A chill Island has many sheep . There are so many on this spit of land off the west coast of Ireland that they outnumber the island ’s population of 2,345. Which might be why the man who fitted me and my dad for our hire bikes asked whether I spotted any sheep farmers at the pub the previous night.
“I don’t think so, why?” I asked. “Would you like to be set up with any of them? Think about it: a simple life, quiet, by the ocean”, he said, as he fetched our helmets and high-vis jackets. Tempting though the offer was, the only man for me on the trip was my father.
Over lockdown, during our weekly-ish phone calls, Dad started telling me stories about holidays he took with his parents. It was the first I’d ever heard of these stories. He’s not one to talk much about his childhood.
But lockdown made us all nostalgic, and I began to see a portrait of my father as a little boy in the back of the car, going to Achill Island one summer with his parents, while other summers saw him in his mother’s native Sligo with his cousins. I realised we’d never travelled just the two of us. I remember one weekend when I was younger, my mother and sisters away, just us.
It was very quiet. Only a few sentences passed between us; I’m certain they were about what to eat for dinner. Otherwise, it was just the tip of his head visible behind a newspaper, or else he was engrossed in some sports match.
I just didn’t know how to communicate with my father, a man more fluent in sports.
