I GET UP at 8am and the first thing I do each day is come down and turn on the coffee machine in the cafe for my own coffee. Then I’ll walk the dogs with my husband, Klaus, and head over to Durrus to pick up the day’s newspapers.
I grew up in Barbados, which was amazing. It was all about the sea. We’d head to the beach every day straight from school and spend weekends on the water in little Mirror dinghies.
I left at 17 to go to art college in England and came on a visit to Lough Key with my father. I woke up to see the mist on the lake and just fell in love with it, so I moved to Sligo to finish my course and ended up teaching in Boyle for a number of years.
But I needed to get back to the sea, so when the opportunity to buy this property came up, I bought it.
I have a pottery studio, a painting studio and a wood studio where I work with driftwood. There’s a gallery and, since Easter, a cafe.
We have a five-acre garden with raised beds and poly tunnels, so we use as much as we can from the garden. Each morning I’ll do a pick of fresh salad leaves and edible flowers for the kitchen.
I work two days a week in the kitchen and my sister, who lives on Sherkin Island, comes over to work too. Mostly though I’ll head off to my pottery studio.
I can’t paint in the summer because there are too many people around and I need peace and quiet to concentrate. With pottery you can stop and start more easily.
For lunch I’ll run into the cafe for something to eat and then head back to my studio for the afternoon. The cafe has been a great way to attract people into the gallery and we have met some really nice people through it.
At the moment it’s tipping rain though, so it’s a bit quiet. When the sun shines people sit out on the patio and passersby can see them from the road and that brings people in too.
We close up at around 6pm and I’ll pack a picnic and a bottle of wine and head to the beach to meet Klaus, who will be coming back from our other gallery in Schull. We’ll catch up on the day there and, if there aren’t too many jellyfish, have a swim.
You never really finish work because in the evening there is still always something to do, orders to make or e-mails to catch up on. I’m also a big Corrie fan, so I record that and watch it before falling asleep around midnight.
- Annabel Langrish is owner of the Heron Gallery in Ahakista, west Cork, 027-67278, herongallery.net
- In conversation with Sandra O'Connell