This Story Is Lost Somewhere Out By Faughart

I was out by Faughart.  There was a shrine out there.  The shrine of St Brigid.  I thought I would go out there to get some peace and quiet.  It’s a nice part of the countryside.  I packed some sandwiches into a bag and also a brand new red notebook I’d just got.  It had been rather expensive for a notebook.  I also brought an old pen with me.  It was the pen my parents had presented me with for my twenty-first birthday.  On the pen, it said ‘Sean.  21^st.  7/3/1979.

I was going to use the peace and quiet of Faughart to write an end-of-a-marriage story.  It was going to be about a husband and wife who have decided to go their separate ways, but before they do so, they go for a walk together in the countryside with their dog and they have an adventure.

The writing of the story was interrupted by a search for badgers. You don’t see badgers too often.  They are reclusive animals.  But I happened to see one scurrying over a mini-cliff and disappearing through a fence.  It was the first time I’d ever seen a living and breathing and scurrying badger.  I was impressed, so I started looking for more.  I spent a few hours doing this as the afternoon slid into sleepytime.

Not another sighting during those hours.

Nothing.

I was about to give up looking for badgers and concentrate on this story when I noticed a swiss roll of stunning black waddling up towards a witch’s hat-shaped rock.  It had to be a badger.  I would have bet my pittance on it.  It was the waddle of a badger.  I dashed forward like in an action film you've probably seen before somewhere.  I cut a peculiar shape, wearing combat shorts and a navy T-shirt.  If I’d been a passer-by looking over at me, I would have thought I was an actor playing a photojournalist in a war film.

When the badger saw me coming towards it, it screamed like a frightened damsel badger and shot off over the mini-cliff and through the fence.

In all the excitement, I’d dropped my expensive red notebook. 

This story existed only in that notebook. 

I traced my steps back a bit.  The notebook was nowhere to be found. 

I kept looking.

Nothing.

In desperation, I tried to quickly remember all that I had written for this story in the notebook.  I managed to scrape one solitary sentence together. 

‘A lack of a section at the back dedicated to the widely watched sports frustrated Sam.’

It was just a fragment.  Didn’t make any sense.  Who was Sam?  A section at the back of what?  So confusing. 

This sentence is all that is left of the story.  I’m disgusted with myself for losing it while running around like an imbecile looking for badgers.  When I got home, my wife packed her bags and left.