I left London 23 years ago pregnant, having become inexplicably afraidHilary Fannin: My urge to go home carried my son and me, and later his father, across the seaFri Jun 07 2019 - 09:30
I couldn’t give a monkey’s what I’m going to wear on the beach this summerHilary Fannin: My anxiety quota has been used up on my work, my children, and the state of the worldFri May 31 2019 - 06:00
‘I suppose I’m lonely,’ she said. ‘Lonely and I never thought I would be’Hilary Fannin: Don’t tell me to take up a sport. Especially golf, said my lonely friendFri May 24 2019 - 06:00
Are big nights out bad in middle age? Sometimes they make us feel less aloneYou’re not as young as you used to be and alcohol is no longer your friendFri May 17 2019 - 06:00
Spring means deluded parents and spray-tanned Holy Communion girlsConservative estimates suggest many families shell out at least €1,000 for the dayFri May 10 2019 - 06:00
Hilary Fannin: I graduated from Trinity College the other day. It’s never too lateIt saddens me to hear people say they’d never have the confidence to return to educationFri May 03 2019 - 08:58
Kim Kardashian and Spice Girls are naked ambition gone viralSpice Girls reveal years-old sex fling, Kim Kardashian announces law career. Oh please, just give it upFri Apr 26 2019 - 07:20
I lay down on the rug and the next thing I’m on the phone to my dead motherHilary Fannin: It had been a dream, but it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt very realFri Apr 19 2019 - 06:00
How does War Horse work? A complex design of bungee cord, cane and leatherPuppeteers inhabiting gargantuan, horse-sized puppets play a key role in bringing this epic story to lifeFri Apr 12 2019 - 06:00
Could I stand naked before a full-length mirror to get my fat cells frozen?Hilary Fannin: A clinic offered to freeze the fat off me but I bottled it at the last minuteFri Apr 12 2019 - 06:00
I am not a huggy person. Don’t worry, my friend said. You can pretend to hug meHilary Fannin: I’m a lumpy, uncomfortable hugger, unless I am moved to hug at my own discretionFri Apr 05 2019 - 06:00
‘The depiction of romantic 1960s life was a warning against time travel’Hilary Fanin goes to The Jersey Boys: ‘In the name of god, how did we survive all that crap?’Fri Mar 29 2019 - 06:00
Women who dreamt of making art ended up making beds and sandwichesHilary Fannin: When I was little women needed husband’s consent to buy washing machineFri Mar 22 2019 - 06:00
If St Patrick arrived in Ireland today, what would he think of us?Hilary Fannin: We were told stories of Hail-Glorious-St Patrick-Dear- Saint-of-Our-IsleFri Mar 15 2019 - 06:00
Pity the dewy-eyed bride with all those wedding rules to followHilary Fannin: You have to have two wedding dresses now, even if you’re only marrying one personFri Mar 08 2019 - 06:00
St David wasn’t just a spiritual leader – the man was rippedHilary Fannin: I’ve been going to the gym for two weeks now. It feels like centuriesFri Mar 01 2019 - 06:00
What I learned talking to a Harvard-educated Zen BuddhistHilary Fannin: I’m not good with self help books. It’s appallingly immature I knowFri Feb 22 2019 - 06:00
Why I enjoyed the tweedy-knickered Leavers showing their front bottomsHilary Fannin: Laughs, a satisfying cry, ‘Calendar Girls’ was nakedly charmingFri Feb 15 2019 - 06:00
My Mum's diary entry when she was 89: ‘Lose Weight Now!’Hilary Fannin: We’ve all glared at bulging buttons. We’re good enough as we areFri Feb 08 2019 - 06:00
I went to a Botox clinic but left with my wrinkles intact. It’s almost subversiveHilary Fannin: I had passed the clinic quite often and wondered about itFri Feb 01 2019 - 06:00
Women of my vintage don’t exist when it comes to sex and allureHilary Fannin: Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos have separated after a ‘long period of loving exploration’. I might be available. Just sayingFri Jan 25 2019 - 06:00
Do other parents lie awake in the dark too, I wonderedHilary Fannin: Or do they just look in the mirror and tell themselves to get on with it?Fri Jan 18 2019 - 06:00
I look at 2019 as though looking at a stranger. Who knows where it will end?Hilary Fannin: I’m full of good ideas for 2019. I’m going to sleep more and drink lessFri Jan 11 2019 - 06:00
No need for the gym. 2019 is Year of the CardiganHilary Fannin: And there was I thinking the new year was going to be about embracing flexitarianismFri Jan 04 2019 - 06:00
Slimming knickers for Christmas? Thanks for nothingHilary Fannin: At least they’ll be useful for catapulting away unwelcome lifestyle adviceFri Dec 28 2018 - 06:00
