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.

FLUENT in Dutch, my sister uses the odd Dutch word once in a blue moon when she can’t find an English one to do as good a job. She’s on the phone now.

THERE’S nothing like a bit of death’s door to file the point on a Christmas memory and keep its edges sharp.

I’VE never really gone in for all this ‘I am my beloved, and my beloved is me’ stuff.

MY DAUGHTER comes into the kitchen from the sitting room, where she’s been watching Snog, Marry, Avoid, and asks me why there are so few women politicians.