Dear Daddy,

REMEMBER when I was five? You didn’t have a car then and you got the bus to Ardee on Christmas Eve to get a few ‘messages’. When I heard the bus pulling up, I stood on a chair at the window to watch you coming in. I fell off and cut my ear.

You hugged me and soothed me and, as if by magic, produced a beautiful book of fairy tales to my delight and astonishment.

Remember when I was a teenager and you would collect my friends and me from the local dance in your A40 at two o’clock in the morning? Sometimes it would be a Sunday night and you would get up at 5am, give yourself an insulin injection and head off to work. You would be laying tarmacadam while I was still dreaming.

Remember when I got my first job and you gave me some advice? You said to save a little each week and it will build up. I am doing that and I don’t miss the fiver a week that I put away.

You saved for years, rearing a calf or two every year in our rented cottage garden, so that after several years you were able to buy a house for your family, mortgage free.

Remember the good time we had at my wedding last year? You paid for the meal and did an Irish dance, a hornpipe I think, at the reception and had tears in your eyes as we drove away on our honeymoon that evening.

I am sure that you miss work now that you are not feeling the best at times. I appreciate the fact that you often call while we are at work and prepare the vegetables for our dinner.

You say it passes the time for you, but I am sure you could find more fun things to do.

I would feel silly saying “I love you” to your face, so I am writing it down. You will probably laugh when you read it. I am looking forward to many more years with you in my life, so look after yourself — and maybe think about giving up the fags. My father died about 10 months after I got married, collapsing at a football match aged 61. He had left the fire set and ready to be lit on his return if it was a cool evening and a scythe hanging on a branch of a tree, having cut half of the garden. My 21-year-old brother finished it a few days later. I was 22 and his anniversary is on the 28th of this month, the 36th year. Bernadette Carroll, Castletown, Kilpatrick, Navan, Co Meath

Dear Friend,

ICALL you “friend” even though our encounter was brief and for my part, like a lot of things, it didn’t result in any obvious resolution.

It was Christmas Eve and the wind was whistling up the Liffey. I shivered as I rushed up the quays for a quick coffee. I saw your crouched figure in a derelict doorway lit by the sinking sun.

Just ahead of me, a young garda also spotted you. You