Hilary Fannin: I’ve been writing this column since I was 50. Time for a break
Thank you for listening but it’s time for me to recalibrate and reset
My father bought two bunches of flowers the day I was born, one for my mother, the other for his girlfriend
Hilary Fannin’s Year: For Halloween I dress up as a 60-year-old with peroxide blonde hair, a chain-store jumper and too much eye make-up, and lie on the couch with the cat, eating fun-size Mars bars. It’s wonderful
As I listened, I remembered us leaving a club in the 1980s, my red tights ripping under my feet because I’d lost my shoes
Hilary Fannin: We expected our lives to become richer as we got older. But it’s easy to feel increasingly alone. This Christmas I’ll raise a glass to absent friends
She’s in a very nice coat. He has a carefully trimmed beard. I tune in to their loudly whispered argument
Hilary Fannin: I overhear their contretemps when our trolleys briefly kiss in the domestic war zone otherwise known as Ikea
Hilary Fannin: What is lurking in the stockings of the lovely people? Vibrators
Only 380-ish hours left until Christmas and not a child in the house washed, as Great-Aunt Delphinia would say
Hilary Fannin: I gradually lost any true sense of time or place and drifted into oblivion
I had an online chat with a robot. Suffice it to say that the bot and I had a discordant communication, neither of us quite understanding the other
Hilary Fannin: I didn’t know whether to bring an umbrella or a swimsuit
Tangled memories, good intentions and a dead bird on a weirdly warm November beach walk
Hilary Fannin: Would I like to whip out my card for €650 silk pyjamas? I lied with such ease it scared me
As I was already on the top floor of the store, with no pressing inducement to ride the escalator down again, so I’d wandered into its Christmas zone
Hilary Fannin: My layer of self-protection has been sandblasted away
Maybe it’s the time of year, or a relentless low-level sense of helplessness in the face of world events
Hilary Fannin: She asked with startling clarity if we had once been great friends. Yes, I said, great, great friends
Hilary Fannin: The last time I saw her she was in the hospital on the outskirts of the town we were revisiting, her faculties being smoked out by disease
Hilary Fannin: We shared a rickety cottage by the sea with a ghost — a real one, with a beautiful neck
My mother, sensing she was not alone in the kitchen, saw a young woman drift through the hall
Hilary Fannin: As a child, this park was a place not to go to alone
Here, gangs of teenage boys in tight denim jackets and polished boots met to fight similarly attired gangs
Hilary Fannin: The nuns split us into girls who did science and girls who did domestic science
How opportune that a pal should send me the Homekeeper’s Diary 2023, by Francis Brennan
Hilary Fannin: Bilious feelings of rebellion bubble up during the royal funeral. So I turn to a far wiser monarch
Gywneth of Goopdom, my queen of all that life throws up, bends my mind this time with an article about ‘living funerals’
Hilary Fannin: When I visit my sister I am hit by the realisation that she is happy there despite her battles
My sister has been ill. I’ve come to see her after three years of phone calls and unsatisfactory Zoom connections