The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
My Saturday
Weekending well with author Marian Keyes
9am I do the Irish Times cryptic crossword in bed, while Tony [Marian’s husband] is out running. We live on the coast in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, in a house built in 1840. At the moment we’re not allowed to go further than five kilometres from our homes.
10am I have porridge with Greek yogurt and berries, wearing my Toast nightshirt (like Johnny Rose wears in Schitt’s Creek). Porridge is the most comforting thing ever invented. 11am I spend Saturday pottering. I’ve always been an enthusiastic online shopper, but it’s gone through the roof during lockdown. I’ve bought some Josh Wood hair dye. Tony does it for me occasionally, while I sit on the bathroom floor. Midday I might do Yoga with Adriene on Youtube for 45 minutes – she has been a lifesaver through all of this.
1pm I’ll go for a walk and check on my mother, Mary, who lives nearby. I don’t go into the house as the figures are so high. She lives alone and I miss her. RTE, the Irish TV station, puts Mass on every day, so she watches that. 2pm I have a summer book deadline, a sequel to Rachel’s Holiday, which I wrote 22 years ago. I write in the spare bedroom with an energising Neom candle. Recording my radio show [where Marian reads her non-fiction writing] at home was an intimate experience. Tony has his own study. When we bought our house, we were hoping to have lots of children. In the end, we weren’t able to have any, but the upside is that we’re not tripping over each other. 4pm My younger brother, Tadhg, lives near, too, and calls round with his children. I get so much happiness from my siblings [Marian has four]. 6pm Tony and I share the cooking. We’ve tried Nigel Slater’s aubergines with halloumi, pomegranate and mint, and Nigella’s fish finger bhorta, which is delicious. 8pm We watch a lot of Walter Presents subtitled shows. Nordic Murders, which is actually German, is great. 10pm I go to bed at 10pm. I’ve just started Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, about inherited trauma. Tony comes to bed at 11.30pm. It was our 25th wedding anniversary in December. I think if you marry somebody kind, you have a better chance than if you marry a bad boy.
Between Ourselves with Marian Keyes, Thursdays, 6.30pm on BBC Radio 4; Grown Ups is out now in paperback