IT’S 11.30am. My mother is on the phone. “Can’t talk long,” I say, “I’ve got a free business-advice meeting at 12pm.”

My dad trained for the priesthood; at 18, he dispatched himself from Blackrock College to Trinidad where he was a seminarian for three years with the Holy Ghost fathers.

The plan is: we are moving. A field away from where we live now.

London, Sunday morning — and my sister, husband and I are lying on the sofa, trying to assemble the pieces of last night’s birthday party . 

2 pm. I am with my five siblings, walking round a lake amid the sights and sounds of our childhood. 

HOME, 4pm. I am up a step ladder, re-painting the sitting-room ceiling.

1’s 1.30 pm, in bed — and if I am on page 141 of We are Water by Wally Lamb, I’m thinking it is no thanks to my husband, who’s scampering enthusiastically across the room’s diagonal on all fours sideways, so as to make our ancient floor-joists judder and squeak in alarming fashion.

HOME, 8.30am. Our house has been denuded of certain essential items.

I’m in England, spending a week in the company of my mother-in-law and mother; women with a mean age of 82, who have stared down the defeats of life but still remain, after all is said and done, resolutely inclined to Movement and Battling On.

BRISTOL Airport — and I am walking towards my mother-in-law’s car burdened by my luggage and a nagging sense of guilt about having dissed her driving in last-week’s column.