LIFE LESSONS

KATY HARRINGTON Saying no to social obligation (three times)

I’M sitting in an old bed in my new flat on Saturday morning, cup of tea in hand (I have a kettle now!), bagel with avocado, red chilli and crumbled feta within arm’s reach and a gloopy green tea clay face mask slathered on my bulb.

I feel like Lady Muck. And so, I shall behave as such. Today I plan on doing precisely nothing, alone, which is fast becoming my favourite thing to do. In order to achieve my goal, I need to stare down the barrel of social obligation and say no, no, thrice no! It will require determination and unwavering dedication.

Thankfully I am a woman of mettle. First to deal with a group of badly behaved Irish people I met on a night out who have been texting about a birthday brunch which I have no intention of going to. “I’m on the dry and too boring for words, have fun without me,” I write. Group chat silenced. Job done!

Then to a pal who has had a baby and is threatening to visit. “The flat is terribly cold (fact) and up four flights of stairs (fact two) so it’s an awful place to bring a baby, ever,” I explain. “Come meet us at the pub then,” she suggests. Spending the afternoon in a packed pub watching people eat fatty pork swimming in gravy and grotesque Yorkshire puddings WITH A NEWBORN BABY. Are you mad? “I’d love to,” I say, “but I’m on the dry and even more tedious than usual” (fact three).

Finally, to the dear friend who has no interest in rugby who has invited herself over to watch the rugby. This must be handled swiftly because I WILL NOT have her talking over the match so I keep it simple: “I want to be alone.” The Greta Garbo approach.

Now, I must go, my face mask is turning to cement.

ELEANOR GOGGIN Latest binge gives me taste for fresh diet

IT’S getting worse and worse. My attitude to dieting. I’m beginning to think I’ve given up caring. I threaten every day I’ll try to stop eating rubbish and every day without fail I eat copious amounts of said same rubbish.

I went back to my fatty class a few months ago and from the moment I signed up I gained weight. The rebel in me. Week in week out I steadily gained weight. The exact antithesis of what I was meant to be doing. They looked at me appalled. I thought they were going to send a psychologist out to me. And I’m afraid now to rejoin in case they tell me they don’t want my type. I’m giving them a bad name. Destroying their credibility.

So I’m going to go it alone. Now I’ve been saying this for the last few weeks and I swore when all the crap was gone out of the house I’d start. And then I saw special offers in my local garage of six bars for three euro in a packet. And I bought some. I won’t say how many but ‘some’.

Now I’m sitting on the couch at night like Grandad in Mrs Brown’s Boys. Hands folded over my impressive stomach, drifting in and out of consciousness. I’m exhausted from eating.

I had what can only be described as a gnawing hunger last night and I got in to the car and drove to the nearest chipper for a double burger, mushrooms in batter, onions in batter and enough chips to feed a barrack of soldiers. That’s not normal behaviour.

And to compound the whole issue I had to go for tests the other day and they measured my height. It transpires I’m growing down and my girth is increasing. I was 5ft 6 and now I’m 5ft 4. Soon I’ll be wider than I’m tall. I’ll start again tomorrow.

AINE O’CONNOR The turbo tedium of morning chatter

NEITHER Girlchild nor I are especially chirpy morning birds so on the school run, if we cannot muster enthusiasm to practise French verbs, the radio fills the spaces our brains cannot. We don’t really want too much fact or news, we would ideally just like someone to play us music and not chat too much. Do you know how hard that is to find? Presumably someone, somewhere at some point did research which revealed that the ideal morning radio content, even on music stations, involved a whole lot of talk. And not just any talk — attempted humour, usually delivered by pairs of people who seem to find each other side-splitting. Banter I believe they would call it.

Humour is a subjective thing at the best of times. Comedy inserts often work and if they don’t they’re swiftly over. These are not the issue. The issue is The Banter. The prolonged yammering that is meant to sound all casual like but is mostly contrived. And contrived humour is turbo tedious. With the best will in the world a very high proportion of the alleged humour is not going to land. So who decided the morning, stressy with traffic jams, time constraints and potential tetchiness was a good time to inflict such potentially unfunny crap on listeners? And, in the name of all that is holy, WHY?

Some of the stations think it all so chucklicious that they have highlight shows. It’s as if by telling you often enough that it’s funny you might fall for the emperor’s new jokes. The Girlchild and I are beginning to despair. We just want some tunes and less of the bloody forced banter. Are we alone? Or is the channel-wide acceptance that banter is good just as bad as the jokes?