IN Galway recently, I looked out the window of a seafront apartment one morning and saw five glossy blackbirds perched on a leafless shrub.

IT was July, probably around the mid to late 1970s. My mother piled us children into the car, drove down to the pier in An Spidéal in Galway to buy a few freshly caught salmon from the trawlers and half-deckers as they returned.