Running with the sheep

I spent many a day in Ireland running alone on the hillsides with the sheep. It led to some oddly amusing voice notes

I really need to start writing my Ireland book soon. I’m worried my memories will start to fray around the edges. Soft-focus memories. But I've been busy these past days trying to re-stabilise the rest of my life after 10 weeks of neglecting virtually everything else. 

In preparation to begin writing, I’ve been going back through voice notes I recorded during some of my runs in Ireland. There are some funny insights in there, some off-the-wall musings. At one point I find myself contemplating the thought-process that led to the first blackberries ripening so much earlier than all the others. Why did the odd one, I wonder, decide to go for it much earlier than all the others? I envisage the others saying, “not yet, it’s not time, you have to wait for September”, while the one berry already blackening, the early ripener, the pioneer, bursting with restless energy, says, “I don’t care, I’m going for it. Don’t try to stop me.”

On another recording, I decide that I’m like one of the many sheep on the hillsides. There they are, in this amazing place, with these wild, swooping views, the soft Atlantic breeze, standing atop dramatic, craggy cliffs, and yet all they care about is that little patch of grass in front of them, and getting it into their mouths.

And there I was, running the same landscape, yet fixated in the same dumb way, not by eating grass, but by my watch, and the little numbers on it, and watching them change.