It’s a blazing hot day and I have to keep hauling Jessie inside to cool her down as her breathing is becoming increasingly rapid. She’s plonked herself now on the cool tiles of the hall blocking my exit. I won’t disturb her as if I do she’ll only demand to go out again and bake once more in the hot sun.

I’ll be out for the greater part of the day. Dark clouds are gathering and finding he hasn’t moved, I manoeuvre the ironing board (I’m getting good at this – would probably pass my aircraft carrier driving test in the morning should I so wish) into the small shed at the far gable, the rear part in shelter, the tapered section sticking out through the open door.

I’m coming back from the vet with Jessie when the phone rings. I pull in. It’s Liz from bat rescue. What a relief. She lists out all I must do for the bat’s well-being and hearing that I have in fact already carried out all her directives without success, she says the words that of all the words on the entire planet I want to hear the most right now :Well can you get him into Galway to us?

Pressed for time now for a physiotherapist appointment in the city I’m on the road again, a particularly narrow, beautiful uninterrupted hedgerowed stretch. I realize too late, because of the car in front, that I have just passed over a little robin standing in the left centre tarmac. I continue for a mile before I come to the only safe turning point and turn round, fearful to see a tractor and a van and trailer coming towards me.

But miraculously, he’s still there, feet glued to the road, eyes terrified. There’s a gateway nearby and I park, run to the little thing and it takes a minute for him to release his frozen grip on the tarmac. Placed safely on the grass inside the wall, he remains still and I drive away but a mile over the road I turn round again – not a good day for my carbon footprint – conscious that someone had thrown two bags of rubbish near where I positioned him, a draw for prowling creatures against which he wouldn’t stand a chance. He hasn’t moved but is eyeing me more warily now and just as I reach out he flies up onto the very branch I’d picked out for him.

He’s still sleeping in the warm shed. Liz suggested I pick him up with a tissue, but too many vampire movies seen in my youth scotch that action. I try to transfer him onto a small towel, but frail and all as he is, his little hands cling for dear life to the pyjamas. Nothing for it then but to glide the whole bundle into a mesh cheese box I’ve sorted for transport and when I’m finally done, and hatch secured, I worry that he’s so high up in the box – like the Princess and the Pea – he’ll bump his head off the ceiling if he moves.

Martin greets us at the door with a great welcome, takes note of what happened and tells me to wait for my cheese box and my bundle while he goes and settles him in his new abode. He returns some time later with the box but tells me the little creature won’t let go of his ‘blanket’ so he won’t upset him by insisting he hand it over.

Some days turn out just perfect don’t they?

A busier morning than expected and it’s late afternoon when I plug in the iron for the last lap. Reaching out to sort the remaining items, I freeze. A small brown shape, head bowed, is huddling under my crumpled pyjamas. A mouse would never remain so still, and moving closer I see it’s a bat – a teeny one at that. There’s soft down on its little head and one gothic matchstick arm is stretched out from its covered body. I daren’t touch it to see if it’s still breathing, for much as I like the little creatures, I wouldn’t be great at checking for a pulse or a heart beat.

Pondering on what on earth I should do, he moves out from beneath the covers and crawls along the surface of the loose, floor length, felt blanket I use as an ironing board cover. The what if he suddenly flies and gets tangled in my hair scenario, grips me and I stand well back, transfixed by the movements of this tiny creature, my hand on the door for a quick get-a-way. He moves with a slow, strange triangular gait, exploring the blanket cover, then over the side he goes crawling down to almost floor level, then back up again and back to his little den beneath the pyjamas. An hour has passed since I entered the room. I move closer again. People often talk of the wonder of the little pink nails of a new born baby – well let me say it’s nothing in comparison to the wonder of the tiny little fingers, nails and knuckles of a baby bat. An amazing sight to behold. A true work of creation. But I must act. Vivian is contacted – my phone a friend – when I get into a fix like this. She’s brilliant, knowledgeable and swift and she’s already on the web calling out reams of dos and don’ts and a warning for me to wear a pair of leather gloves before any manoeuvres are carried out: not the wisest thing to say to a rather nervous bat rescuer. So lights are put off, all the windows opened wide, the aircraft carrier docked alongside the biggest window and I wait in the darkness and wait, and wait and wait.

Not a stir. No even the smallest twitch of the ears as a gently breeze enters the room. No interest. He’s tucked up for the night and he’s going nowhere. As it’s the first dry night in a fortnight I decide it best to move him outside lest an anxious parent is frantically searching around the building for her missing offspring.

The move outside is painstakingly slow, my doors not made for such a large apparatus, but eventually we’re in the driveway and as I ease my grip on the board, the felt cover slithers to the ground and a small squeal of panic calls out from below. Returning everything to the board, and checking that he’s still in there the poor little mite, I move away in the hope that perhaps something will ride out from the darkness like John Wayne and swoop him up to safety. And there is some dark swooping in the trees and I move back indoors.

