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.

SOCIOLOGISTS employ all sorts of clever-sounding techniques in order to determine how social systems, such as small rural communities for example, function.

A FEW DAYS after Senator David Norris calls for a debate about standards in Irish life after watching an episode of the show Tallafornia, I decide it’s time to call my own.

IT’S the last night of our weekend-break in Amsterdam.

I’M TAKING a city break with my old friend V. We’ve just turned left out of a specialist cheese emporium and right into a designer interiors shop in Amsterdam.

MY SISTER — resolutely urban and under-whelmed by country life — has arrived from London.

A FRIEND approaches me outside the bank. When I ask after his little daughter, he says that she’s been refusing to brush her teeth.