I’m supping a slow and cool pint of beer in Clonakilty in the County Cork on a bright afternoon, and my mind is in neutral gear.

I'm fond of Clonakilty, and it does that kind of magic to you betimes. 

The Dutch Nation is collecting me later, I have all my scribbling done for two days, I'm at peace with the Gaelic world.

I recall now that just one small cell of my mind was relishing the beauty of a new word that Vincent informed me about in the Honk Bar in Shannon two nights earlier. The word is "murmuration," and Vincent told me it was the collective term for a flock of starlings.

Say it aloud to yourself and it is beautiful and, for starlings, as precise as a German cutting tool.

So there I was in Clonakilty looking through a pub window loose in mind and body. Suddenly a young man jumped off the back of a truck of gravel on the other side of the street.

He was in his prime, dark, athletic, wearing a yellow construction helmet and a high visibility waistcoat of exactly the same color. He landed on the balls of his feet like a cat and strode purposefully across the road. He was close to six feet tall and built to match.

As he reached the other side of the street he swept off his helmet as he headed directly to tables in front of another pub on my side of the street. Clonakilty has a pavement society in summer.

There was a young woman sitting with two friends at the table. They were drinking coffees.

Without breaking his step the young man swept the lady up from her chair, wrapped his arms around her and gave her as rousing a long kiss as you have ever seen delivered in your life. Her hands and arms fluttered with surprise to either side of him when he began the process.

Then they just fell down in surrender. She did not hug him back, mark you, but she was not trying to run away either. Her friends were laughing and clapping their hands.

I'd say he kissed her for the better part of 30 seconds before releasing her, standing back, retrieving his helmet, bowing quite elegantly, and crossing the street back again with a huge smile on his face to cheers from his friend on the truck.

She remained standing for a moment, then sat down slowly in her chair with an expression on her face I've only seen once before. Beyond any doubt I'd just seen a kiss being stolen by a stranger from a stranger.

And my mind came out of neutral gear as I remembered where I'd seen that facial expression before, and the young British officer and the young Mayo virgin going to the spring well for a bucket of water who had never been kissed. 

It would have been in the 80s. I was in her home on the Mayo/Galway border, somewhere near Cong, and I was there as an Irish Press reporter because she had just celebrated her 100th birthday and had received the check for £100 from the president.

Those are hard stories to do because the old people are so often so fragile and above all deaf, so communication is difficult. She was in the home of a married daughter and I was told to come in the early evening because she was more alert then.

I was astute enough to bring a bouquet of roses with me and a birthday card. She was propped up on pillows in a sunlit front bedroom.

She was so frail the sun seemed to be shining through her. The silvery hair looked so downy and fragile you'd think you could blow it off her old head with one puff of breath.

I sat one side of the bed with my jotter and her daughter sat on the other side. And Lord above, looking at both of them, I knew so much about her background without a word being spoken.

It was out of my own rural background I suppose. You knew she'd led a hard farming life on poor land.

Her hands were white and skeletal, but they were large from all the feeding of calves, hens and turkeys outside, all the trips to the spring well, all the helping with the hay and the turf.

There were still the remains of a wiry musclature around the neck and shoulders. This had been a very significant working farm wife in her time, just like the formidable daughter sitting beside her.

In addition to all the work she'd borne no less   than 11 children, raised them all for export bar two in Ireland, and survived for the better part of 20 years in her later life as a widow living alone. Only in the last four years had she surrendered her independence to her daughter's care.

This one had been as tough as leather and had needed to be. And she had come from the Famine years all the way to her century. No wonder the Sacred Heart on the wall looked down at her so gently. 

She knew I was there some of the time, not all of it. She had mighty meas (respect) for de Valera and the Irish Press and we got that.

Most of the time her daughter did the talking for Mammy, filling in the gaps, interpreting low sentences I did not pick up.

But there came a moment at the end of the interview, out of nowhere, when something came which even the daughter had never heard before.

Bearded then as now, I was giving her a gentle farewell kiss on the forehead when she reached up and touched my beard and went back to the year she was 16 and going up to the well for water for her mother from the spring under the bank which I was told by the daughter was still there. And she told it in a clear child voice as if it had happened only the day before.

She had drawn the water from the well and was still hunkered down beside it when suddenly there was a mighty clatter and a horse and rider came flying out over the bank. She fell over with surprise and shock, and her bucket of water was spilled around her bare feet. She began to cry with fright.

Next thing she remembered she was in the arms of a young British officer in a red jacket and navy britches and high boots. He was soothing her at first, asking was she all right, but then he kissed her!

And the smell of his soap or maybe aftershave was different to anything she ever smelt before or after.

And he had a black moustache that tickled her nose. And O but he was the bold boyo was he, not to kiss her without ever having met her or even knowing her name!

And O he kissed her full on top of her mouth that was never kissed before, and kissed her twice or even three times maybe before he refilled her bucket and carried it down to the front door of the house and assured her mother she was all right and she was a beautiful girl indeed.

And O but was he not the bold lad altogether in his red jacket that did that to her?

And all those years ago she had the very same expression on her old face as the girl I saw in Clonakilty that had a kiss stolen from her by a stranger too.

And O but was he not a bold boyo?