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.

AT A DINNER party, there is a post-pudding lull in which an idle conversation about speed-dating begins.

IT’S late at night.