So the storm came and went and left our playhouse smashed to smithereens.
At least we had electricity, so we were warm as we watched the carpenter do a patch-up job.
It turned out Fionnuala knew nothing about Genghis coming round to strap the damn thing down and I kinda knew he wasn’t going to say: so he’d have one over me.
It was going to cost a few hundred pounds to sort out the damage but all in all…
A new thing happened shortly after to take my mind off storms. Fionnuala has a cousin who she is close to (lived in the same house at university and went inter-railing together) and her daughter needed a lift to the airport with her boyfriend.
They were hippie-types with cord trousers and dreadlocks and they were exuberant but kindly.
“You’re sweet, Fabien. Really appreciate the lift.”
Clara was looking up at me from the front seat and I gathered that underneath all the nose rings she was pretty. James in the back was staring out the window, asking questions about the farm fields that I couldn’t answer. He had toothpaste-ad teeth and sharp eyes.
“I’m from Belfast, James, I’m not a culchie. That’s why you fluked a lift: I’m going to visit my ma.”
They were in a band that was “everything to us”, and they survived by working on organic farms during the summer. “It has to be sustainable, or we couldn’t work there.”
They chirped the whole way up the motorway and I envied their carefree lives, talking about what festivals they were performing in. “Jura is profound, Fabien; you would love it. Love it!” I knew I would too but that was never happening.
They told me about why they were back home. James was from Magherafelt direction and had an elderly great-uncle who needed a bit of minding after breaking his hip.
James said he’d do it for a week, but it soon turned into two weeks and so on.
Then the bombshell came when the old uncle asked the two young ones to sit at the kitchen table: he had an announcement to make.
He was so taken by Clara and James (playing their instruments and making delicious healthy food) that he wanted to leave the house to them when he died – if they would stay and look after him.
It was a dilemma. They were happy in their nomadic lives. They were a new generation of free spirits, who saw the world differently from the rest of us. They had no desire for the rat race and all its traps and constraints and they wanted to float on a different wave.
But the wee house was lovely. South-facing garden looking into a field where a herd of Fresian cows grazed by a river at the bottom.
It was humble and neat and the little sheds at the back with their red roofs could be workshops, or a place for friends, or a music studio.
It was a happy home, with a satisfying aura, whose thick walls exuded a well-like silence that resulted in deep, sensuous sleep.
So, the pair sat down with his mum to thrash it out and they couldn’t believe how she laughed.
The wee house didn’t belong to her uncle: it was rented, through the Housing Executive.
After the dust settled (the uncle claimed he got mixed up), they decided to high-tail it back to Liverpool and pick up where they had left off.
I said it must have been a hammer blow, as I pulled into the airport.
“Not at all,” Clara smiled at me – there was a bit of the movie star in that goofy smile – “It’ll make a beautiful song.”
“Don’t go there.” James was directing me away from the drop-off lane. “It costs £3. We’ll get out at the wee roundabout.”
And, as they jumped out, I never saw the sign – ‘No Stopping, Picking Up or Dropping Off. £100 Fine.’