Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 18:43:20 -0500 From: Phanny Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: CONTEST: The Honey Trap This was sent five days ago and just arrived in my email earlier today. Phanny The Honey Trap 'What is it makes a man leave his hearth and his home acre and go with the old grey widow-maker?' The words of the Viking widow's lament of a thousand years ago came to my mind unbidden as I stood on the headland and gazed out to sea, the old grey widow-maker of that ancient poem, silently watching a modern glassfibre ketch as she left the safety of the harbour. She was a ship the like of which the old Viking warriors could never have dreamed. But for some things nothing changes. The power of the sea itself is undiminished and will demand respect forever. Like the men in the longships before them the men in the ketch would know that well enough. I breathed in deeply for the wind was straight off the Atlantic and the air, scented with the heather of the distant hills across the silver bay, was like champagne as I stood there alone on the close cropped headland. I smiled to myself as I remembered the laconic passage in the Admiralty sailing directions for these waters. 'Heavy overfalls. Small ships like destroyers may founder.' A warning to strike fear into the hardiest small boat sailor for whom a destroyer is a big ship indeed. But the ketch would be alright, she had all the technology of the twentieth century to help her. Devices that would astonish those old marauding sailors to whom the Viking poem was attributed. However, today was a 'cavu' day and the old grey widow-maker was asleep. Sparkling light from the high summer sun reflected off her dark wavelets, belying the awesome power that slept so uneasily there. A 'cavu' day? Few enough will know that word, I suppose. It's a pilot's acronym meaning 'ceiling and visibility unlimited'. As I affect to number myself among the gliding cognoscente for me it described the day perfectly and in a single word. The man in the sky high above the Bishops Palace that sat so solidly on the headland, though I thought, terrifyingly close to the edge of the cliff face, would know it well enough. He wheeled a mile above me on high aspect ratio wings of moulded glass as he rode the thermal beneath the cumulus that marked it. I could see his objective clearly. It was the lenticular cloud at the apex of the wave lift that was coming like ripples in the sky from the purple mountains of Donegal far across the bay. I hoped he would make it into the lift and I hoped too he would survive to describe the experience at the clubhouse later that night for that innocent looking cloud was, for the inexperienced, a smooth and silent killer. As I gazed out to sea I reflected thoughtfully that the ketch and the sailplane were alike in many ways. They were among the most beautiful things man has ever made, for in them form follows function without prejudice of beauty or line, and they used the forces of nature to achieve their ends instead of opposing nature with brute power. The only real difference being they sailed in different elements. Both machines were the product of today's technology. The cockpits of each would be filled with electronic instruments reaching out to explore their environment with sensors far more subtle than our own crude and finite senses. The ketch with her echo-sounders, her satellite position finders, her radar; the sailplane with her total energy variometers, her polar computers, her solid state piezo electric gyro compass etc.etc.. The list is endless these days. I suppose I'm unashamedly a child of the twentieth century. Just as the cockpits of the sailplane and the ketch would have every modern gadget so my own home is filled with electronic equipment. As I write this I can see my computer, my television, electronic pulse charging equipment, my hi-fi, my satellite receivers with their digital decoders - my -. I'll stop right there for this list too seems to go on forever and not a single item would be recognized by my grandmother if she could be dug up and brought back from the dead! Most people would have some of these things but few indeed would have them all or even want to! Even fewer would understand how they work as I do, for electronics has been a lifelong interest of mine. I couldn't live without these things for they extend my senses until I can literally reach across the world and pull any information I wish from the sky or the net. And yet, before that sparkling day that started so perfectly on a headland in Donegal was ended, I was to see a way of life I had thought gone forever. A way of life that pretended the twentieth century had never existed. I turned away from the sea as Nessa called to me that the car was loaded and we set off once more, heading south this time over the border into Eire. Our travel plans were as vague and ill-defined as usual. Nessa and I had just thrown our suitcases into the car and taken off for parts unknown to get away from kids, the cat, the dog, and last but not least, though I dare not say it to her face, her mother. We could be gone a week or return that very day; it depended on the weather and our mood of the moment. We have always been like this; we explain it by saying it's probably a touch of gipsy blood somewhere in our pasts. Anyway, without giving the matter much thought, we headed south to see the new waterway linking the Erne and Shannon. We stopped for lunch at one of the new inland harbours and Nessa began to set out the tea things while I relaxed for the moment. I had barely closed my eyes when chance tore to pieces the few plans we had made. A yell from Nessa brought me awake instantly just in time to see a teapot fly overhead! The teapot was followed by a huge cup and saucer which in turn was followed by a colourful can of lager. The hot air balloons