Mary Kennedy writes with unflinching honesty about life and loneliness in her new book

WHEN Mary Kennedy was asked to write another book, she knew the words would come straight from the heart. 

She also knew that she would talk honestly about life, warts and all, with its joy, optimism and celebration but also its struggles, challenges and hard times.

And yet it’s a little disarming to hear her talk about her Valentine blues.

It’s not that February 14th went badly this year. The Nationwide presenter spent the day being grateful that all her children are in happy relationships and whiled away the evening catching up with a girlfriend over an informal meal.

That night, she drifted off to sleep with a “huge sense of satisfaction” though, she adds mischievously, “not in a Mick Jagger kind of way”.

It was the next day that blew her off course. She took Larry, her Maltese/ pomeranian cross, out for his morning constitutional and cried all the way around their usual 6km walking circuit.

“The tears just came and trickled down my cheeks,” she recalls.

“I bowed my head when I was passing another walker and nobody was any the wiser.”

When she came home, she cranked up her computer and spilled the sadness and loneliness out on to some of the moving pages of her fourth book, What Matters, Reflections on Important Things in Life, due out on Wednesday.

She wrote: “There is nobody in the house but me, the dog and the two cats, and nobody will come through the door until tomorrow at least. I should have organised something to do today.”

It reminded her of the times she would visit her own mother in the later years of her life and find her, “alone, sitting by the fire, quiet and lonely”.

At the time, she found that image of her mother hard to reconcile with memories of the strong woman who was always “running here, there and yonder” while she was growing up with her three siblings in Clondalkin, Dublin.

“Now I understand what she was going through,” she says.

“My mother was on her own, without her life’s partner, from the age of 58 until she died aged 83. I was separated and am divorced now for many years.

"I have found it increasingly difficult to settle into subsequent relationships and I now have times when I understand what my mother felt on those evenings when I called by,” she writes.

But don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not that anything was — or is — wrong with Mary Kennedy’s life. (“It’s not as if I’m Billy No Mates,” she laughs.)

She leads a full, busy life and has a huge circle of friends that stretches right back to her days at Coláiste Bríde, where she was both teacher and pupil: “There are eight of us who taught together who are still as tight as tuppence.”

Yet, there will be days like February 15. Mary Kennedy just wants to acknowledge that. Self-doubt, loneliness and melancholy are all part of life, she says, and, for her, they have become more frequent visitors now that her children are grown up.

When Weekend arrives, though, the pendulum has swung back into the happy quadrant and there’s a spirit of unbridled celebration. For one thing, it was a glorious day for the morning walk with Larry.

To check just how good, Mary takes out her phone: the pedometer app says she walked 5km, took 6,200 steps and burned 228 calories.

It’s just as well because the kitchen blender is switched on for a batch of fairy cakes that will be served up hot, fluffy and deliciously light, precisely 10 minutes after they are popped in the oven.

They are the same fairy cakes that Mary used to make at ungodly hours of the morning before travelling for work so that her four children would wake to the wafting smell of comforting home baking.

The oldest of those children, Eva, 31, has just got engaged. There are cards of congratulation all over the mantelpiece and they will stay there. Eva insists on it.

Her two brothers Eoin and Tom — who will turn 29 and 26, respectively, this month — can put their cards on the windowsill.

The three are still at home. Though that is about to change because there is more great news. Youngest daughter Lucy, 24, has just announced that she is coming home for good.

When she left to teach in Korea more than two years ago, her mother felt “raw grief”.

“I couldn’t get my head around the fact that I didn’t know when I would see her again,” she says.

At the time, the sadness and emptiness seemed all-consuming but at least Lucy had chosen to travel. Her trip was an adventure rather than forced emigration.

“I cannot imagine the grief of a mother whose child would rather stay and work at home but has to leave.”

There’s work to be done before she comes home — “a bit of Feng Shui” to make sure there is space in Lucy’s wardrobe, for example. Mary’s clothes somehow crept in there over the years.

Which brings us neatly to the subject of clothes and style. How does Mary Kennedy do it?

She always looks so immaculately groomed, so stylish, so young… add your own glowing adjective here as many viewers have done over the years.

She says Catherine Manning in the wardrobe department at RTÉ is responsible for the clothes, and brushes off the rest.

As for style, she likes classic designs that are comfortable to wear. Ask her what she’s planning to wear as mother of the bride and she says it will be “straight down and no-nonsense”, but with a sense of occasion.

Anything she wears must also have “wriggle room”.

When Mary turned 60 on September 26 last year, she felt her clothes were getting just that little bit too tight so she joined what her daughters call ‘The Fat Club’. In the last 12 months, she has shed 18lbs.

What? Mary Kennedy in a Fat Club? She knows she’s not “huge”, but she says she’s prone to putting on weight and regularly falls off the wagon.

On one occasion, post-holiday, she weighed in at the Fat Club to find she had gained two-and-a-half pounds in a week.

“I gave vent to my disappointment by buttering several slices of crusty white bread and eating them. After dinner,” she admits.

But you have to have your off days. And, of course, your treats. “I won’t go to the party and only eat a carrot.” She will always, however, drink water. An impressive three litres a day. That’s part of her beauty regime, she says, along with “tonnes of cream”.

“I remember getting off a bus in Africa after 10 hours and going through the cleanse-tone-moisturise ritual. For me, it’s just like cleaning my teeth,” she laughs.

There is much more to talk about, like the time she cleaned the house from top to bottom — including hoovering the decking — before RTÉ filmed her cooking at home for Neven Maguire.

There’s her love of gardening, of home, of travel, her strong faith (she regularly recites the rosary while pounding the pavement), her guilt-ridden relationship with alcohol, her admiration for the people she meets while filming Nationwide, her charity work, and yet the conversation always comes back to strong women.

She comes from a band of resolute, hardworking, determined women. Her book champions them and celebrates them, then mentions the many more she has met along the way. Like Mary Harney, for instance.

The former health minister was a year ahead of her in school and campaigned to make honours maths available to her fellow students.

The nuns said they didn’t have the staff but they did allow the girls study in the nearby boys’ school. There was a curious rush on the subject.

It’s one of the many stories Mary Kennedy tells. “Stories”, she says, “are what make us realise that we are part of a community.”

And for her, that sense of community, with its network of friendships and allegiances, is what really matters.

What Matters. Reflections on Important Things in Life is published by Hachette Ireland

In her own words....

On menopause: “It’s a bonus to go through it because it means you are still alive. I’ve lost friends before the middle stage of life... so let’s hear it once more ... for the seven dwarves of menopause: Itchy, Bitchy, Wrinkly, Sweaty, Sleepy, Bloated, Forgetful.”

On plastic surgery: “It’s looks a bit like the G-force is pulling you.”

On feeling low: “We should not beat ourselves up when the chutzpah is missing, and we should grasp life with both hands when it returns.”

On drinking: “I love raising a glass of bubbles to celebrate. It bothers me though. I fall asleep only to wake up a few hours later and spend the rest of the night trying to keep the demon guilt at bay.”

On turning 61: “There is no age I have been to which I would like to return.”