Gwyneth Paltrow’s pubic hair ‘Fur Oil’: Try Me, reads the stickerHilary Fannin: At Goop, the dachshund and I also peruse the pleasingly pastel vibratorsFri Dec 21 2018 - 06:00
‘I’m a Christmas killjoy. Time to bite down hard on my baubles and get on with it’Hilary Fannin: Seriously, this time of year can be hard to love, with its orgy of consumerism, its debts and its temperamental Christmas lightsFri Dec 14 2018 - 06:00
My Gran would probably have a Tinder profile and be speed-dating in fake pearlsHilary Fannin: I heard my granny was a social climber, laughing behind her slash of red lipstick, which she wore even as a corpseFri Dec 07 2018 - 06:00
‘When I’m gone, I’m gone. And yet I find myself talking to the dead’Hilary Fannin: Learning the hard lesson that grief cannot be ignoredFri Nov 30 2018 - 06:00
'When you’re hirsute, pallid and in baggy jeggings, you’re bound to bump into someone'Hilary Fannin: My fragrant, pretty, well-off school friend became wistful over the persimmonsFri Nov 23 2018 - 06:00
The beam from Baily lighthouse helped my mother sleep againHilary Fannin: In praise of the continuing importance of Irish lighthousesFri Nov 16 2018 - 06:00
After ‘Bake Off’, say hello to ‘The Great Irish Write-Off’Hilary Fannin: What TV show could ever compete with all that moistness and stiffness?Fri Nov 09 2018 - 06:00
Was Meghan and Harry's baby conceived in Dublin?Hilary Fannin: Naming a child is an onerous responsibility but Drumondrina has a nice ring to itFri Nov 02 2018 - 06:00
Are we subtly telling young women they are not good enough?Hilary Fannin: There is something insidious about being told at 17 you have not made the gradeFri Oct 26 2018 - 06:00
People are forgetting what it's like to do their own ironingHilary Fannin: They say the economy is in recovery now and these successful Dragons are reassuring to have aroundFri Oct 19 2018 - 06:00
Do you like my new dress? It’s made out of bin linersHilary Fannin: I’m drawn to the notion of a better self – a calm, centred, eco-selfFri Oct 12 2018 - 06:00
‘Men? In the kitchen? Well shag me sideways Brigid’Hilary Fannin: I’m grateful life blurred the conditioning we received as childrenFri Oct 05 2018 - 06:00
Second adulthood: It’s just another desperate paean to the myth of immortalityHilary Fannin: Like a buttock lift, it’s just another desperate paean to the immortality mythFri Sept 28 2018 - 06:00
Vagina grooming: Brightening up 'down there' is big businessHilary Fannin: Just as we started letting our Brazilians grow out comes a new luminiserFri Sept 21 2018 - 06:00
‘I quite like self-help manuals – as long as I don’t have to read them’Hilary Fannin: Many of the titles seem to assume there are legions of us wandering around in a shadowy vale of varicose veins, baggy bladders and deep regretFri Sept 14 2018 - 06:00
‘Ireland is a changed country. We’ve a Taoiseach that goes to the gym’Whatever happened to the Pope's teenagers?Fri Sept 07 2018 - 06:00
Through the looking glass of booksActive participation in stories helps children develop future mental healthWed Jun 20 2018 - 14:53
My mum’s ashes have been in the urn for nine months. ‘She’s bored. She wants to move on’Hilary Fannin: I had thought we should scatter them over the cosmetics counter in our local chemistFri May 25 2018 - 08:20
I’m tired of women’s bodies being thrown around the morality ballroomHilary Fannin: No-side literature made me hurdle the garden wall to return it to its senderFri May 18 2018 - 06:00
‘There’s something wrong with the cat. I think she’s got dementia’Hilary Fannin: It began when she said she expected to go to Gwyneth Paltrow’s weddingFri May 11 2018 - 06:00
Eurovision 2018: ‘Ireland!’ shouted the winsome Portuguese hostessesWith one vote left, it seemed Ireland wouldn’t break the ill-luck that has dogged us since 2013Tue May 08 2018 - 23:04
Are we modifying our kids, like crops?Hilary Fannin: There is a look that is so ubiquitous it somehow defeats geneticsFri May 04 2018 - 06:00
Move over Meghan Markle – I’ve become a lifestyle guruHilary Fannin: Watch out Gwyneth and Meghan, it's time to splatter the blogosphere with a dose of suburban realismFri Apr 27 2018 - 06:00
Mindy O’Brien’s 10 tips for reducing the use of plasticHilary Fannin: Citing the plastic-bag tax, she said that Ireland had the capacity to influence behaviour at an international levelFri Apr 20 2018 - 06:00
Meghan Markle biography: a fairytale princess story to send you to sleepThe quantity of pointless trivia can't disguise that Andrew Morton's book is entirely toothlessMon Apr 16 2018 - 11:38