Cockles and Mussels Alive-Alive-oh!

Cockles and Mussells alive, alive-oh!

The O´Driscolls live in an old whitewashed thatched cottage at the head of Oysterhaven creek. The little house is tucked away between the water and the road, almost hidden from view by a thick sprawling hedge. The O´Driscoll brothers live a simple life. Frankie the second eldest makes model boats. His weather beaten face and rolling gait testify to years spent in the Merchant Navy. He inherited the skills from his father, who once worked in a shipyard. The brightly painted little miniature boats are different shapes and sizes and look pretty, bobbing at anchor in the creek.. From time to time Frankie sells one to a passing motorist. Ma Murphy at the “Leaping Salmon” village pub is pleased whenever that happens. Sometimes, after a good sale, Frankie will buy drinks for the house. A very popular family, the Corcorans, on these occasions. Billy works on the roads with the County Council. He’s the steady one, the only one with a `proper’ job – and the others depend on him. He has a slight hump on his back, due more to bad posture than any physical defect. He sets out for work every morning on his push bike and sometimes shops on the way home.

Paddy is the wise old owl of the family and the others look to him for advice. The youngest brother Willie, is barely seventeen. He’s not simple exactly; more innocent in a childlike way and always likely to be so. His arrival, coming ten years after the third born, caused a sensation at the time of his birth. He was regarded as a “special child”. His mothers’ last request to the other three was to look after Willie.

Paddy and Willie pick periwinkles and sell them to Monsieur Deschamps, the large moustachioed Breton Fish Buyer who drives by once a week in his pick-up truck. He doesn’t speak English and they don’t speak French, but they manage just the same. They let their hands do the talking.

I heard Paddy had an old rowboat for sale and found him in Ma Murphy’s one evening. She was an old clinker built “Regatta” boat which had seen better days but was ideal for my purposes. She was a bargain at five pounds and was powered by an old two and a half h.p. outboard engine. We did the deal there and then. Paddy offered to replace the few rotten timbers and give her a fresh coat of light blue paint with a bright red stripe around the topsides for an extra couple of pounds. He took me to see her a few days later. She looked very smart. I decided to call her “Irish Rover”.
We launched her in the creek just below the O’Driscoll’s cottage. She was to give me many happy days of boating and fishing in the beautiful setting of our remote little Paradise, hidden away at the top of Oysterhaven Creek.

Boating on the creek and the estuary beyond is a unique experience. The scenery on all sides is quite dramatic and varies under different lighting conditions. The weather in the estuary can be quite changeable. Fortunately there are several small offshore islands and there is always somewhere to run to for shelter in the event of a sudden down turn in the weather.
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One morning I went out trolling for mackerel and filled two buckets in half an hour with the gleaming silver fish. The morning sun suddenly disappeared and a grey mist descended on the estuary without warning. Squally winds created a choppy swell and white horses appeared on the surface of the incoming tide. I received quite a wetting from the steady drizzle. Paddy, unsure of my boating skills, awaited my return that first day. His slight, stooped frame belied his considerable strength which became obvious when he helped me draw the boat up on the little beach.

“Come back up the cottage” he said. “but don’t break down the rod. We’ll store it under the eaves”. There it remained in permanent storage until required for the next outing. An open turf fire that blazed in one corner of the cottage parlour greeted us and within a short time I was as dry as toast.

“Now sir” said old Paddy, “would you prefer a glass of Parliament, or a drop of the Old Man?” Parliament was their way of describing regular Whiskey. I had never tasted “The Old Man” a code name for Poteen. It was excellent, very strong but smooth on the palate with a fiery, smoky after-taste which conjured up images of fragrant peat fires. The distiller was a distant cousin, “but not too distant” smiled Paddy.

The manufacture and distribution of Poteen is usually a family affair and a closely guarded secret. The illegal liquor is distilled from potatoes on one of the many off shore islands. The period leading up to Christmas is a busy time for Poteen makers. The good stuff usually sells for about half of the price of regular whiskey. From time to time the Gardai receive a tip off and a police launch arrives from the town and searches for one of these secret stills. The illegal spirit is then supposedly done away with, but it is an open secret in our area that the best Poteen to be had is from a friendly Garda at the local Guards Barracks!

