Talking Wall, Kilmac, Co Wicklow

Grey stormy day, spitting rain and rocking the Yaris, making me wary of looking at anything but the road. But I managed to glance up at one of my familiar milestones, the talking wall in Kilmac.

Driving to Wexford or Wicklow, over the past decade or so, I'd come to notice this old wall, hanging on a high hill above the main Dublin-Wicklow road, just before you enter the Glen of The Downs. It usually carries a Provo slogan, in clear, white capital letters: something about releasing the Columbia Three or saving the Sienna Seven etc.

This afternoon, as I drove to Ashford to hand the wean over to my wife's mum for a couple of days (feeling utterly torn as he wailed: "You come with me daddy!"), I had noticed that the usual slogan had been methodically defaced, corrupting the letters into a jumbled ladder of runes. On the way back from Ashford, I pulled over, got my boots out of the boot, and clambered up the steep, slippery grass, cowshit and gorse, to get a closeup. Because I preferred this, the far more eloquent white noise of a screaming wall, like a legitimate facet of the weathered landscape, finally having its say.

NB
In case you're wondering, the above is a diptych, taken from both ends of the wall.