We drive west from Derry and across Donegal. Katie comments that it’s the first time since leaving the midlands that the land has changed. She’s right. The spare glaciated landscape of Donegal is in stark contrast to the raised bogs and green fields that fill the middle of the country.

It’s the 1st of August, Lá Lughnasa, the old Irish harvest festival. Suitably, it’s also the start of the FrielDays Festival, a celebration of Ireland’s great playwright, Brian Friel. As I drive through the landscape that inspired so many of Friel’s plays, I have ply Michael with questions.

Years ago, I read some of Friel’s plays and went to an Abbey Theatre production of Dancing at Lughnasa. We talk mostly about Translations, the great play about place and the meaning of place and the colonial endeavour to translate our Irish place names into meaningless English names (for instance, how my town Eadán Doire – the brow of the oak tree – was transliterated into the meaningless Edenderry, or my parish Clough na Rinca – the dancing stones – was transliterated into Cloherinkoe). The same colonial endeavour that occurred all over the world.

Michael reminds me of the story and the characters in Translations, places the play within the context of the land we’re driving through and explains certain criticisms of Friel’s historical inaccuracies.

But more, Michael regales me with stories of Friel himself, of various family members, pointing out houses they lived in, houses that inspired characters in the plays, of his own encounters with Friel over the years.

Brian Friel’s plays are brought to life for me as I drive through this place. I want to read Translations now and think I must find a copy when I return to Edenderry.

We arrive at the house out on the island. ‘I keep Friel here, of course,’ Michael says, ‘and Heaney.’ An early collected works of Friel and one of Heaney too. He leaves the Friel on the table for me.

So, here I am now, reading Translations in a place that hums with Friel, where the shape of the people and the shape of the land run through each play. Where better to rediscover these plays?