Whiskey and wet pine cones.

Late last night I took a new bottle of whiskey outside and sat under the pine tree with the low branches in the back garden. Rain came on, fine rain, and the moon shone blue from between the clouds. The world smelled good under the tree, with the wetted earth and grass and decaying leaves and the scent of pine sap leaking out of the branches that I bruised when I brushed up against them. 

There were definitely creatures of some sort fussing about in the bushes behind me. I could hear them but I knew they couldn't be snakes so I let them be. Nothing around me brought up memories of long ago but they came up anyway, unbidden.

Memories of sitting alone and beautifully lost in the rain in a forest in Yugoslavia with night coming on; memories of being the sole occupant of a Youth Hostel in Scotland with no curtains on any of the windows and being constantly soaked through; memories of singing ‘Ti amo’ somewhere in Italy in the rain along with the happy crowd in the piazza in some or other town.

Who would have thought there would be so much going on under a lonesome pine on the edge of the city of Belfast on a wet night with mist and whiskey?