The summer evenings here in our West Cork village is full not of “the linnet’s wings” of WB Yeats’s ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ but of house martin’s wings. These birds faithfully come all the way from tropical Africa to nest below the fascia boards on sea-facing houses each year.

ON mornings after the storms, when the sun is bright and warm and the tide is far out, the floor of the bay stretches away in miles of mud and sand, dissected by narrow channels reflecting the blue of the sky.