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.

MY HUSBAND’S capacity for crying while watching films has always far exceeded mine, and our children’s for that matter.

MY LATE father had a kind, gentle soul and a heart as soft and yielding as butter.

WHEN I say ‘walkies’ to my old dog, she stretches, resettles her limbs and raises her eyelids for a moment to shoot me a look, which says ‘surely, surely to god you’re joking?’

WE CAN reinvent ourselves for others as we move through our lives, but somehow or other with our siblings, we’re often stuck; in phases we’d rather forget.