Swimming and seals before Saoirse

I won't pretend I swam from the Forty Foot this time - no-one did, on the three days I returned to Dublin Bay with daily dipper Catherine; each time Sandycove itself was filled with what one regular called 'visitors',  refugees from the rougher headland so close.

This time I came with the sea socks and gloves I'd inherited via Cally (who loved it here but was this time enjoying warmer waters on Capri 'but without the kick' of the cold water - still not too bad in early October, but the accountrements meant I could stay in for longer).

The second day was the sunniest. We met an old man with his faithful dog, who was crazymad for the water but had to wait while his master went for a swim, drying off being a problem. No tying up was necessary. The few amiable turnstones who putter around among the regular swimmers had become a colony more or less keeping to themselves, but unperturbed by my coming closer.

Egrets are especially abundant along the Bay, especially at Booterstown. But this lone one near the Forty Foot that day struck a poetic chord.

On the third day, having got my Zoom classes of the week out of the way, I decided to join Catherine and her distinguished friends for an afternoon matinee screening of The Outrun at Dun Laoghaire's multiplex. We took our swim first, and I walked to Sandycove from Dun Laoghaire DART station.  It was a darker day, but with the sea still fascinating in different lights as I passed the Casement statue

and rocks with cormorants on them, Howth in the distance

to Sandycove. I think there might be a seal in this pic from the previous day

but certainly they were around at even higher tide. The ocular proof is feeble, but palpable.

As I was swimming out of the cove to make it to the set of steps on the other side, I heard three women further out shrieking with laughter. Catherine later discovered that one had felt something under her. Seaweed? A dead body? A big fish? The two seals were playing and swimming around them. 

You'll know, if you've seen The Outrun already, how well this ties in with the film (the above image appears early on, when the protagonist narrator tells us about kelpies). Ronan's character Rona, based on the author of the book of the same title, Amy Liptrot, goes back to her native Orkney to try and recalibrate after major alcohol problems and London rehab. She returns first to her parents' farm, works as an RSPB volunteer and then after a brief relapse seeks an even more isolated island. Early on we see her marvelling at the seals, and at a group of women swimming (Liptrot apparently makes a cameo appearance among them), whom she watches shyly from the shore. 

But it's not until a decisive moment that she ventures into the water - on Christmas Day, I think - comes close to the seals, and the smiles and joy that have been so long withheld through the film's first two thirds immediately surface.

It seemed so serendipitous that all both Catherine and I feel about the necessity of our regular bathes tied in to this epiphany in the film. In a radio interview Ronan told the presenter how she had to act the trepidation of her character at cold-water immersion; she learned to swim as a child in the river Slaney.

I won't write more about the film except to say that while some have found it a bit too long, I think the length is necessary for us to be immersed in Rona's purgatory before the healing can truly begin. And of course Ronan, an actor so loved by the camera with her clairvoyant eyes and her perfect modulations of mood, registers everything. I couldn't fault it.

This has been an especially, or maybe I should just say typically, rich visit to Dublin. Central was J's first exhibition in the new Europa Experience Visitor Centre's gallery, 100 panels by as many artists expressing various aspects of Europe in the Heart of Ireland, curated by the wonderful people of the Hamilton Gallery in Sligo.

But everything else has been unforgettable, too: Irish National Opera's one-off concert performance of Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday,  and Teaċ Daṁsa's Nobodaddy, genius inspiration of Michael Keegan-Dolan, preceded by the launch of the big Brian Maguire exhibition. La Grande Illusion, at the Hugh Lane Gallery a mere five minutes away. Irish arts firing on all fronts...