To make my life more comfortable, he wanted to take the discarded banana skin from my sideplate. I had just fed the baby in the restaurant and it sat where my bread roll should be.

You know, farming is so busy. These days, we joke, we only meet in the back kitchen, over hurried conversations. ‘Did you pay that bill?’ ‘What time will you be cutting Ardoughtar?’, ‘You’re late again.’ ‘Will you ever be home to put the kids to bed.’ ‘So tired of this.’ ‘Will you change his nappy?’ Romantic it is not. Ordinary everyday life it is.

The Spring gets longer every year we sigh, tired.

It gets stale, you start to feel as if you have the same conversation, passing each other, always rushing in June, no time for the sit down and chat. The cows need milking, silage needs drawing in.

Then there’s a funeral. You sit down after the burial and you just stop rushing and chat with each other amongst others and you giggle. At the same things, nudge at the odd funny relative and he takes the banana skin from your sideplate and there we meet again. In the out of the ordinary ordinariness of it all. My gentleman always.