AS soon as I’d said it, I knew I’d done a bad thing. My wife had a “You, of ALL people” look on her face.

I’m reading a self-help book: Crucial Conversations — Tools For Talking When The Stakes Are High. It’s the archetypal business management book.

HARCOURT Street in Dublin was relatively quiet. The night time hadn’t quite begun.

I’M hypothetically writing an imaginary political drama at the moment.

THE first item is written down with purpose. The handwriting is legible and even has a bit of embellishment.

I DON’T know when I had cabbage like it. The right amount of firmness, so tasty it must have been grown on volcanic soil fertilised by contented, opinionated cattle and cooked in water from one of those ads where the water surges free off a mountain that had trapped it since antiquity.

NOW that I’ve decided to do it, it’s obviously too late. When it comes to fashion, I’m always the one who arrives as everyone else is draining their glasses and saying their goodbyes. If you have a beard you can shave it all off now, because I’m going to grow one.

INSPIRED — it’s a loaded word. An exasperated parent may ask “What-in-the-name-a-god inspired you to do that?” as they snatch the creosote-dipped brush from your hand and look at the wallpaper.

I DON’T know Brian Acton or Jan Koum, the founders of the $19 billion WhatsApp, so their success does not make me resentful — thankfully.

I FEEL dirty. I was on one of those websites. You know, the ones with the photographs of the different models. Lurid claims about performance were splashed all over the pages and it was clear a lot of them had work done. Everything is for sale and there is much hyperbole. After all, most cars have alloy wheels.