were sinking rapidly, obviously looking for a place to land. Now, I must confess I'm an inveterate beggar of flights in anything that flies so the chance of getting a teapot in my log book was too good to resist. We bundled the tea things into the car and took off in hot pursuit with the front wheels spinning on the loose gravel and Nessa leaning out and struggling to close the doors as I floored the pedal. The balloons were travelling diagonally across the line of the main roads so that I was constantly making left and right turns down side roads to keep them in sight. Almost inevitably I made a mistake and and was forced to a stop at the edge of a lake where the road ended. The teapot and the cup made one last firing to rise above the trees surrounding the lake and were gone from sight in moments, leaving only stillness and the ticking of the cooling car engine in the leafy bee-loud glade where we found ourselves. And so we came by happy accident to Yeats Country and the place he immortalized in the classic poem 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'. Since we had missed lunch and having nothing better to do we left the car and wandered throught the masses of honey-suckle and white flowering rhododendrons towards the water's edge for our picnic. As we neared the edge of the lake I began to have the uncomfortable feeling we were being watched. I remarked this to Nessa and she confessed she had the same feeling. Then through the shrubbery I saw it; a picture perfect tiny white-washed cottage with a newly thatched roof. An old woman was leaning on the bottom half of an old style half-door and it was she who was watching us. She beckoned to us. I suppose I must have groaned for Nessa took my arm and firmly led me towards the cottage. She wanted to see inside it but I knew what would happen if we were invited in. Ordeal by tea! Perhaps I should explain that remark; in Ireland for some reason or another people feel the need to feed perfect strangers. It must be some almost forgotten folk reaction to the famine of a hundred years ago. The need to share with others what little one had. The old lady invited us in and Nessa clutched my arm and silently warned me not to object with a look that could have killed. I followed her meekly enough into the little cottage and we were soon seated beside the turf fire while Nessa and the old lady chatted two to the dozen, their mouths going like the clatter bone of a goose's backside. I was left to make conversation with the old gentleman who was smoking in the inglenook and looked desperately around the cottage to find something to talk about. 'It'll soon be dark,' I ventured. He nodded silently as he considered this then rose from his rocking chair with some difficulty. 'Rheumatism; I'll light the lamp.' Light the lamp? I mulled this over in amazement; they had no electricity, in 1997? I watched him lift the glass chimney off a beautiful Waterford crystal oil-lamp and touch the wick with a spill he took from a box at the side of the mantlepiece and lit from the fire. I glanced around the room and noticed for the first time there was no television. He saw me do this with amusement in his old eyes. 'You're looking for the television?' I nodded in embarrassment. The soft glow from the lamp gave the cottage a warm and comfortable feeling that the cold light from an electric bulb could never achieve. 'How is you've no electricity?' I asked as he sat down again. 'No electricity, no running water either, no telephone. 'But why?' I asked. He looked at me and drew on his pipe before he shrugged. 'Never wanted them.' His wife brought a tray of tea things from the scullery at the end of the room and set them down on an elaborately carved Indian rosewood table. 'My man brought this table back from India' she said as she saw me looking at it. One of the tea cups was cracked. 'Indian rosewood, beautiful' I muttered as she handed me the cracked cup. I just knew I would get that one! I watched to see what hand she used to drink with but she seemed to use either hand without preference. Uncomfortably aware she was watching me in return, I took a cautious drink from the cup and lifted a slice of soda bread from the plate she pressed on me - then I remembered the old man saying they had no running water! Nessa and the old lady were still chattering away like those wind-up teeth you get in a joke shop. I could only get snatches of the conversation as the old lady led her guest through the rooms of the little cottage, tea cups in hand. 'Sailor. Been all over---' 'This is Wedgewood--' 'She loves a good natter,' the old man remarked. I nodded glumly. 'So does mine.' 'Where do you get your water from?' I asked. 'The lake of course! Makes the best tea in Ireland,' he replied as he turned the turves over to make a better blaze in the fireplace. I almost choked as I looked at now now almost empty cup. It would be interesting to see Nessa's face when I told her. 'Would you like to see our book?' the old man asked suddenly. 'Book?' 'We keep a book and ask all our visitors to sign their names and addresses in it.' He handed me the guest book and I turned the pages with interest and growing astonishment. These people had no need for the internet or television. The poet Yeats and the tourist board brought the world to them. I read the addresses in the book in amazement. Canada, USA, Alberta, Boston, Australia - there were hundreds of them from all over the world! When we finally took our leave of the old folks it was dark. By then I finally understood; the beautiful little cottage was a honey trap and we had been caught in it as surely as a spider catches a fly in his web. As we drove off the old folks waved a final goodby and I turned to Nessa with a smile. 'Did you enjoy your tea?' 'Yes I did, That soda was delicious.' 'Do you know where they get their water from?' I asked innocently.