We are opening the pub earlier than usual today, for the Ireland-Romania rugby game. Wanting to make the most of this morning, I get up early. I practice Portuguese for an hour on a language-learning app, and then trot up to the castle cafe, reluctant dog in tow.

Sam has been lethargic and tender lately; the cause could be just the muggy heat, or it could be something internal, a wound or an obstruction hidden, so far unseen, in his dark coiled organs. But the cafe is a short walk away, and he usually likes to explore the garden. I love to see him on his own, investigating, sniffing and licking and looking at people. I want to see what he does when he's being independent, if for a wee while.

In the castle cafe garden, I have coffee with a cheesecake drenched in mango sauce. Cake for breakfast always picks up my mood, even on Saturdays I have to work.

While the dog lies panting among the weeds behind me, I read Deborah Levy's latest novel August Blue, about a young virtuoso pianist, caught in a crisis of the self after a catastrophic concert (the crisis of the self is, apparently, a dominant theme of the books that appeal to me): "The moon and stars were bright. I let the stars enter my body and I realized I had become porous. Everything that I was had started to unravel. I was living precariously in my body; that is to say, I had not fallen into who I was, or who I was becoming. What I wanted for myself was a new composition."

I’m not young anymore. Nor am I a pianist or a genius, of course. But l feel an answering pang, a release of congested feeling, perhaps, from the damp and obscure regions of the spirit.

<<