IT’S MORNING and I’m in the front gardens of a pretty Georgian terrace.

PEOPLE enter marriage with all sorts of odd needs that have to be stitched in so the seams hardly show. This is the stuff of compromise, which is the stuff of relationships. But some needs are easier to harmonise than others; weird sleeping habits need to be accommodated, but they’re tricky.

I’m walking in London to the Tube and happen to glance down at my hand.

ONE advantage of middle age is that by the time you’ve reached it, you’ve learnt to differentiate between those activities you feel obliged to enjoy and those you actually find pleasurable.

ACCORDING to the results of a British study, mothers are the Chief Instigators of Family Arguments.

AROUND the time she’s getting ready for bed, my teenage daughter, our late night alarm call (repeat on nightly loop), screams.

MY SISTER took me to a fundraising evening recently, up on the west coast of Ireland, where she lives.

EVERY family has it’s own kind of etiquette, a set of distinctive idiosyncrasies that help define it.

TUBES, buses, taxis and planes have returned me home safely from Geneva to west Cork.