Will I ever get my HRT?

The novelty of living in a place where a policeman called Ambrose lives in a house whose door you can knock on if you need him will never wear off on me.

I’ve asked around and no one here can remember any crime, aside from years ago they seem to recall there was a murder. But except for the odd murder, policing in West Cork usually consists of an old person having a broken oil burner and Ambrose taking them a portable heater.

It’s rather like an episode of Heartbeat, and feels as though one has gone back in time by at least 60 years. Every time I drive past Ambrose’s house with its Garda sign above the front door, I feel a surge of happiness.

There is also a doctor in a tiny bungalow at the end of the high street. I thought it was a good idea to pop by and introduce myself, in case I ever needed him. An English lady was sitting behind the reception desk looking very flustered as I went in. She said she was usually the nurse but the receptionist was off sick so she was the nurse and the receptionist that day. She was delighted when I told her where I was living. ‘Oh, you’re my new neighbour!’ she said, revealing that she lived a few doors down from me, which is to say, two farms and a hundred acres away.

‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ she said, nodding to the ramshackle arrangements. ‘It doesn’t look much but it’s terribly good here, honestly.’ I said I bet it was.

Papers were heaped up everywhere, the phone was ringing constantly. She snatched it up at one point and said ‘Hold the line’, then put it down, then called over the desk into the waiting room, then turned back to me.