I woke up this morning unable to breathe. I'd been dreaming that I was suffocating and when I woke up, I found I still couldn't breathe. I sat straight up in bed and opened my mouth and gulped in some air. Hay fever. Just bloody hay fever making me think I'm dying again. I got up ...
I stared at the self-service till in the supermarket, and it stared back at me. I braced myself and pressed the start button. Bagels - check. The satisfying beep told me I'd successfully united the barcode and the scanner on first go - result! Bread - check. Surely a record? But I didn't reckon on ...
There is so much advice in the world and there are so many memes with wise sayings, but the only one that has stuck in my mind resolutely for years now is "Use the good bath oil". I came across it in a magazine a long time ago - I can't remember now if it ...
I'm filing this firmly under "just a thought, and I might be wrong" but here goes: Running back to the car after the school drop one morning recently, I fished in my pocket for my keys and came out with a piece of paper instead. Still running, and trying to see what the piece of paper was, ...
17 years ago, on New Year's Eve, I turned to my husband and told him my resolutions. I can't remember them precisely now - I think I wanted to learn Italian, teach myself to cook, and break my newly formed post-work shopping habit. We were living in an apartment in Dublin 2, working in an ...
Yes, this is a very niche Christmas gift list. But I've never done a Christmas gift list before, and it struck me that if you know a freelancer, this might be of help. (If you are related to me, got me in Kris Kindle and don't know what to buy me, this won't be of ...
It's kind of a tipping point isn't it - a euro for a stamp. I remember when the price went up, Christmas was the first thing that sprang to mind. 60 cards would mean €60 on stamps. It might just be too much. And over the last week, having seen many sensible people posting on Facebook about ...
"You just end up buying things for them, you never shop for yourself anymore," said a friend of mine, when I was expecting my first baby. And indeed, lots of other people have echoed that since. Many's the mum who has had a rare child-free shopping trip, only to find herself shopping for her kids. I ...
"Well if you could just stop asking stupid questions!" said the loud man on the DART, making me jump. He wasn't talking to me, he was talking to a woman sitting opposite him. My eyebrows went up. Who talks to anyone like that? "Here's another one," he said then, "Why did the dog cross the road?" Ah. ...
I went to U2's last ever Irish concert, in Slane in 2001. It was the best concert I was ever at, made all the more special knowing it was their last one ever. Oh, except for the one I saw in Croke Park some time in the middle of the noughties, before we had kids. ...