Seamus Heaney, RIP

Back to Sicily after August in Ireland. Back to stuffed aubergines, sweet tomatoes and - torrential rain and mosquitoes galore. Also, Seamus Heaney, our Nobel Laureate, died on Friday, aged 74. On Saturday night we had a Swedish couple in Pachamama. I went to take their order, but instead of the order notebook, I pulled 'The Spirit Level' (my favourite Heaney volume) out of my little waiter bag (they are equally slim). I told the Swedes about Heaney winning the Nobel in 1995 and the man said he had seen it on the news on Friday in Stockholm. So I left them the book of poems to peruse until their food arrived. “You are neither here nor there,/ A hurry through which known and strange things pass/ As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.” Seamus Heaney, 'Postscript', from The Spirit Level

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