I can’t seem to get comfortable enough to think at all these days. It doesn’t help that the husband is grumpy, dictating our moods as he harrumphs and snarls across the kitchen table. Finola the yoga teacher suggested that the husband try a hypnotist in Sligo, but it sounds like so much hocus pocus for two hundred quid. Anyways, on a respite from the husband (away at last for the day), I let my thoughts drift, resting wherever there's light, like a cat following sunshine across a room.

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The other day I went on a long walk with friends, a couple who are finally moving in together in town. Des has been a lifelong bachelor, but no more the days, mornings even, of walking into a certain local bar for the purpose of getting, ahem, eggs. As we wandered along the path, past wee fairy doors and fields yellow with buttercup, Helena told us about an old man who lived in the back of the beyond down south who'd post himself a postcard every day. The postman would drop off the postcard at the old man's house in the afternoon and drive the old man into the village where he'd do the daily shop, mail himself a postcard, and sit in the pub drinking pints until the publican gave him a lift to his house.

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