“If you could pick an age, what would you choose?”

IT’S 9pm. I’m in Sligo, at my sister’s house, where my siblings and their families have gathered for the weekend to celebrate my mother’s birthday.

I’m the last to arrive, and from where I sit in the car, I can see the entire scrum — spanning three generations and all kinds of vigorous temperament — through the conservatory windows. It looks pacy in there. It looks very pacy indeed.

I love that scrum but right now, after hours of single-carriageway trucking through faraway lands to the back of the boondocks, I’m wondering how I’m going to survive the whirlwind of it with my faculties intact. What with tomorrow’s itinerary of long beach-walk and icy swim (“last one in’s a wuss”) looming, I’m thinking perhaps... sedation, to be honest. In the wake-me-up-when-it’s-all-over sense of the word.