The Anchor Stays in Bantry

It was a relaxed, sleepy morning. No business – just wandering, texting friends on the go, peering into charity shops as though they were museums of island life.

I stood at the crossroads and simply looked at it. The town moved around the old building the way water moves around a rock. The Anchor Tavern hung over the street like an old ship that had sailed in from another century and never left. While everything around it had changed hands, colours, and names, the Anchor had simply stayed unmoved.

It was raining again, and the wet cobblestones reflected the red signage in broken fragments. Standing at that crossroads, I felt that strange sensation of having woken up, after a long sleep, in exactly the right place.

I’ll do it next time, I told myself. An anchor, after all, is not meant to go anywhere. It felt too big for me that day, so I turned into the alley opposite, where music drifted from the Box of Frogs café beneath striped awnings. The old ship said nothing; it had heard promises before.

I painted it later — many layers of black watercolour around the red to show that depth.
Months later, after I had moved north to Drogheda, a message reached me. A woman named Kate had seen the painting and asked for three watercolours — one for each sibling.

I drew the originals by hand, packed them carefully with cards, and posted them across the Irish Sea.

Somewhere in London, three pieces of the Anchor found their walls after all…

After the paintings arrived, Kate wrote:
The pictures are beautiful. They are a representation, an image of ‘our old Anchor’ where we all lived one time or another — a little bit watery, a little bit wavy, the image from the past.
My parents lived in The Anchor from 1962 to 1990. I lived there from 1962 to 1982, my brother from 1962 to 2018, my sister from 1975 to 1990. The building was sold in 2018...
You have made me feel very special. You are a credit to your parents and to your family.
— Kate, London