Much later Vivien instructs that I get a ladder, take the bat, and climb up onto the highest surface I have, and poise the bat there in a flight position and let him off. I look at the tiny sleeping head that hasn’t moved in an hour, the outline of the huge pines hardly distinguishable it has got so dark, and my rusty, two steps missing, ladder, and common sense prevails. Sheila rings again. She’s left a message for the bat rescue people. She figures he possibly fell through a pipe from the attic into the hotpress and to put him back there. I don’t , but haul the board instead around to the back of the house and place it outside the hotpress window lest there’s some bat passageway close by that I haven’t spotted. He’s still snug in his bed and praying that the rain holds off, I get extra jumpers to tuck round him and put a large rock in the centre of the board to stop the blanket from slipping to the ground again. And I depart and leave him to the mercy of the night.

It must be two years since I pulled out the ironing board. A huge wide, pink metal affair – the aircraft carrier of ironing boards – that Aunt Tess brought over from Boston in the 50s.

Once manoeuvred into the living room, dusted off and set up, I gathered this great bungle of crumpled clothes that had never felt the heat of an iron and a very pleasant hour was spent flattening and smoothing and watching all those creases and crinkles slowly disappear. The dogs were sleeping, the sun coming through the windows onto me and my ancient ironing board. Very therapeutic. Very peaceful. Very satisfying. As two folded, creaseless piles of order rose to the ceiling, I switched off, brought the warmed clothing to the hotpress and left a small bundle on the ironing board to be dealt with next day.

The area is shrouded in fog this morning. It’s like the middle of Autumn and hard to believe it’s only July. It’s so heavy that I can’t even make out the shapes of the cows lying over in the field, though I know they are there.

There are some strange red berries in the hedgerow on Abbey Hill and they too remind me of Autumn. A red haze from the poppies outside my window is breaking through the mist and it looks spectacular.

I’m late and it’s dark leaving the city though the roads are quiet, the night clear. Driving through Oranmore village I see a small bundle taking off across the road. Warning lights on I slow to a halt, the impatient driver behind blasting me with his horn passing me out just as the hedgehog is moving out from the protection of my car. (Maybe his wife was about to give birth – though the hospital was in the other direction) The oncoming car sees the hedgehog too, and puts on his warning signals and comes to a stop. There’s another car behind me now so just in case his wife is also about to give birth, I grab my old jacket, tear over to the hedgehog, cover and lift him, his quills digging into my palms and run to the garden where he seems to be heading. There’s a wide tarmacked driveway but a lovely green area with trees to the left of the house and I’m wondering what to do when a figure standing inside the tall unlit window opens it and asks what I’m doing in his garden. ‘Ah he’s probably looking for his pal who was there earlier in the day’ he says, and tells me to pop him in the garden round the back where there’s plenty of cover. Thank God for nice people. And there were no screaming motorists when I hopped back into the car and drove away.

I’m up early. I’m taking Hazel to the bus. I told her I’d take her to Shannon but no, she insists, she’ll take the bus. She won’t put me to the trouble. ‘Are you sure it’s leaving at 8.15?’ I query, so just to make sure, she rings a friend – a seasoned bus taker – and yes, the bus is leaving at 8.15.

So we give ourselves a good 30 minutes to drive over and arrive with 10 minutes to spare.

Hazel is ages over at the bus stop studying times. Fan and I are watching her from the warmth of the car. I’m imagining the timetable – the old crumpled page, fallen sidewise, the information fuzzy and faded, laced by dead flies and brown leaves all trapped in the fogged up, stained, plastic.

I walk across the Square. ‘It says it left at 7.45’ she says. I look at the timetable. It’s in pristine condition. A work of art, beautifully and clearly laid out, sullied only by the scrawl of ‘Anne loves Jim ’ across the glistening plastic, in big black marker.

Every bus from dawn to dusk that day is leaving at a quart to, not a quarter past but
Hazel insists that the time table is wrong and that the bus will come so we hang around for another 20 minutes, my small ancestral dragon starting to stir in my head. Calls are attempted, but she can’t get through to the depot. A bus does pull up, but he’s not going as far as Shannon. ‘Get in the car now!’ I hiss.

Fan is delighted to see us both returning to the car, and now pressed for time, we swing out into the building traffic, the heavy rain.

I hate the Shannon run these times. The lush green fields, the trees and hedgerows have been butchered by the bulldozer over the last few years and today along the route, several huge, sky- reaching mounds of rich, displaced soil, bear witness to man’s disregard for our blessed, green giving earth.

Great swathes of concrete and concrete barriers and overpasses and tunnels are everywhere and Hazel interrupts my brooding, telling me to watch out for her phantom Shannon bus and if I see it in my mirror, to pull over and she’ll hop out and flag it down. ‘Forget the bus,it’s not coming’, my dragon wide awake now, stoking the glimmering embers. ‘I know you’re cross with me and you’ve every right to be’, she says, my silence telling her I don’t need her permission for that.

And it’s a rotten morning, heavy mist and rain and the cars are whizzing by on the wet motorway which always makes me nervous but we are on time, and once I see the cut off sign for the airport, it loosens both the tension and my tongue.

