WE FOUND a bunch of old pony tack when we cleaned out the shed this week.

I’M VISITING my youngest sister.

MY sister-in-law and I are reading the newspapers in companionable quiet at the kitchen table.

IT IS midnight and my husband and I are sitting at the kitchen table.

MY sister in law is full of good ideas about how to make a fortune.

MY sister, who is two glasses of Pinot down, has just introduced me as someone who ‘lives in the back arse of nowhere’ to an acquaintance of hers at a party in London, just before whisking off to get herself a refill.

AS USUAL this January, I didn’t start to think of myself as a to-do list and race around at warp speed, signing up for pilates and beginner’s Italian.

WE HAVE watched David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet.

THE gentle swell and curve of west Cork is another world, I think to myself as I drive through bleak landscape north-west of Tuam.

I’M NOT a goal-setter.