Conspiracy theories

‘Data-free vegans incoming by taxi,’ I texted the builder boyfriend, to alert him to the possibility of triple trouble. Quadruple really, for they were also American. The young eco-tourists from the West Coast didn’t want to switch on roaming on their phones, for they were interrogating me about the route by text while at the airport. I knew they were lefty environmental types because when the girl booked she told me she was travelling to Europe to learn about ‘natural building’. After the course, she and her boyfriend would be heading to Ireland for what she called ‘some misty time’. I don’t know whether that was a euphemism for sex.

The solar panel fitter was eating his fried breakfast when the talkative vegans came into the kitchen. They surveyed his plate of bacon, eggs, sausage and black pudding with a look of disgust before helping themselves to cereal, which they doused in the soya milk they had gone to the supermarket to buy, because I refuse to stock milk alternatives. What people eat is now a political issue hotter than the Middle East. It would be easier and safer for me to ask a B&B guest’s views on a two-state solution than say: ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ When I ask a guest what they want for breakfast, the

‘Please do NOT wash up!’ reads the makeshift sign I have fixed above the kitchen sink. It instructs our B&B guests to leave their dirty dishes on the side, which sounds ridiculous. But we cannot convince anyone to put their plates and cutlery in the dishwasher any more, because they all seem to have bought into the latest conspiracy theory. The Canadian was making his way through a plateful of eggs like Cool Hand Luke. He was very young and good-looking, so watching him devour eggs at my kitchen table elicited mixed feelings in me. I couldn’t be cross, given how lovely he looked as he performed his bowel-defying feat.

‘Please do NOT wash up!’ reads the makeshift sign I have fixed above the kitchen sink. It instructs our B&B guests to leave their dirty dishes on the side, which sounds ridiculous. But we cannot convince anyone to put their plates and cutlery in the dishwasher any more, because they all seem to have bought into the latest conspiracy theory. You may think anti-vaxers like me are annoying enough. But please give me credit for never being so barmy as to become an anti-dishwasherer. The anti-dishwasherers are way worse than the anti-vaxers for a whole host of reasons. So far they seem to be flying under the radar of the

‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a series of mini rungs into place on two mini rails. The builder boyfriend keeps going to check but the hedgehog seems very happy, snoozing away in its comfy box I should have known. Why did I even ask? Of course he was making a hedgehog rescue ladder. The BB doesn’t like to admit it, but beneath the gruff exterior he has such a soft spot for all living creatures that he often bends down to pick up stranded worms from pavements and roads. It is a charming contradiction in his

The TV talent show star was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and would be checking into our house long before we were ready to open it as a B&B. I said yes to the lady in the village who organises events, and she told me to expect this singer who is very popular in Ireland, and his band, who would be performing at the local folk festival. Kids, babies, female friends holding babies. I leaned to my friend: ‘They can’t all be staying at mine, can they?’ I spent weeks trying to make our partially renovated Georgian house look acceptable, and then the builder boyfriend had to go to

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. The doctor reminded me of Dr Meade from Gone With the Wind when he’s about to start amputating limbs It’s rather like an episode of Heartbeat, and

At the Centre for Rare Diseases, the car park was full and lots of people were milling about. I pulled into a private space I wasn’t meant to be in so that I could let my mother out of the car by the front door. I then sat in the car waiting, watching the rare people come and go. On further inspection of the website, it turns out that a rare disease is not necessarily something that happens rarely. A rare disease is a condition affecting less than one in 2,000 people. However, ‘with more than 7,000 individual rare diseases, their collective prevalence is about one in 17 of the