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36EXT. PUB - DAY

PADRAIC at table outside. Two horses look at him over a wall, & something about the loneliness of it all makes him want to cry. He drinks to stop it, as COLM and his dog come out, PADRAIC wiping his face as COLM sits.

COLM

I was too harsh yesterday.

PADRAIC

Yesterday, he says?! I know well you was

too harsh yesterday! And today!

COLM

I just, ah... I just have this

tremendous sense of time slipping away

on me, Padraic, and I think I need to

spend the time I have left in thinking,

and composing, and just trying not to

listen to any more of the dull things

that you have to say for yourself. But

I’m sorry about it. I am, like.

PADRAIC

(pause)

Are you dying?

COLM

No, I’m not dying.

PADRAIC

But... then you’ve loads of time.

COLM can see he isn’t getting through to him.

COLM

For chatting?

PADRAIC

Aye!

COLM

For aimless chatting?

PADRAIC

Not for aimless chatting. For good

normal chatting.

COLM

So we’ll keep aimlessly chatting, will

we? And me life’ll keep dwindling and

in twelve years I’ll die with nothing

to show for it bar the chats I’ve had

with a limited man. Is that it?

PADRAIC

I said, not aimless chatting, I said

good normal chatting.

COLM

The other night, two hours you spent

talking to me about the things you’d

found in your little donkey’s shite that