Howe in the world? – Tales From The Boneyard

Malin Head…What happened here? …Almost everything. Some years ago, we headed up to the northern most point of the Isle of Ire, but still south of the invisible border between Europe and the UK, except back then it was both.

When we got there, the tumultuous sea was in apparently endless bicker with the debating wind. Mere humans, such as we, wedged our beings between the shouting match to slip on down to the precarious edges below just beside the possible salty death depending on the random rogue wave that hungered for a flesh sacrifice.

It was an awesome feeling. Not the kind of ‘awesome’ over-used by millennials and generation Xers in convenient lazy expressions of wonder in minuscule ponder, but in an actual awesomeness, as in full of awe.. . But not awful at all.

The energy between the element fiercely churn around the corner of Earth, raging against that splinter of land mass irritation shoved under the fingernail of a massive slam dance between sky and sea.

So. I took an iPhone photo, as if it were something worth noting placed that was before me on a plate that felt worthy enough to assign reportage back from the field here to any hungry eyed peeker in for a seconds worth of entertainment swipe.

But nope.

The plastic Apple failed. It would not take the photo. That made sense somehow. Why should this much power be something readily captured by a screen peck? When Mark ‘getting out of writing yet another week of his column here’ McCausland attempted to, instead, luckily capture the moment with his own iPhone, it died too.

Huh. Ok. That was something real and hard to otherwise imagine. Malin Head ate our phones.

So, we soaked up the pelted spray upon us and walked bounded upon the rocks like it was indeed a planet. And when we felt saturated enough, hiked back up to the car, at which point Mark’s phone began working again.

Huh. That’s awfully strange, with a splash of perplexing.

And that was that. Off we went. Never to return. Until last week. This time, we hiked up around the upper parts and kept waiting for the phones to konk. But they kept working. Snapping away a ton of photos we’ll never look at again just to tempt the fates of phone failure. But nope.

They worked. We weren’t down just beside the water this time, but still.

The wind and the sea were still arguing none the less. Or making love. I couldn’t tell.

Off we went. Back into the car and headed outa there. Until Mark stopped at the crossroads, and stayed stopped a curiously exaggerated amount of time. Then abruptly turned left towards the sea instead of right on outa there.

The tiny road ended just beside what’s known as the ‘wee house of Malin Head’.

…A crumbling fixer-upper for the mason inclined amongst us. But no. It’s been left as a monument. A plaque placed before it.

It explained how a hermit used to live in the convenient cave right there next to the wee crumbled stone house that also housed a wee spring. It also said that legend had it that no matter how many people crammed into that cave for much-needed shelter, there was always room for one more regardless however many was in there.

And the plaque marker finished up by stating that the place still attracts pilgrims annually on August 15. At that point, Mark and I looked at each other in our now usual perplexed pause and then glanced at the iPhone to see that today was August 15.

So, we hung around awhile like pilgrims and took a slew of pictures.

Later, on the ride back to Omagh, when checking my phone, none of the photos or vids of the wee house and cave were there! Just the slew of shots before and after our visit there were on the phone.

iPhone has glitch issues with Malin Head no update can correct.

A few days later, those photos and vids showed up on the phone. What does that mean? The iCloud was caught up in the tangible tango tween torrents of seascape and gust?

Maybe.

That’s all I can tell ya this week.

And it still doesn’t hold water.

I’m probably back at MaCann’s now, anyway, in pint and ponder. #22 on the charts for pubs to ponder and pint in.

Until the next awesome article next week

…Slante.

-Howe in the world