I start to read the paper. The home section is my first choice and immediately the juxtaposition of our messy house with other people’s organized havens starts to annoy me. I read enviously about other people’s harmonious existences. I wonder why I am reading this. From time to time Mikey or Joey appears in front of me, begging me to go outside, to sort out an argument between them. My default response is to tell them to work it out between themselves as I was brought up to do as a child. This tactic gets me only so far, and after a while, I come to the conclusion that I may as well go back on to the green to act the referee. I look in the mirror in the hall and I realize that a beard doesn’t suit me and I resolve to shave it off this very afternoon.

After a while I come back in. Maeve is lounging around the sitting room, reading a book. Her shorts seem just a little short for such a day with a chill in the air. I tell her about the dangers of complacency as it is still only April. She duly ignores my concerns and I wonder what kind of a teenager she will become.

She tells me that she is hungry and I agree to go and get some croissants. She gives me that smile, that look of triumph, and I know that I am easily won over, and that I am supposed to be watching their sugar intake and that Jenny thinks that they eat too much crap and she’ll go mad. I don’t care about this today. Where is she now, I ask myself? Wandering about town. Having a little well-deserved break from her work, her work that is incomeless. I wonder in that moment what it is that I deserve.

I go back out to the green and attempt to round up Mikey and Joey. C’mon, lads, let’s get a couple of croissants.

They are busy with the other kids on the green, and so I leave them while I head across the road to the Centra. Mikey says that he’ll see me but Joey has his back to me and that is that. I relax a bit when I think about our local Centra and what it offers to me. I can pretty much buy whatever I need there. It has a fine wine selection and I feel it in my bones that the quality of fruit on offer is often every bit as good, if not better, than the selection in any supermarket. These things matter to me.