Last weekend in Creetown – was fairly intense to say the least.

Friday was at the primary school. Bellows pumping, a sensation, a noise almost like rowing a creaking, wooden vessel. It was satisfactorily meditative, a repetitive movement, matching response from the charcoal furnace. Pewter ran through the afternoon, and cuttlefish were opened to reveal shiny, instant artworks, created by Creetown’s most talented bunch.

Saturday may have started off at what felt like a reasonable pace, but as the tension built and as time gathered speed – when at just past six o’clock, the mobile foundry began to perform what felt like a series of near – ritualistic moves and finally, our bell was poured.

There was silence, and for a short period it seemed that everything but the movements of Roddy and Kevin paused. The fleeting moment as the bronze emerged for the furnace, was set in, clamped lifted, poured – was both endless and instantaneous.

We retreated to the Ellangowan, and I sank gradually deeper into the furniture. Something like kiln formed glass in the slumping stage….

Sunday arrived. Misty, damp, as if the weather muffled the senses. The same wee crowd drifted down the street, as the mould was hammered away – revealing an object that feels already placed within the old blacksmith’s in Creetown. It clanged pleasingly, authentically – before being packed away to be re-tuned. The bell will return to the town shortly, chiming to a note of it’s own.