The musically-minded amongst you might want to check out:

’Her song murmured, she beseeched me to accept her ring on my finger, to be the husband of an Ondine, and to visit her in her palace and be king of the lakes.’

Aloysius Bertrand.

My story begins and ends and continues with the sunlit panorama of an Irish wilderness.

I was walking, in this great green landscape of the Celts, alone and at peace.

Almost at peace; for nothing, to my mind, was better than nature, except perhaps sex, but is not that top of any man’s list?

Of that I had had my share, but 11 years of marriage saw to it that it was perhaps not so fair as I would like.

Alone, I took myself, for mile after warm and breezy mile amongst the grasses and the waters.

Your thoughts pop in and out, random, or can flow like the becks and brooks, effortless and unstressed by the artificial world.

Here you can go for a full day without seeing anyone, even at the solstice of the summer. That, soul in retreat that I was, is how I liked it.

Occasionally you do chance upon a human: a fisherman by a small lake perhaps, a farmer, a fellow wanderer or two, even a female pleasing on the eye.

I muse that they can be hot, these rambling girls, the outdoorsy and exercising types. Elusive, though, and to be greeted with civility and never to be seen again let alone fucked by me, sadly.

Onward goes my trek, and the chirrups and bleats are my only living company; with the azure of the sky and almost sentient forms of the clouds, they are my sustenance.

Further mile and further still, and you think nothing will happen, which is just fine. Then the unexpected.

But nothing prepared me for this one.

Coming over the rim of some crags, I came upon a small mountain lake; ‘lough’, in Irish. Sounds vaguely like love, I always think.

I saw her; first of all just as if something red moving in the breeze, at about 30 metres distant across the soundless still water.

I saw that this was hair; a mane, which flowed with a freedom that matched the place and, if my eyes did not decieve me,

This titian vision was attached to a pale and naked body, bathing.

She moved with a finesse, dabbling into the water and then out, then back again as if not knowing where she preferred to be.

Why out here alone? That was the question I entertained, and did not even think as to the ‘how’, for there was no sign of clothes or hiking gear, and no village less than 10 miles distant.

Outrageous! Although, not really, since in my own vanity I have been prone to strip off and become the nude rambler when the day is hot enough and the trail safe enough.

These Irish, a bit bolder than the average English, and also perhaps more in tune with nature; so, why the hell shouldn’t she?

A middling to good height for a woman, which was just how I liked them. Moreover, the form, so gentle and ideal of curve and no more than aged 25.