Hee! Though admittedly, it was the only place I could think to put John so that he would have an accent that wouldn't hurt my head. Rodney's definitely from Dublin yes - all that rapid, quick-fire talking, hands moving everywhere - so John kind of needed to be a culchie. *g* The idea of John with a Cork or Kerry accent made me wet myself laughing, I'm not overly fond of the Northern accent, and my own isn't drawly enough (I'm a Laoiswoman; rural enough, but a bit too clipped in ways). So the City of the Tribes it was!
(And you just know that John's father had some tiny little farm somewhere up in the back of beyond, all stone and a thin scatter of soil. Even if the land had been better, it would have been too small to turn much of a profit; Bill Sheppard farmed there til the day he died, but the only things he made his living from were small EU subsidies and smaller government grants.
John knows he should have sold it on when his father passed away. He's lived abroad for years, in Dublin for several; and there are plenty of people who want to build holiday homes in the area now, people who would pay him obscene amounts of money for a ramshackle old cottage and a couple of acres of lands because they think the harshness of the land, the vastness of the sky, is picturesque and pretty.
He doesn't, though. He tells himself it's because of laziness and an opposition to yet more ugly new-build concrete bungalows on a land that's meant for stone and sky and open air; he tells himself that because he doesn't want to admit that it might be because of sentiment.
He doesn't want to admit it to himself, but he brings Rodney there anyway. The drive back is longer than John remembered it, the traffic even worse. Rodney sleeps through most of it, four and a half hours of bad roads and worse drivers, only waking up once they leave Galway City behind them, muttering something about leaving the last vestiges of civilisation behind them. John just grins to himself, enjoying the expression on Rodney's face as the roads they take get narrower and rockier, become lanes, become bohreens, as the landscape gets wider and the sheep get more abundant. "Christ," Rodney says, "I woke up and found myself in Peig, didn't I?"
Rodney's less than impressed with the cottage itself; John admits it could use some work, but at least there's indoor plumbing now, and electricity, and a tv that picks up all four channels (There's only four?), but no, Rodney, there's no broadband, there's no phoneline.
John's rarely seen Rodney speechless, but being mostly cut off from the outside world apparently manages that; it's kind of nice, and he takes advantage of it. He wrestles Rodney into his coat, coaxes him outside, striding off across the fields that John loved as a child and hated as a teenager. The air is clear, wind so cold that it stretches John's smile tight across his face, burns and fills his lungs. The Atlantic is a blue-grey slash in the distance, the ground rocky underneath their feet; and when Rodney catches his foot and stumbles, he grabs John's hand to steady himself, and John doesn't let go.)
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(And you just know that John's father had some tiny little farm somewhere up in the back of beyond, all stone and a thin scatter of soil. Even if the land had been better, it would have been too small to turn much of a profit; Bill Sheppard farmed there til the day he died, but the only things he made his living from were small EU subsidies and smaller government grants.
John knows he should have sold it on when his father passed away. He's lived abroad for years, in Dublin for several; and there are plenty of people who want to build holiday homes in the area now, people who would pay him obscene amounts of money for a ramshackle old cottage and a couple of acres of lands because they think the harshness of the land, the vastness of the sky, is picturesque and pretty.
He doesn't, though. He tells himself it's because of laziness and an opposition to yet more ugly new-build concrete bungalows on a land that's meant for stone and sky and open air; he tells himself that because he doesn't want to admit that it might be because of sentiment.
He doesn't want to admit it to himself, but he brings Rodney there anyway. The drive back is longer than John remembered it, the traffic even worse. Rodney sleeps through most of it, four and a half hours of bad roads and worse drivers, only waking up once they leave Galway City behind them, muttering something about leaving the last vestiges of civilisation behind them. John just grins to himself, enjoying the expression on Rodney's face as the roads they take get narrower and rockier, become lanes, become bohreens, as the landscape gets wider and the sheep get more abundant. "Christ," Rodney says, "I woke up and found myself in Peig, didn't I?"
Rodney's less than impressed with the cottage itself; John admits it could use some work, but at least there's indoor plumbing now, and electricity, and a tv that picks up all four channels (There's only four?), but no, Rodney, there's no broadband, there's no phoneline.
John's rarely seen Rodney speechless, but being mostly cut off from the outside world apparently manages that; it's kind of nice, and he takes advantage of it. He wrestles Rodney into his coat, coaxes him outside, striding off across the fields that John loved as a child and hated as a teenager. The air is clear, wind so cold that it stretches John's smile tight across his face, burns and fills his lungs. The Atlantic is a blue-grey slash in the distance, the ground rocky underneath their feet; and when Rodney catches his foot and stumbles, he grabs John's hand to steady himself, and John doesn't let go.)
Or something. :)