Sunday 19 August 2007


From Chapter 16 of The Blue Cabin:-
“Late that afternoon, at the height of the wind, he took a remarkable photograph from the north end of the sound, looking diagonally across towards the cabin: the sun has just broken the lower edge of a curtain of dirty grey cloud, flooding gold into a strip of clear sky underneath and punching out the crowns of the Scots pines by the cabin. Beyond Islandmore, the outline of Ringdufferin Point, which defines the boundary of sea and sky, appears as a faint and liquescent brushstroke of burnt umber through a veil of horizontal spray. The sound itself, with its top dressing of silvery plumes layered over streaks of sepia where the sun has penetrated an extra cargo of weed and silty foam, has the rich translucence, the good-enough-to-eat quality, of a freshly pulled glass of Irish stout, backlit by candles. A dozen yachts face dead into the wind, trailing tattered banners of muslin spray from their rigging, hanging at crazy angles to the sea and blasted back against their mooring chains until some of the buoys have lifted clear of the water. On Islandmore the cabin is just discernible, its drenched and gleaming front wall picked out by the sun: an insignificant, transitory-looking structure – unfairly placed, you would think, in the path of such careless elemental forces.”
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