A warm Sahara wind was blowing and by late afternoon the western sky where it met the sea was the colour of golden sand. Surfers bobbed like seals on the milky ocean, waiting for a wave. It stretched like a sheet of silk all the way to the golden horizon. Lying by the hotel pool
The empty train seat looked inviting, and all three of us stared at it, then looked away, not daring to either take it, or offer it to the other. This train from Clapham Junction to Surrey was absolutely packed. But when someone got up and there was a seat right next to me, I realised
‘This is a New York strut,’ said the builder boyfriend as he wedged in place a steel bar, bracing shut our bedroom door to prevent us being murdered in our beds. We had been settling in for the night. The BB had been about to close the farmyard gates when a car swept inside them
‘Printers are evil,’ said the office supplies salesman after I texted him to complain that my new printer was not working. A day earlier he had installed it perfectly, and it worked perfectly – all the while he was standing there. Then he left, and the devilish thing looked at me and thought: ‘I’ll have
The anger management counsellor stormed through the door and shouted at me to turn the heating up. Hello to you too, I thought, but I was polite because I realise we are going to get difficult customers doing B&B in West Cork, where tourists come from all over the world. At first, however, I didn’t
‘Where are my empty plastic bottles?’ I ran around the house screaming, after discovering my stash had disappeared. The government in Ireland has done something with the recycling laws that has made people into wild-eyed scavengers. It has introduced a scheme whereby you can feed all your empty bottles and cans into a machine in
‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a series of mini rungs into place on two mini rails. The builder boyfriend keeps going to check but the hedgehog seems very happy, snoozing away in its comfy box I should have known. Why did
‘My name is Love,’ typed the help assistant, ‘and I’m a member of the Airbnb community support team.’ I was using one of those chat boxes, where someone from the company you’re grappling with, embodied in a flashing cursor, interacts with you in print on a live chat screen. I am kind and polite, I
My friend replied to my text with seven sets of animal paw prints, interspersed with pink hearts and rounded off with a cat face. This was in reply to me telling her it had been nice to see her when she stayed with us in West Cork. I squinted at these emojis, trying to make
My passport and driving licence sat on the counter but the girl stared back at me, repeating her demand. ‘I need your DVLA check code,’ she said. I told her I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was on about. ‘I need your DVLA check code,’ she said again, doing her best ‘computer says
The TV talent show star was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and would be checking into our house long before we were ready to open it as a B&B. I said yes to the lady in the village who organises events, and she told me to expect this singer who is very popular in
The sound of the little cart on the lane came first and then the sight of the pony clip-clopping towards our gate. An old woman, as old as the hills, was sitting atop the cart jiggling the reins as she jogged the pony expertly down the road. An old woman, as old as the hills,
Every time I have a protracted ding-dong with a big organisation, I put in a request under data protection law to see what they’ve been saying about me behind my back. Anyone can do this. If you get into a row with a charity after complaining they’ve put your direct debit up without telling you,
My neighbour had a surgical procedure and keeps telling me about it. Every time she starts, I shout ‘No! Please stop!’, because I’m squeamish. At the risk of distressing anyone else who is squeamish, I do need to say that she had her eyeball injected, because of what followed. Three people in four days –
The little toy shop stood at the highest point of a steep winding lane of shops all painted different colours, near the harbour. So quaint, so beguiling and magical was this place, it was like walking into your childhood memory box. On the shelves of games on the back wall I found KerPlunk, Connect 4,
‘Where’s the eye hospital?’ shouted pretty much everyone standing outside a building signposted eye hospital in Irish. ‘An tAonad Oftailmeolaiochta’ read the sign on the brand new building and then in much smaller letters underneath ‘Opthalmology’, which is one of those English words that twists the tongue and isn’t much easier. Good for the Irish,
‘Zip my head in,’ he said, after climbing into a white jumpsuit with a mesh helmet. It was a beekeeper’s outfit, but the effect was less apicultural and more like the scene in E.T. where the special agents in biohazard suits come for the alien. The builder boyfriend was struggling with the zip around his
Relationships are about compromise and no wonder so many of us come a cropper in this department when we don’t embrace this central truth. There is a man out there (using the term loosely) who would dutifully follow my orders to go to a fancy boutique during his trip to London and buy me an
‘Horses – beautiful, noble, intelligent creatures,’ said the neighbour I was having tea with. ‘There speaks someone who has never had to deal with them,’ I said, for I had been run ragged by our four horses since the builder boyfriend had left me at the house in West Cork and had gone to London
My one finished bathroom featured a sink so small I could only wash one hand in it at a time, as water spilled over the edge. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed, while I stood in the newly installed en suite to the main bedroom, which had somehow got smaller since it was renovated while I
