An Ill Wind

Yep, it’s still blowing. Up around a force 6 and stronger. I’ve become an obsessive watcher of satellite weather maps. There’s a vile low swirling around the English Channel and – too – slowly brawling its way eastish. And there are other lows milling around hither and thither. The only hope for a change for the better is a big but distant high way out in the Atlantic. But will it be muscular enough to push these lows out of the way and bring sun and balmy breezed to my and (depending where you’re reading this) your life? The three day forecasts seem pessimistic. But the winds should at least drop a bit and – sod it – even if I end up camped out on a beach or island waiting for favourable weather I’m inclined to push off and get going again however little progress I make. The alternative is terminal unfitness, a wrecked liver and penury; the three obviously interconnected and a result of shore leave in Dingle.

Yesterday which was occasionally sunny if always blustery I strolled around Dingle taking ‘dolphin’ photographs. An infinite number of café signs, sculptures, advertising hordings and the rest using the Fungi brand and image.

On the basis that I wasn’t going to see anybody but the occasional distant trawlerman and a puffin here and there I stopped shaving when I pushed off from Baltimore two weeks ago. That and the discomfort of shaving in cold seawater each morning. The results have been gratifying. For the first week I merely looked scruffy. Rather than designery. But since being in Dingle I’ve gone from looking merely gone-to-seed to actually homeless. Which I suppose is accurate enough. I’m going to have to steel my nerve to keeping going with the facial hair thing. The next stage is probably going to make me look like an Amish pastor. Then one of those mid-west alt-folk-rockers. When, I ask, do I get the Hemingway look? Weeks? Months? Whatever about the resolution to keep paddling, the commitment to pogonology is daunting. Even more so now that I’ve just looked up beards.org. Which is possibly the most off-putting website outside of DIY surgery info sites currently on-line. It may have to be back to the cold, saltwater and rust razor blade. Or even tweezers and pliers.

Dingle has been going through local contortions over its ‘official’ name change to An Daingean by the Government. Despite this being a gaeltacht area, where Irish is – sort of – the first language, the locals in a plebiscite voted to keep Dingle in the form of Dingle Daingean Uí Chúis rather than the Dublin-imposed Irish-ified version. The main reason being that Dingle is a ‘brand’ dependent on tourism and a name change on maps, sighposts etc are seen as similar to renaming Stratford-on-Avon something like Illyria-ex-Arden. Anyway, high feelings, many defaced signs, strong arguments and all the rest. And plenty of ammunition for local and independent TDs to beat the government with.