Michael Harding begins our chat by telling a little story: “Jimmy is a middle-aged man and he is at his mother’s deathbed. For the first time in his life, he tells her how much she means to him and how much he loves her. In the middle of pouring out his heart, mammy wakes up and says to Jimmy: ‘Would you ever stop talking.’”

It’s a great way of illustrating how difficult the ground can be when it comes to expressing our emotions. It’s ground well travelled by author and columnist Michael Harding, who says most people feel the same way he does but he is able to talk and write about that common experience in an ordinary way.

After the resounding critical and popular success of Staring at Lakes*, his latest book Hanging with the Elephant tells the story of what men do when left to their own devices – talking to the cat and going to the supermarket, he reckons. It is also a meditation on grief and the death of his mother.

“My mother died two years ago at the age of 96. She had been grumpy in her old age and now I realise this was because of loneliness and isolation. I took my time sorting through her things and in so doing I re-discovered the beautiful woman she was. In her prayer book I found four clippings from the Angle Celt – her wedding notice, the notice of my birth and that of my brother and the death notice of her husband. These were the important milestones of her life.”

He says women take great pride in their men but that the relationship between a mother and her first-born son can be tricky.

“The first born takes on the responsibility of making his mother proud, there isn’t the same onus on younger sons and this makes for a lighter relationship between mother and son.”

Michael Harding has written openly and honestly about his depression, but he’s equally at home talking about the human search for happiness.

“So often we are happy without realising it. So we need to trust ourselves and reaffirm people to do what they think is right. Don’t discount our instincts – we have the answers within ourselves.”

So it will be a real pleasure to discover some of those answers when we present An Evening with Michael Harding as part of the programme for the evening before the Women & Agriculture conference.

Apart from Michael, the package includes dinner, bed and breakfast, and laughter yoga with Fiona Hoban, as well as musical entertainment. It costs €85 per person sharing. The conference ticket plus teas and lunch costs €50.

Staring at Lakes won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2013 and was voted Book of the Year by the John Murray Show Listeners’ Choice Awards.