“How was I to know you were having a stroke?”

I HAVE been idling in Dunnes Stores for a good 10 minutes, watching a double act — my mother and her old friend Sheila — play out in the pyjama section. We are all wind-blown and purple-cheeked; it is minus two outside and braving the beach has exhausted any desire to ever go out of doors again.

My mother is lamenting the dearth of “decent cotton nightwear” to Sheila who, she’s failed to notice, swung right half a minute ago and disappeared behind a stand of folded pyjamas.