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On Hearing my first Foreign Accent
By Bernard Mc Cormack
Location : Derry, Northern Ireland

We lay on the roof top of the embankment. It was the perfect place for sunbathing. Immediately behind us was the outer edge of Maydown Airfield. In front of us, the big sheet of water of the Lough and the Donegal mountains beyond.

We were connected to the main road be a narrow sunken lane, hedged in by Hawthorn trees. It was a mysterious place that ended in a clearing and a rough track that led to the top of the embankment. It was a good place for a picnic or bathing and very popular with the Personnel from Maydown. The official name of the base was H.M.S Shrike which somehow always only frequented by thousands of seabirds wheeling and diving above the tide line.

It was a hot summers’ day and both the sea and the landscape shimmered in the heat as we lay there. Over and above the humming of insects and the rustling of the tall grasses I heard the sound of distant laughter rise and fall with a bell-like clarity. It soon grew louder and more intrusive as a group of girls cyclists approached the spot where we lay. They were all dressed in summer ware and obviously hell-bent on having a good time. Most of them hid behind the anonymity of large dark sunglasses.

They parked their bicycles in the clearing and scrambled up the side of the embankment led by one particular girl who seemed to me to be their chosen leader.

Unlike the others she pushed her bike along the top and somehow managed to keep her balance by straddling the seat with her long legs and the help of a small dark girl pushing her from behind.

As yet, she hadn’t seen me lying there, when she eventually did I could see was adept at not showing surprise or any lack of composure in her face, this intrigued me, instead. She seemed to move above me, a golden blonde girl who when she did speak did so with an allure that could not have come from having grown up in a flat landscape with magnificent skyscraper like Norfolk or the rolling countryside of Kent.

It was an apparition that I was not likely to ever forget.

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