IS IT better to give or to receive, or to simply hide in a cave until it’s all over?

THE Christmas tree thing is giving me status anxiety.

THE Round Robin season is upon us.

YEARS ago, I did a creative writing course at the local university.

AFTER an extended gap year from dating, I draw my self-imposed man ban to a close, ending my sabbatical by bringing the new chap home to meet the kids.

THE death of Savita Halappanavar, the dentist who died after a prolonged miscarriage at a hospital in Galway, is under investigation.

WHEN Katarina smashed up New Orleans, we looked on in horror the way you would a foreign disaster movie — appalling, but not really something you could relate to.

IT’S not even Hallowe’en and there are a pile of Christmas cards on my desk.

THE gates to my house are in sorry disrepair.

WHEN that 15-year-old student and her 30-year-old teacher were on the run in France last week, it was as if the media were trying to recreate a missing child story of Madeleine McCann proportions.