Sea fresh sharpness

IT may not have been Dylan Thomas’ “mussel pooled and the heron Priested shore” but the view from the windows at Deasy’s Seafood Bar in Ring, outside Clonakilty, Co Cork, is as captivating as I imagine the shoreline that shaped the Welshman’s sublime Poem in October must have been.

There are few more endlessly revealing dramas than an ebbing tide, as it is ushered through gullies, over seaweed beds by metronomic, bopping seabirds — oystercatchers, curlews, bullying gulls and little dunlin darting, spearing sea maggots stranded amongst the samphire like a busy scrum half rescuing the ball from tangle-nets of forwards’ legs.

And, if you’re lucky enough to get one of the enviable window seats at Deasy’s, you can watch all of this life and death — but you must be there as the tide ebbs, sluicing towards the gap at Inchydoney, pushing all the time to reach Clonakilty Bay.