MY DAUGHTERS are slumped in the back of the car with Zara bags underfoot.

MY MOTHER is coming to stay.

I’M STANDING in a London art gallery, staring at this sentence: “At the moment of becoming our thinking “I”, we reconstruct the jarring and incompatible into crazy narratives of surrealism.”

A TEACHER has invited me to school to talk to a class of 11- and 12-year-olds about journalism.

WE’RE WATCHING Titanic at home.

MY MEMORIES of the old, soft days of parenting seem to have merged into one — a generic day, punctuated by kisses, which went like this: “Drink your milk — last drop, one shoe on — now the other one, hold my hand, five-a-day, sharing is caring — yes — even with scones, bath-time, pyjamas, time for bed, two stories, there’s no such thing as monsters, night, night,” sofa, glass of wine, box-set.

MY FRIEND’S daughter is expecting her first baby and talking about childbirth at my kitchen table, in a manner which is best described by the words, “unsuspecting” and “credulous”.

I’M UP on the west coast in deepest rural Ireland, lying on the sofa in a friend’s sitting room.

EVERY spring, as sure as daffodils bloom, so does the idea that women should worry, diet and exercise their way to bikini-ready bodies.

MY SISTER, whom I am visiting in Sligo, has been embarrassed into attending a “unique social event” by a male work colleague.