It was the morning after the night of Aidan's 80th birthday which had been well and truly celebrated in a private room off the  main bar of The Bank, which had once been a bank but was now a bar.  

All the guests who were over 70 remember it being a bank ('sure wasn't that where old man McNulty's office was?' etc etc) and so they reminisced while I went off to find a smoking spot.  

I wasn't disappointed.  I took a metal staircase up to a half floor and followed the sound of fiddles and bodhrans into a snug bar warmed by a small wood burner.  Although it was inside it was on a floor of its own and there was an ashtray on the dimly lit table so I took the time to listen to piped trad music in a small, candle lit room with old lobster nets hanging from the ceiling. I stubbed out my cigarette, put a small log on the fire and followed the staircase up to another floor to the sound of techno.  Up here was another bar, a mixing kit and terracotta pods which looked like they were straight from a fairground.  In each pod was a small round table around which was a curved wooden bench on which at least 6 people could sit.  No matter how loudly the techno blasted, the acoustics in the pod allowed you to have an audible conversation. 

So we'd spent the evening between private room, the Irish pub and finished it off in a pod.  The children bonded with their unknown half brothers over pints of Guinness, Nico's cold was cured by Bushmills and Aidan happily saw in his ninth decade.

This morning was slim, smoked bacon and eggs and then we set out along the lanes.  

I have to have lived what I can see and from here we can see for miles.  So we walked for miles, looking back from time to time to catch a glimpse of the house getting smaller and smaller until we lost it behind a hill.

To begin with our steps fell differently and there was a language glitch.  Gabby herded us like a collie and after a few miles we fell into step physically and linguistically and played the word games I'd played with the children on long walks when they were little.