop about in a field of head-high buttercups. Every evening, about eight o’clock, a fox passes at the top of the field.

ONE WONDERS how far the nanny state can go in terms of nanny-ing us. I was amazed when an obliging digger driver said he couldn’t dig a pond deeper than two feet in our yard.