Michael Lavery : a great writer by the way

 Des belles photos de  Mickael Lavery 

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My Omen.

It was a truth back in the days,when a half a milking can full of blackberries would put me in my Mother's good graces for a week that the sweetest blackberries always grew in the most perilous places. Over cliff edges ,inside the wall on the Bull or Stallion's field, or in ruined houses filled with most vicious tearing briars the Devil ever made, they hid from that never easing Connemara wind.

That truth led me to a curious lifelong fear, the fear of a smell. A smell I'd mistakenly over the years referred to as brimstone because I associated it with brimstone's diabolical connotations but actually it's the smell of crushed stone.

An unusual smell, uncommon now but back in the day of knocking walls and lifting gaps, iron cart wheels on gravel roads and sledge hammers, it was quite recognizable. Especially to the likes of lads who thought nothing of appropriating their father's good ball peen hammer to mine and investigate any yellow metallic lines found in some of the stones so common to the place where I grew up, in case the stones might prove precious.

It all began on a day I'd little luck and had hardly covered the bottom of my tin can with blackberries after scouring Lavery's and King's land for them down to the sea, when I came across an old roofless ruin where the brambles had taken shelter and were thriving. The brambles there seemed in their vitality and the berries in the size and numbers to mock the scrawny, wind beaten, bits of yokes clinging to dry stone walls for dear life, I 'd been picking all day.

Finally abundance, but with a thorny attached conundrum. The inside of that house consisted of a single dense tangle of briars, thick enough to have even Brer Rabbit from the old story, seriously reconsider, if being thrown into briar patches was actually such a good idea, but once having seen that fruitful bounty the thought of going home defeated and empty handed was unbearable. The challenge had to be taken up.

The solution was obvious, if a little precarious , the way to harvest those berries was to get up on top of the old stone walls and pick what could be picked by reaching in over that world of thorns to the length of a young greedy arm. Being a decent climber and seeing as how the walls of those old houses weren't very high things went well, the while. I'd half filled my tin near the gable end when I gazed an offering of the fattest, ripest most numerous blackberries I'd ever seen in my life, growing up along the top of the gable. Mesmerized by the chance to fill my can and be home, a hero, in no time, up I went.

What possessed me to climb to the very top of the gable I don't know. maybe the especially nice berries up near the cap stone, maybe the challenge and a good story to tell at home, who knows, but I shouldn't have. I'd damned near got my can full and was grabbing a last few fingers full when disaster stuck. Just as I'd reached the top and had placed hand on the cap stone I felt some of the ancient stones beneath my feet shift and I got that smell of grinding stone. The gable was not very high but finding any place to jump to not scattered with rocks and stones was generally uncommon back our way and this was no exception. Decision! Jump, don't fall, falling could mean going into the briars. I jumped.

The next thing I remember I was walking up the Boreen half way to King's house with the taste of blood in my mouth and the smell of that infernal stone in my nose. I was carrying my tin which was half full and not the foggiest clue as to how I came to be there. A nice bump on the back of my head had me surmising that on jumping I'd dislodged a stone or two and falling one had struck me on the back of the head. Thank God for thick skulls.

There was no other damage, I wasn't even bleeding, just the taste of blood which didn't last and that stone smell I've never forgotten. A while latter when I came of off a bike, riding side saddle, under the bar above the crossroads I was sure I smelled it on the road gravel, and when I fell over the wall at Brandy Bridge and had the wind knocked out of me I smelled it again. Stranger, on occasions over the years when disaster stuck I was often sure I could catch a tint of stone on the air and to this day if I ever get a hint of that peculiar smell I always expect the worst.