Grey days like these

Lilac Haze, by Marjorie Leonard
This is a painting of Lough Erne, but it looked EXACTLY like Strangford today

We were driving along the road to Greyabbey on the shores of Strangford. It was a perfectly calm midwinter afternoon. The skies and waters all merging into Rothko striations of grey. There wasn't a single wisp of wind and as the darkness closed in early in that shade of impossible whispering blue,  pretty lights from the cars began to reflect on the waters below, twinkling like a watery lost city.

"A painted ship upon a painted ocean," I thought. Never had I seen the lough so calm. So eerily still. Flocks of lapwing were flopping about indolently. You can always tell lapwings from miles away. They are goodly sized birds and they have a huge lapping style of flying. They also tend to move ever so slightly out of sync so it reminds you of prayer wheels being turned one after the other, or in the black-white-black-white-black-white rolling across the expanse of water, in an avian game of Othello.

"How do you KNOW what they are?" asked Ghin exasperated. "They are only dots in the sky. What's that bird then?" he says and points at nowhere in particular.

My mum also laughs at the back. My dad, who is mostly deaf doesn't react in anyway. I don't know if he realises we have said anything or if he can't be bothered to ask for a clarification. I wish I had my camera, cos then I would capture the peace, the silence, which has draped itself over the lough. Imagine, I thought living here, a thousand years ago and seeing a day like this. A day where there is neither night nor day, where nothing is real nor a ghost, where you are just taken in, enfolded in the timeless of the moment. The veil is always thin in Ireland, but also ever present. You could imagine leaving and not returning for a thousand years on a twilight like this. And when you return, nothing has changed. The moment was still here, once again and forever - captured in the naked branches, the scratching of twigs, the geese and the curlew, the moment which is soaked with memory and then will make you forget. How many many people, lives, stories have come and gone, like the sunrises and sunsets, the tides which wash up and away. And here I am, driving with my family, my dear Ma and dear Pa, and my son, and we are saying nothing and yet, there is everything which is to be said.

My mother recalls all those other times we have driven round the lough. Or Loff, as my dad says. That time we went to Exploris. That time we collected potatoes in and put money in an honesty box. That time we had lunch in Donaghadee. That time when we went to... all those times, that time...

I have lived in Northern Ireland now for almost 20 years. Looking back it is incredible. I have stayed and watched things change so much. When I first came here, one of the first nights we were out at a pub, there was a stone thrown at the window and everyone in the pub hunkered down by instinct. I was dragged to the floor by Peter. "Get down!" he shouted.

We went to the Ulster Museum on Sunday and we went to an exhibition on the Troubles. They were mostly photos from Belfast - York Street and the Markets. Some photos from Derry. Children laughing and just making do with what is and what was. Today people are fat and happy. Today, things are so different.

I recall the image of the garden I have created and the fruit within it. And the flowers and all the wonderful wonderful plants. It is now winter and the trees are resting. But it is also the roiling height of summer. And it is also harvest and it is also spring. It is an amazing garden. A garden of wonders. And here we stay, along the shores. Be bourne backwards by those currents into the future.