I am a perimenopausal woman, so about two minutes ago, at a dog being adopted on Insta.

Last week, while I was wet-wrapping my child’s chronic eczema.

About five minutes ago; I cry easily.

Watching the Olympics.

A few weeks ago, we spent a long weekend going around West Cork, and I was so happy it amazed me. My husband doesn’t always make me happy around the house, but add a road and some scenery and the combination can be very powerful.

When I was seven I wanted to be a nun. When I was eight, I wanted to be a boy so that I could be anything I wanted. Also, of course, I wanted to be Samantha in Bewitched.

Catherine Corless, who spent her own money to secure birth certificates for the unrecorded dead children of the Tuam mother and baby home.

I was not great with my mother-in-law, who was a very gentle woman. I thought she would be an uninvited part of my life for ever, but she died early and I wished I had been more open and patient.

Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

When I was 17 I took on a class of six-year-olds for a week. When the Angelus rang at noon, they stood up in silence and I realised I was supposed to recite the prayer, which I did not know. I said: “There will be no Angelus today because of that child fidgeting at the back.”