Think of these posts as postcards. Missives scribbled in rare moments of rest and reflection not just from a sunny balcony in Lanzarote, but also from the shaggy and toothsome interior of my mind, where one might encounter ancient defensive structures and little sea birds and black-sailed boats on solitary enigmatic journeys. There are other landscapes, the further inward you roam. Of childhood and youth, of other travels, of the imagination.

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Between 1730 and 1736 a series of volcanic eruptions sculpted new volcanoes on the island. Too in the mind certain volatile yet fertile spaces born from great quakes and flows of hellfire.

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Spotted in Lanzarote:
* grey heron, Marina
* ruddy turnstone, Marina
* African collared dove, everywhere
* trumpeter finch, cliff walk
* clouded-yellow butterfly, cliff walk
* Spanish or willow sparrows, begging for food from its parent, cafe
* various cat shelters furnished with bowls of water and trays of food, along the shore
* cacti like bear paws, tipped with fruit and engraved with the names of lovers and youths

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I think of Mags, who is in the process of selling her house in Kerry and moving here. Always smiling in her usual spot in the same bar, listening to the same band every night, repeatedly meeting strangers who are your best buddies until they inevitably leave. Imagine wanting to do that for the rest of your life. A perpetual tourist, attuned only to physical needs, the picturesque qualities of landscape, and the vagaries of weather; the centre of a society oriented around leisure, yet always an outsider, disconnected from local traditions and history. Nice for some, but obviously not for me. How unreal life would always seem.

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