Tokens

Beautiful evening. My cousin Pat asked me out to his studio in Bray to see the latest painting he's working on. A pleasure to watch him work, all that dogged, electric concentration. Some great paintings too, dashed-off figurative/abstract watercolours vivid as stained glass trial pieces, almost monochrome expressionist landscapes, and I was especially struck by a large painting of our grandfather, from a blurred photo I once took while looking in the drawing room window of our old home in Stillorgan Co Dublin. It might have been with the first SLR I got hold of (a Zenit I think), in my early 20s. He died not long afterwards, in the early 80s.

Later, just in time for a token wander along the dusky prom where they were putting up the funfair. On the almost deserted beach a slightly breathed-on, almost full moon pinged clearly above the sea, accompanied by an extraordinarily delicate rose-pink cloud, a slightly creased chiffon scarf tossed on a coverlet, barely yet utterly there.