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.