“Everyone in my class says that you can only have picnics and go to the beach in the summer.”
I turn down the radio and turn up the windscreen wipers.
“They said what?”
“They all said that you can only go to the beach or have a picnic in the summer.”
The rain is hammering on the roof of the car. Struggling to hear, I turn the radio fully off.
“Hmmm, right…” I say, with a long pause, trying to buy myself some time. The five-year-old has a habit of starting in the middle of a story. And I’m lost, struggling to catch up.
She is speaking softly, almost to herself.
“And then … the múinteoir said that they were all right. But … actually … they are all wrong. And I said that … you can go to the beach whenever you like and you can have a picnic anytime you want.”
I glance in the rear-view mirror. She is leaning forward, her hands held out, palms upwards, her amazingly expressive eyebrows raised into pointed arches.
Then, once she is satisfied she has made her point, she relaxes back into her car seat.
“Ahhhh …. Were you doing a lesson about the seasons, na séasúir?” I ask her.
“Yes,” she nods.
“And did your teacher ask you to match different activities to the seasons? Like maybe making a snowman in an Geimhreadh (winter) and planting flowers i rith an Earraigh (spring)?”
She nods again.
“And did you put your hand up and say to the class that … you can go to the beach whenever you like, and you can have a picnic all year round?”
“Yes. Because you can have a picnic any time in the year, not just in the summer.”
I suppress a giggle. “Well, yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“And picnics in cold weather are better,” the ten-year-old explains, suddenly engaged and looking up from her book, “because that’s when we always have hot apple and toasted sandwiches!”
We pull up at our house. The sound of the rain has sent the three-year-old to sleep. He is snoring. I realise I’m going to have to wake him up and carry him inside in the rain. He won’t be impressed.
***
Later that evening, when the children are all upstairs in bed asleep, the wind picks up. It rattles through the kitchen extractor fan vent. The rain has been falling continuously for hours and is driving sideways now – rat-tat-tatting against the windows at the back of the house.
I’m washing the mandatory plastic school lunchboxes, my hands in the warm soapy water, when I start to smile, remembering our five-year-old’s conviction that beaches and picnics are not just for summer.
It is late September now. I glance over at the calendar to see the date and only notice then that it is the night of the autumn equinox.
Standing here at the sink, I realise that I have spent so much of September in man-made environments: classrooms, lecture halls, schoolyards, football clubs, soft play centres, car parks, halls for ballet and pantomime practice, libraries, Zoom calls, swimming pools, supermarkets, in bed sick, travelling in cars and trains and vans. These plastic lunchboxes feel like the closest any of us have come to a picnic all month.
The fridge hums, the dishwasher whooshes, the extractor vent rattles again, and the washing machine clicks into the fast final spin cycle with such sudden intensity it gives me a fright.
I lift the lunchboxes out of the warm water and leave them to drain on the drainer.
Sometimes in a storm it feels cosy to be indoors, at home. Other times it feels like the natural world is banging on the windows, asking you to come out to play. Like a neighbour’s child at the door: are you coming out? Have you nearly finished your dinner yet?
I unscrew the lids of the three children’s water bottles and plunge them into the soapy basin, lifting them up and down, filling them with water and spilling it out again.
Outside in the dark, I know the waves are crashing on the shore down at Cross Beach; forests of seaweed are being thrown up onto the sand at Carrowmore. The Erriff River is filling up. White ribbons of water are rushing down the sides of the Three Lugas in Maumtrasna. Unwatched.
Apples are falling to the ground out at Lough Carra. Rowan berries are tossing in the wind, clinging onto their branches on the road winding up through the Sheeffry Pass. All kinds of strange mushrooms are fruiting on trees in Clonbur Woods.
I reach into the cupboard to pull out some things to start making the children’s school lunches and spot our big family picnic flask on the shelf.
I pick up my phone and check the weather forecast for the weekend. It looks set to dry by Saturday, I note.
We will go somewhere this weekend, I promise. I lift the flask down and wash it out, leaving it to dry alongside the lunchboxes
Hot Spiced Autumn Apple Juice
You’ll need:
1 litre apple juice
500ml water
Cinnamon
A little chopped ginger (optional)
1 star anise (optional)
1 tablespoon honey
Put everything in a saucepan and simmer gently for about three minutes. Strain out the ginger and star anise and pour into a flask.
Best shared on a cold walk close to some thick moss-covered old stones and a body of moving water. Ideally with a damp, mushroomy woody smell in the air.
Particularly good with a toasted cheese sandwich if you build a fire, or a regular cheese sandwich if it’s not that kind of day.
The three lugas are glacial corries, or hollows, gouged out of the northwestern face of the Maumtrasna/Partry Mountains in County Mayo, Ireland. The word luga comes from the Irish word luga, meaning a hollow or recess