Maurice isn’t back home yet and there’s no sign of his return. As you know, he’s out in Lisnapookybawna catching up on a backlog of essays and projects for a course he’s doing. It should have been finished months ago but he’s like the church; breathless and late for everything.

He’s so happily ensconced in Lisnapookybawna I think he might never come back. He even got himself a dog, a stray like himself that likes nothing better than eating, drinking and stretching himself out in front of the fire.

I hope he doesn’t intend bringing that mutt into Killdicken when he decides to return. But return he must as council business is cranking up after the summer.

I’m not exactly looking forward to his coming back. Is that an awful thing for a mother to say? Since he left, I’ve become convinced that adult children are not meant to live with their parents except in extraordinary circumstances – for instance, where one or other or both are candidates for sainthood.

As you well know, neither Maurice nor I are saints. In fact, we might have difficulty making it into purgatory – although, in my case, I feel I have my purgatory done.

Anyway, since he decamped to Lisnapookybawna I’ve become used to my own company and my own independence and the thought of his return leaves me with a touch of claustrophobia.

I don’t know if it’s a woman thing, but the older I get the more self-contained I feel and the more I see other people as an encumbrance. It’s a bit like sex and the older woman. When my husband passed away 25 years ago I did miss the marriage bed but for the last two decades it has been the last thing on my mind.

At this stage, I’d prefer to go to the dentist than have sex with man or woman. And the thought of sharing as much as a square inch of my gorgeous double bed with a snoring, farting male makes me shudder to the core.

You’re probably wondering where this puts my relationship with Stefan, my Polish friend, but let me put the record straight; our friendship is purely platonic, we simply take the bare look of one another. His older sister in Poland isn’t well and he’s spending a lot of time there so we’re living separate lives.

Anyway, as a single lone dweller you develop a little routine for yourself as life takes on a sort of a routine, an almost monastic rhythm. As regards meals, I only need cook one egg and boil it to my satisfaction. There’s no one saying: “Sure we might have a fry.”

I can listen to any radio station I want and don’t have to listen to Willy De Wig Ryan talking through his hairpiece on De Sticks FM every morning. As a local politician, Maurice has to tune in to that tantalising hoor in case he’ll miss any local controversy.

De Wig gives me indigestion. One day last week I inadvertently turned to his programme as I was just about to take the top off my egg when he started to describe a trip to the chiropodist that included a detailed description of the paring of his toenails. I had to put the egg in the bin and hardly ate a bite for the rest of the day. Living on my own, I don’t have to listen to him or his likes.

Another thing, you don’t have to make any arrangements when you live on your own. You don’t have to agree with anyone about when you’ll do this, that or the other. The more I think about this, the better I like it. Perhaps I should tell Maurice to stay in Lisnapookybawna, that we’re better off in different houses. It would be a great arrangement and seemed like a great idea until I remembered that he can’t drive.

Amn’t I to be pitied, in my 70s and still tied to my son as if he was still in the pram?

Madge McInerney called by the other night and I let her in on my musings. She wasn’t at all impressed. “Listen Biddy,” says she, “there’s many a woman living alone that would give her soul to have a son, a daughter or even a farting, snoring, belching husband somewhere in the house to take the silence out of the air and the dampness out of a mattress.”

“I never looked at it that way,” says I.

“Well do,” she said, “because I’m looking at it that way and it’s not pretty. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

She was no sooner gone than the mobile rang, it was Maurice.

“Listen Mam,” says he, “I was thinking I might stay out here to Lisnapookybawna.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” says I. CL