Road trip, part one

Road trip, part one: Last weekend, my husband and I took off on a day trip. Up the west coast on a whim we went, following what felt like the road to freedom in warm, balmy air, returning 10 hours later, our minds as smooth and untroubled as freshly laid eggs.

This weekend my husband is eager for a sequel. He wants to go to Skellig Michael to see the puffins. I am also eager for a sequel: I want to go to an island renowned for its subtropical garden, to see the late-blooming Magnolia Grandiflora. We decide to toss a coin for it, which is preferable to compromising, for the obvious reason that it’s impossible to harbour bad

feelings towards a coin. “Heads, it’s Magnolia,” I say, “tails, it’s puffins.” Heads it is.

Saturday morning, and we are driving straight into a low grey cloud which stretches out along the coast. An hour later, we arrive at our destination. I had been hoping that the cloud might end abruptly and directly above the island. It does not. My husband says he thinks the cloud ends in Skellig Michael. Personally, I think it ends in America.

We park the car on the jetty. My husband switches off the engine and Tilly the dog leaps from the back into my husband’s lap. We sit in the front for a while, listening to the wind whip up and watching the rain trickle down the windscreen. Then we watch a group of female pensioners assemble near the entrance to the pier. Beneath a sky that has become brooding and dark, they put on clear plastic rain bonnets and tie them under their chins. “Not being funny,” I say, “but this road trip has a very different feel to last weekend’s.”

We approach the ferry-ticket booth. The man selling the tickets says that dogs aren’t allowed on the ferry unless they are on a leash at all times. “Health and safety,” he says, “you know how it is.”“I’ve left her leash at home,” my husband says, “any chance you’ve got a length of rope there that might do the job?”

The ferryman produces a four-metre length of blue rope from behind the kiosk. It is oily and very thick and speaks of a history with mooring: Barges, oil tankers, log platforms, vessels such as the Titanic. But definitely not small dogs. Now that we have what passes for a leash, we are permitted to climb aboard the ferry. We step from the jetty onto a narrow strip of decking which immediately gives way to the top step of a ladder that leads down to the cabin below. I am a bit unstable navigating my descent because I am carrying Tilly, but not as unstable as my husband, who is carrying the Titanic mooring rope, which is twice my weight, never mind the dog’s.

We wobble down six steps. I sit on a bench at the bottom with Tilly in my lap. My husband sits beside me with the mooring rope in his. The ferry boat chugs out of the harbour. I am wet, my husband is wet, the dog is wet. Right now, I’d do anything for a clear plastic rain bonnet to tie under my chin. Halfway across to the island, the sky turns black, the sea gets choppy and I notice we are the only passengers on the boat. “I am beginning to get a small but peculiar sense of foreboding,” I say. “What about?” my husband says, lifting the rope out of his lap, placing it on the floor and climbing back up the ladder. He is standing halfway up the ladder, with his head rising up out of the cabin, just above deck level and his arms are dangling over the side of the boat. “Oh my God I can see eight seals,” he shouts, “quick, quick, quick, come up here before they go.”

The most unfortunate events in life are often heralded by the smallest of observations: In my lap, Tilly pricks up her ears like she always does when my husband uses his “walkies” voice.

And these unfortunate events happen very very fast: Tilly jumps down off my lap. Tilly is all set for walkies. Using each step as a springboard for the next, she bounces up the ladder. Each bounce has plenty of spring in it, including her last, which propels her up over the side of the boat and down into the deep blue sea.

Right now, I’d do anything for a clear plastic rain bonnet to tie under my chin