9am. I am in the car, en route to hospital, where I am to have a small lesion removed from my lower calf, writes Aida Austin. 

Aida Austin explores the Baroque heritage and scenic landscape of central Europe with a luxurious river cruise on the Danube.

‘I’ve seen car explosions. I saw poor Apollonia go up in The Godfather," writes Aida Austin. 

Weekly diary with Aida Austin

Aida Austin illustrates how unpredictable and yet comical travelling can be once the plans are out of your hands.

I am switching mobile phone providers. This morning, on day three of trying to activate a new phone sim card, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, in front of my laptop.

FRIDAY night. My husband and I are in England, visiting family.

This week Aida Austin divulges the inner workings of her sibling relationships and tells us why sometimes she just wishes she could be an only child.

Tommy Barker considers life in the sloe lane in this funky hideaway situated between Rosscarbery and Clonakilty.

MANY people ask me how I managed to evoke such a vivid sense of what it’s like to be a teenage girl in both of my novels. It’s easy.

So there I was, Sunday night, somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, about three in the morn, drunk as a skunk, debating whether or not to jump out of this moving car.

Tommy Barker reports on an utterly charming rural idyll located near Clonakilty in West Cork which oozes charisma inside and out.

ANY STORY about a sister goes far, far back. Back to the time when you’re both just preliminary sketches of the people you’ll become,says Aida Austin.

Did you know sleeping on silk has all kinds of benefits that 50 Shades never even thought of, says Esther McCarthy.

I am in Sligo, where life has transposed itself, like it always does, into a scene from ‘The Edwardian Farm’.

My sister’s house, Sligo, where children hold your hands, drink their milk and family life feels forever fixed in time.

I’M IN London, walking down Upper Street towards my son, who is waiting in Five Guys — a burger joint he’s recommended because it’s “munch”.

My daughter ended up in hospital this week. She’s home now. Singing her head off in the shower as I write. Pissed off that we’ve run out of Pantene conditioner — but singing all the same.

On spreading out the Irish Examiner supplement on our family breakfast table on Saturday, I was taken aback at the use of certain words in Aida Austin’s much-awaited column.

CORK AIRPORT, 3.20 pm, and I’m awaiting the arrival of my brother. Not the older one I stabbed in the arm with a sharpened pencil for stealing my pillow (don’t look at me like that) who didn’t deserve it. No, it’s my younger brother; the one who used his four sisters as psychological punch-bags, whom I called “fatso” — who deserved a sharpened pencil, but never got it because he was bigger than me.

THE RAIN, it rains on the just and the unjust. And has been doing so forever. Complaining about the weather in Ireland is like Mrs Lincoln complaining about the play.

MY NAME is Noelle and I’m a very bad runner. How bad? I knock down children. I ran over a toddler last night, and I don’t even have a vehicle.