“It’s also great to rub on your chest, when you’re got a cold” my host informed me, “and it makes a first rate hot toddy”. And so it proved to be. I learned that day that the best way to judge a good quality Poteen is to place a small amount on a teaspoon and set it alight. If the flame has a tinge of blue it is of good quality. However if the flame is only yellow then it is best left alone.

Willie had just baked a large loaf of brown soda bread on the bastible over the open fire and produced a large plateful smothered with creamy homemade butter. We all became great friends in the months that followed and old Paddy turned out to be an authority on all things to do with fishing. He thought me to tie salmon flies and which ones to use in certain conditions.

Winkle picking is best carried out at low water during the Spring Tides. I watch the O’Driscoll brothers sometimes from the house, two dark silhouettes at the waters edge. The work is tedious, as they burrow through masses of kale and carrageen in search of the little blue black shellfish so prized by diners in expensive restaurants on the Champs Elysees. The O´Driscolls – other than Frankie - have never been abroad. The others have never even been outside their native county. Monsieur Deschamps, with his black beret, twirly moustache and knitted Guernsey sweater smelling strongly of Gaulloise tobacco and stale fish is the closest they’ll ever get to France……….

You’ll know they’re out there on the tide when you spot the two old bicycles lying in under the roadside hedge. It’s hard work, picking Winkles. Sometimes they’ll stand in freezing water for hours on end in all sorts of weather, bent over double and slowly filling plastic bags from the local Supermarket, specially saved for the occasion. One day I called across to them - “If you ever come across any Cockles or Mussels, I’ll gladly take them off you”.
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“I brought you them Cockles and Mussels” announced young Willie, standing shyly at the kitchen door. Rainwater dripped from his oilskins forming puddles on the slate floor. He was soaked to the skin. “Come in and dry out”, I said.

There must have been at least a stone of Cockles and Mussels in the sack. The blue black mussel shells contrasted strongly with the lighter coloured cockles. Willie had wrapped them in large bunches of glistening brown seaweed, to keep them fresh. There were some clams as well and periwinkles for good measure. He wouldn’t take any money and seemed a bit embarrassed as he peered at me from under the mass of curly black hair. “They’re a present” he said. “You were good to old Paddy once, that time he was in hospital.”.

We hung his oil-skins out to dry. He seemed glad of the mug of tea and leaned over the Aga, soaking up the warmth. Curious eyes peeped out from under the tangled hair as I scrubbed the shellfish briskly at the large porcelain sink.

“I’m going to make Paella” I explained, “a speciality from the South of Spain. It’s a bit like a Spanish version of an Irish stew. You combine shellfish with bits of fresh and smoked fish, chicken, and rabbit- when you can get it. Then you cook them all together, slowly in a deep flat-bottomed pan with saffron, rice, peppers, onions and garlic and any other odds and ends you feel like chucking in. It’s really very tasty”.

Willie laughed at the notion of cooking meat and fish together. “I can get you rabbits” he said. “They’re all over our place and do a lot of damage to the cabbages. Paddy gets mad and he traps ‘em. We usually chuck `em in the tide ‘cause nobody at home eats rabbit”.

He was as good as his word. Regular supplies of cockles, mussels, clams and rabbit started to arrive with the occasional head of cabbage thrown in. We got around the problem of payment one day when I produced a six pack of draught Guinness stout. I buy them from Ma Murphy at the “Leaping Salmon” – so nobody loses out. Moules Mariniere, Clam Chowder, Colcannon and Rabbit Casserole as well as Paella soon became regular dinner fare on our household menu.

There was a problem though. Deliveries got a bit too plentiful. The garden shed was beginning to pile up with strung up rabbit carcasses and piles of cabbages. The freezer was chock- a – block full of frozen shellfish. The six packs of stout were obviously going down well in the O’Driscoll cottage. I didn’t want to hurt my friends feelings or dampen their enthusiasm but my wife’s patience was wearing thin. We were running out of storage space and anxious that Ma Murphy at the pub might begin to wonder why the O’Driscolls weren’t coming in so often. Her off-sales of canned stout must have reached record heights. It was only a matter of time before she put two and two together,

Eventually matters came to a head. The phone rang out early that day. I could tell from the exasperated tone in my wife’s voice that trouble was brewing. “This has got to stop” she wailed. “Willie wants to talk to you. Apparently Paddy is thinking of buying himself a second hand shotgun. They want to know if you’d be interested in taking pigeons! He also mentioned hares, pheasant and snipe………”.

But that´s a story for another day........

The End