Sheila Spilled Tea on Her Notes and Is Now Unable to Read Some Words.

The starling inspired me to starting time writing afterwards I establish her ane morning, trapped in the living room of my mother's old house. She'd fallen down the chimney and dropped the twigs and wool she'd gathered to build her nest. I plant them scattered in the dust on the grate every bit she tore at the window badly trying to go out. I was then worried that she was going to injure herself, that I somehow managed to gently grasp the sooty, piddling body and carry her, slowly like a flickering candle, to the dorsum door. I set her free and as the tiny silhouette disappeared into the pink, winter heaven I chosen out to her:

"Please come back anytime – we're building a new home here too."

"Look for me in spring copse!" I thought I heard her say and I wrote it down in a footling notebook so I wouldn't forget the bulletin.

In Jan 2020, I started to go on a diary about our first twelvemonth back on the family unit subcontract on Dechomet Mount in the Dromara Hills in Co Downwardly. My husband and I had been living and working in Belfast city for many years and we'd built a new habitation here where nosotros planned to run a music social club in the restored barn loft.

I grew up on this small-scale dairy farm where my mother, Maggie, milked eight cows twice every mean solar day for years after my begetter, Nicholas died following a brusk disease in 1974. I was 12 years old and my sister, Carmel, was eight and for the three of us the loss was immeasurable. Just life on the farm had to keep and, together, nosotros took practiced care of our cows because they were our breadwinners and our friends.

Every morn, three steel cans of cooled milk were rolled from the pocket-size dairy beside the byre to the roadside for the creamery lorry to collect. Each Friesian cow had a proper name and sometimes, in the summer, my mother would wander down into the fields to talk to them – Whitey, Wee Heifer, Toddles and the residue. They would walk upwards to her and button their big heads nether her arm for a caress. Cows are kind that mode and the bond between u.s. and the animals was strong and unforgettable. I've carried that memory similar a photograph in my heart all my life and I always knew that somehow, anytime I would come up back to the fields and the homeplace.

Our barn loft was a traditional Irish farm building with two doors at basis level in the farmyard. One was for the stable, where my grandfather kept his cart horse a century ago, and the other for the calf business firm where baby cattle were fed upward until the 1990s. Stone steps with a red handrail led to the loft where grain was stored at harvest fourth dimension. My grandmother told stories about ceilis in that loft later bags of corn were heaved upwards the steps from a trailer on the road. At the start of 2020, I put a tilly lamp in the gable window of the restored barn on the nights nosotros at present welcomed our musical friends to play Irish and American jazz, gimmicky folk and soul music at the modern-day ceilis we were now hosting in the befouled loft.

The inner, white-washed walls glowed in the lamplight as the music spilled out beyond the yard and into the fields beyond and we were delighted to have broken new ground on the farm, growing music on the mountainside. The whole experience of renewal provided fresh stories and observations for the nature diary I was now writing as role of my creative writing class at Queen's University in Belfast. "Write almost what you know," they said, so I did merely that.

Past March 2020, we were becoming more anxious, watching the daily news reports about the Covid-xix pandemic. The world was shutting down to protect all of us from the coronavirus threat and so the music had to terminate and our barn went dark. By the end of the month, nosotros were locked downward on the mount, walking the land route like pilgrims looking for promise in the spring landscapes.

On the 26th of the month, we stood in our garden nether a cold, crescent moon to applaud, like millions of others, our friends and family members working in the National Health Service. We started to clap slowly, the sound billowy off the mountain and splitting the darkness. Across the fields, nosotros watched our neighbours come out of their front doors to exercise the aforementioned, the xanthous lights warming the chilled air. Within seconds, the countryside echoed with the sound of human hands uniting and the connection was deep and powerful. In a spontaneous moment, Linley lifted his trumpet and played the bright, golden melody of When the Saints Go Marching In and suddenly, for just a little while, anybody was clapping in time, singing loudly and wildly across the valley. The music lifted all of us that nighttime.

By May 1st, 2020, we had adjusted to a new routine of long, daily walks along our repose country roads and loanins, regularly stopping to talk to neighbours over garden fences where they were habitation schooling their children. In the unexpected but very welcome heatwave, I spent hours outdoors revisiting babyhood haunts in fields and meadows and making notes virtually the hedgerows and ditches now bursting with cow parsley, chamomile and buttercups. The daily business concern of the birds had become woven into our lives as we woke early on with the glorious chorusing of blackbirds, robins and wrens at dawn.

One bright morning early on in the month, I opened the little door of our black postbox which is congenital into a pillar under the barn loft. On the floor of the box, I found some twigs, wool and straw. I closed the door, blinking back tears, and went into the house to find a plastic container for our letters. Later on that morning, I told our postman to use it for our mail as there was a new resident in the box. Within days, my starling friend had built a sturdy nest in there and would shout noisily from the treetops when anyone approached the area. Sometimes, early in the mornings every bit the sun slipped up behind the mountains, I would lean out the window and whisper to her "I'm so glad you came back". "Me likewise," I call up she said.
Maggie Doyle worked for BBC Northern Republic of ireland as a radio producer and manager for over 30 years. In 2019, she took early on retirement and returned to live on the subcontract with her husband Dr Linley Hamilton who is a musician and educator. Together, they run a music club and mentoring projection to back up immature singer/songwriters. Mount Notes is Maggie's outset book and is based on diary notes she kept during 2020 about walks in the local landscape. The book is an appreciating and lyrical memoir of their reconnection with the natural world and the re-imagining of the farm as a place where music grows. Mountain Notes costs £10 with proceeds going to thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk Information technology is bachelor from No Alibis in Belfast, Bridge Books in Dromore, Painted Globe in Newcastle, Blue Beans Crafts in Castlewellan, N Downward Museum, The Turnip House in Leitrim and The Bee Business firm in Bangor or email magysfarm@gmail.com

Sheila Spilled Tea on Her Notes and Is Now Unable to Read Some Words.

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/mountain-notes-the-music-of-what-happened-in-lockdown-1.4790094