An edit that didn't make the final copy of In The Wicker Wood. Went off subject I suppose.

Bob Tyrell and Frank Gowan visited the Bog of Allen to the north of Port Stephens and went for a spin on the narrow gauge railway through what the guide called “A Millennium of History. They saw where the turf was first cut by men, later machines, and later still not cut, but milled for briquettes and peat for the gardens, They learned there were seven floors of turf in the Dale Tree bog and ten in the better drained Kildare bog. They stopped to visit the Bog Oak Sculpture studio and saw how local craftsmen could bring out the hidden contours of wood that were thousands of years old and sometimes reveal faces and forms that had been hidden in the wood before their observation and skill could bring them to life and into view. They went through The Island and Tyrell marvelled once again how so small a place, this island in the bog, could produce footballers, sometimes three at a time, for the County Team. On the homeward leg, to the south of the bog they passed Rathmore, the Fairy Fort, and he remembered another team the one that beat them in the semi-final the year after they won the championship against Galway. God he marvelled three Island men and three Rathmore men on that team, tough boyos clean and fair but tough. In the back of his mind another thought, uncompleted yet there, another Rathmore man, who do I know that is another Rathmore man? A sub on one of the teams, or someone he met at another time. Never mind these things usually surfaced when least expected. But yet it bothered him. Who was the other man from the Fairy Fort?

Finally the ravening hunger aroused by the bog air satisfied by a fine “All Day Breakfast” in “Journeys End”, a converted locomotive storage depot. They stopped again to enjoy the afternoon sun, in the Peoples Park in Port Stephens, beside the river where Frank took the sun and Bob smelled the wind blowing off the river and thought once again of strong trout and tight lines. “Soon” he prayed. “Soon, please Lord, next week”.

“First sign of madness Bob, talking to yourself.” He turned squinting against the bright spring sun now lower in the sky as the approaching figure said “It’s Jack Collins. Haven’t seen you in a long time. Eight years I think. What are you doing down here in the bogs?”

As they shook hands and Frank and Maeve were introduced Bob remembered Jack was the Rathmore man. He smiled and in his mind this time to himself he said, “It’s amazing how you think of someone and then they turn up.” Out-loud he said, “Jack how’s that second sight of yours, this weather? Have you time to hear a story? I just need to rearrange a meeting,” he turned aside, walked towards the river and said into his mobile phone, “Mister Prunty? Junior? Can you tell Mister Prunty Senior that I’ll have that list collected tomorrow. Something’s come up in the case. Thanks.”

Cross of Christ, he thought as he turned back, what a bloody coincidence, Jack Collins, even if his sixth sense can’t pick up something now, it would be great if I could persuade him to have a look at the case. This might be just the break we need.

Over the next hour as the evening set in, and the flies hovered above the water and a few small trout “slapped” at the surface noisily, he brought Jack and Maeve up to date on all aspects of the case they had been reading about under the headlines, “Curate Captured! No Clues” and “No Confessions Forthcoming.” Worse of all “Charlie’s Chaplain Missing”, from a hack who knew that Jim Gaffney had once been a priest in the parish where the retired Taoiseach had his farm and stables.

In the silence that followed when Jack and Maeve considered what Bob had just told them and the crows flew home and the air grew colder and they admired the spreading redness in the sky. Maeve said “I just can’t get this bloody tune out of my mind. It’s driving me mad. Do any one of you know it? Is it a sixty's thing?

Descending dreamlike picture painting, figure floating sunset settles silently

As night-time visits the wicker wood again.

As each shook their heads and Jack said “It’s more like poetry or verse than song,” Maeve said “It may be but… it’s doing my head in.”