I tossed a crumpled tin of Linden Village into the bin at the steps. I said that it was mad what comes out of the water and that I often thought about bodies being washed up.

I said that every single time I came here, I wondered why I didn’t do it more often. There was something about the place that was sheer magic. Like a postcard.

Jenny said she liked my passion, and that it was a great trait to possess. I was hoping that she was going to tell me that she was mad about me, that’s what I wanted. With her talk of passion, I thought that she might be taking the piss and that bothered me.

I said that it was making me feel a bit old talking about the appreciation of nature and I suggested that we go and get pissed or see a film or something.

With the nature trail out of our hair, we bought train tickets and sat on the sick green tartan seats. I mentally compared our train system to other ones that I had been on: U-Bahn, S-Bahn, Métro, Underground. People put their feet on seats in Ireland – supposedly for a laugh, but it pissed me off. There was a smell in the carriage, that distinctive metallic whiff. A woman sat in the seat in front of us and it was obvious to us that she was a member of our nomadic people and the air was hot and sweet and sickly. I turned away.

Jenny looked out the window for the journey back into town. The waft of the algal bloom reached us when the doors opened at Dun Laoghaire but it really came to a head at Booterstown.

The wind whipped in through the doors and it felt fresh as I pointed out our little bird sanctuary to Jenny.

The smell was powerful and I told her it was because of the algae and that actually it wasn’t that bad and I said that if she got a whiff in high summer, she’d know all about it.

We got off the train at Tara Street and we headed into Temple Bar. I suggested Rosario’s, a place I’d been to before. It was cheap enough and we ordered pasta covered with arrabbiata sauce. I’d had it once before and, at the time, it had seemed almost extravagant. The second time round it seemed more like acidic tinned tomatoes on top of a bit of spaghetti. The token dried Parmesan made me think about cats and how they release a smell I found repulsive.