ON THE train, Somerset — and I’m heading down to my mother-in-law Anne, a widow of remarkable warmth, generosity and fixed opinions.

THURSDAY night and my husband and I are in bed. We’re both wearing reading spectacles for the first time.

IF YOU can say “pass the marmalade” in HTML, please feel free to turn over the page.

A PUBLISHED author — I forget who — once said that in order to write as honestly and naturally as he could he rinsed any thoughts of his readers out of his head by imagining them as a bunch of “orangutans, turning the pages with their feet”.

IT IS Saturday afternoon. I join my husband and a small group of friends who have gathered around a café table in town.

I’VE joined a gym. Though I can’t even explain to myself how strange a turn of events this is, I’m trying to explain it to my mother.

HOME from Greece. The normal rules of life, suspended for a fortnight, reinstate themselves.

IHAVE an idea for a book! I have to admit it owes an awful lot to Where’s Wally?, the series of children’s books created by British illustrator Martin Handford, but let’s put that aside for a minute, while I flesh my idea out for you.

SOMETIMES, the fortnight’s holiday abroad can be squeezed out by the combined effect of the two weeks that bookend it.

THE RAIN, it rains on the just and the unjust. And has been doing so forever. Complaining about the weather in Ireland is like Mrs Lincoln complaining about the play.