When did the world become so overwhelming? 

When the clouds come down and the mountains disappear I feel myself disappearing too. As long as I can see the beautiful scenery I never regret coming here, but on days when a white-out envelops us it’s no consolation that the horizon is still out there somewhere.

I feel trapped and lonely and lost and disorientated. The frightening things of the world are overwhelming.

‘I need to get out. I can’t sit here all day,’ I told the builder boyfriend who came through the French windows beaming with the satisfaction derived from cutting out old stock fencing to make way for the all-weather gallop he’s promised me.

His smile evaporated when he saw me sitting at the kitchen table on my laptop, typing into the website of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, and I could see in his face that he was wondering why it was not enough for me to have my dream Georgian farmhouse in West Cork…

We all know that people are the same wherever you go. I keep humming that song. I can’t get it out of my head since a neighbour came by while the BB was gardening out at the front and told him that he wished we hadn’t put a fence around our verge because people can’t pull onto it any more when two cars need to pass in the narrow lane.

The BB explained that they were driving on our water pipe. ‘Isn’t that your land the other side?’ he asked this chap, pointing to the opposite verge. ‘Couldn’t you let people pull in there?’ The man said no, he didn’t want his grass driven over and ruined.