Gracious in defeat

I’m awake at 5 am, a few days after flying home from Seattle. I can’t sleep. The jet lag since I left Ireland on the 22nd November has been intense. I had to drink coffee in America. I required it.

I thought I walked miles over there. But my app says I was rather sedentary. We were chauffeured to Snoqualmie falls and small harbour towns. Places named, literally, Friday Harbour. Big family cars brought us to the Twin Peaks café and an automatic I drove for a little stretch sped past a shooting location for An Officer and a Gentleman. I was a golden retriever in the passenger seat, revelling at the tall black trees which defined the horizon and trying to name the shades of green and blue I saw lapping at beaches and smashing against coastlines. I bought expensive hand dyed yarn with some of the teal strains in a shop next to a bar which served mussels the size of Guinness Book of Records gallstones. I exaggerate, but I didn't know mussels could be that big. Soft sliothars. Moustaches like brown juicy caterpillars. We ordered chips with them, but in Washington State you don’t need the spud compensation.