Hazel is chatting away and wonders if she ever told me about a protest march she was at in Shannon a few years before. ‘Which one was that?’ says I, as I approach the first of three small roundabouts just outside the airport, visibility now very poor. Going into the second one, my eye catches a soggy bundle of white, shoved under the steel barrier rimming the road, and just as I’m passing, this small head lifts up and catches my eye.

‘Oh my God’, I gasp, ‘there’s a kitten at the barrier’, my heart going into overdrive. ‘Well you can’t stop here, it’s too dangerous’ Hazel says and of course she’s right. So I continue down the road, grappling with my pounding heart and as I’m trying to calm myself down, Hazel is telling me that Fan has a problem with strange cats, that she could chase them, eat them even it the mood so took her and I know what she’s saying and she’s right, the last thing I need right now is yet another stray animal problem. ‘Tell me again about the protest you were talking about’ I interrupt and thus distracted, a mile or so later we arrive at the drop off point.

Usually when I leave people at the airport, I become very maternal. Do you have your ticket? your camera? your passport? I check and double check that all bags are tagged and accounted for. I offer Hazel no such courtesy today. Instead I practically shove her out of the car, pitch her bags out after her and tear back to the roundabout.

And yes, he’s still there and again the little head comes up just as I’m passing, and the cars are relentless so I drive back again towards the airport and park a safe distance away at the side of the road. I really don’t need this. This is not what I want to be doing today. Why hasn’t someone else spotted and rescued him.

I had brought Jessie to the vets the week before and happily I had left her box, her blanket and a small towel in the car. Warning lights on, I walk back up the road. There’s a
very narrow path circling the roundabout and I come up behind the kitten, terrified if he spots me that he’ll dash out into the traffic. I drape the towel to block off his vision and in a kung-fu twist it’s wrapped round his neck, preventing movement, only his head visible now.

I’m on my hands and knees at this stage – soaking wet as the rain spills – and I very gently ease him out from under the barrier and swaddle him entirely in Jessie’s towel. He’s skeletal and shivering and we stand there waiting for a gap to get us back to the other side of the road. I can feel the heat of my hands transfer into his body and his little legs begin to move – all of them – so just maybe I’m hoping he isn’t that badly injured after all.

Much as I want to bring him into the warmth of the car, Fan is alert and curious as I approach, so mindful of Hazel’s words, I tuck him into the Jessie’s box in the boot and then we all off into traffic again.

Half way home I hear him call so I pull over, and opening the back seat, I find him up on the top of the box. He’s all dry and fluffy, a friendly, talkative individual, ice blue eyes and snow white coat. Utterly beautiful. I can’t bring him home. Not again.

There’s blood on the towel, so I head for the vet’s and I’m hugely relieved they’ll keep him in for observation for a few hours.

When I return at 6, the kitten is in reception sitting on the vet’s lap, Tara’s King surrounded by admirers. I ask Louise if she’ll keep him in overnight and that isn’t a problem at all. We chat for a bit and as I’m leaving, Yvonne the secretary is putting him in a carrier cage. She hopes I don’t mind but she’s taking him home with her, as she doesn’t ’want him to be there on his own for the night. As she’s tucking a woolly blanket in beside him, I look at Louise, an unspoken hope written all over my face. Louise reads it, winks and smiles. Tells me not to worry, to call in later in the week.

Hazel texts : asks if I’m enjoying my coffee in the Avoca Shop in Bunratty. I tell her I’m at the vets. I KNEW YOU’D GO BACK – I KNEW YOU WOULD – the text jumps out, but all the same I know she’s really pleased that I did.

Hanna is very taken with Rio and Jessie. She loves animals as do all her family. She’s explains that in Poland many families live in flats, up several flights and therefore pets must be kept to a minimum, large animals not an option. She herself has a rabbit and a guinea pig, her boyfriend a pet rat.

Hanna’s father has pet fish. He made the fish tank for them himself. He knows them all individually: Prince is the little chap who spends most of his time in the Castle in the tank and is shy and reluctant to come out.

Hanna’s mother, who already has a dog to look after, also minds a little stray in the area. She’s made a kennel for him close by their apartment, feeds and walks him and has alerted the authorities to the fact that he’s not a stray, and is being look after, although he may appear homeless.

Last December, Hanna and her sister, clubbed together to get their Dad a present. The present is opened on Christmas Day, and Hanna’s Dad is quite overcome. Hanna description of the scene is charming, her laughter infectious as she imitates her father’s joy and wonder: ‘A fish tank. You’ve got me a fish tank’, and he hugs both his daughters his gratitude while still holding on the his wonderful present. Throughout the day and the celebrations, the treasured gift is never relinquished though Hanna tells her Dad that ‘It’s all right, it’s ok, you can put it down now Dad’, only to hear yet again, the mantra: ‘A fish tank. I have a fish tank.You got me a fish tank’.

That night, guests dispersed, Hanna, off to bed, tells her father, still with the tank on his lap, to leave moving in the fish till next day. When she enters the room next morning, the old tank is gone, the new one assembled, air filter running, the fish shimmering in their bright new home and the Prince is back in his Castle.

Haven’t we lost a lot with our Celtic tiger all the same.