Mm...I was a bit down in the dumps yesterday when I wrote about the garden...mind you the weather is so foul that certainly isn't helping anyone's mood. Rain lashing against the windows and it's so blooming dark we have to have the lights on all day...but the Solstice is coming and then we'll begin to see a stretch in the day before too much longer.
A few years ago I was asked would I like to see the sunrise from the very top of Carrowkeel...and I said I would. It's an area of cairns...burial tombs built from stones...and one has a light-box. There's a small gap in the entrance which captures the rays of the rising sun and it shines on a precise spot at the back of the tomb. The same as Newgrange, if you've heard of that, but unlike Newgrange where you have to pay vast amounts of money...Carrowkeel is free.
So Dave and his friends picked me up at about 4.30 am and we set off in his little car with the exhaust held on with a bit of wire and rattled down the laneways...a short-cut...according to our Dave. The woman who sat in front was one of those incredibly irritating people who talked for the sake of it...mostly about how wonderful she was...I sat in the back with Tom...he was a member of the Guardia and he kept glancing at me whenever the woman was in full spate with his eyebrows slightly raised, which made me want to laugh...
But that'd have been rude, so I didn't.
We reached the space to park cars...it isn't a car-park...just a sort of space and usually littered with sleeping sheep...everyone clambered out and our Dave opened the boot to reveal proper gear...those long thin walking sticks...hefty boots that must have cost a small fortune...proper rain jackets covered in pockets for maps and stuff and backpacks.
I was wearing jeans and a waterproof and the boots I used for gardening...
A gentle stroll up the mountain path I'd thought...not a bit of it...they put on their proper jackets and hoisted packs on their backs and laced up important looking boots, while I looked on in horror.
Then they set off...walking at a hundred miles an hour while I trailed behind wishing I'd stayed in bed...I stopped to talk to the sheep who looked at me askance and I stopped to get my breath and I stopped to tie my bootlaces...
By the time I'd reached the cairn at the top of the mountain, the rest of the party were happily ensconced inside...drinking hot coffee from the flasks in their packs. So I wriggled in through the narrow entrance and found somewhere to sit and our Dave handed me a cup and I thought it'd be coffee and it was a sort of thin porridge...
And then it began to grow light.
And I could clearly see the sunshine.
But it wasn't shining through the light box...it was shining all around the cairn...because our Dave had plonked us down...in the wrong cairn.
And nobody said anything!
They heaved themselves to their feet and announced they were going to walk further and I said I'd wander back down the mountain and have a chat with some more sheep.
Our little party were almost out of sight when people began emerging from the 'right' cairn and they said hello and would I like a hot coffee and one had bacon sandwiches in her pocket and she handed me a grease-proof paper package and said sorry it's dead pig...and I said I didn't much care,
I'd eat whether it was dead or not...
We all went off together...a motley crew of seriously New Age people with dreadlocks...a German tourist bedecked with terribly expensive looking cameras and a rather frightened Japanese chap who didn't appear to speak any English and probably wondered whatever he'd found himself involved in.
I sat in the car when we finally made it down the mountain and decided that our Dave was a prize eejit and his faithful followers ought to have known better...but he'd left a bar of chocolate in the glove compartment...so I ate it all.
aye right their eejits 
From Carole's husband in response to an email I sent, sending our condolences 
Clots not clearing up
bronchiectasis flare up
Regular seasonal flare-ups
Struggling with flare up
