The day starts early. Jack, who's doing his Leaving Cert, has classes at 8.30 and Elly, who's finishing her second year in medical school has classes at 9, so they leave the house by 8 a.m.

The first thing they do is put on music in their rooms. Currently I wake to the sound of hip-hop or Mendelssohn, sometimes both together.

John drives them in on his way into work. Inevitably, two people are sitting in the car at 8 a.m. with a straggler pounding on the stairs on a last-minute search for books, lab coats or lunch money. Then there is absolute peace and I turn on Morning Ireland. John has to settle for more of the kids' music in the car.

I am the last in from work in the evening. John and I try to get out for a run every second evening, but that has now become more of a geriatric jog around the local park. Jack, who trains occasionally in the park, refuses point-blank to be seen with us.

I like to cook, and that takes time. We eat late - hardly ever before 9 p.m. The kids complain about this and regularly wish out loud that we were like a normal family and ate at 6 p.m. In my own defence I would say that dinner is usually a leisurely meal. We chat a lot together - apart from the weekend when Jack and Elly are rushing out to one thing and another. Both kids are very good mimics and their accounts of their day are sharp and funny. I'm afraid they find our accounts of work much more boring.

Invariably, one of the four of us claims to be under particular pressure of work and in need of special sympathy and exemption from normal domestic duties. This favoured position is keenly competed for.

Elly loves to play the piano and we often listen to her for an hour or two. Although her taste runs to more classical pieces, she has gradually incorporated pieces we love - Joni Mitchell, Cole Porter, Sinatra or Moore's Melodies. Jack loves film. He's now watching on video all the films we watched as students - Truffaut, Bunuel, De Palma - and even the films my parents watched in the 1940s. Last summer he worked in XtraVision in Rathmines and I think he only left when he had exhausted the entire stock. Laser in Ranelagh should now name an aisle after him. Every Sunday - bar major work commitments - we go for a long walk together in Wicklow. It's become a way of touching base with each other. All the fractured bits of the week get bound up in some way. Although everybody may be in a scrappy mood on the way down, we're usually all in very good form on the way back. That's a routine we've had since Elly and Jack were very young and, miraculously, they still seem to like it.

We often stay out for dinner - sometimes they fall asleep on the way home and it reminds me of when they were much younger.

On holiday in France we used to allow them to stay up really late. On those magical, balmy nights, they used to struggle heroically against sleep, in case they'd miss anything. But, inevitably, they would succumb and we would carry them, fast asleep, in our arms up to bed.

As they've grown up, they sometimes come home long after we've gone to bed. Like most parents, I suspect, we miss that cosy, safe feeling we had when they were small, tucked up in bed, and we felt we could protect them from anything. We still go on holidays together. Every summer we do the marathon drive to Italy and still manage to stay on speaking terms. My mother also joins us. So we have three-generational living in Tuscany.

I suppose it's inevitable that this will come to an end before long but I hope we will always be able to join up for at least part of the holidays.

Last year John was in New York and Jack went with him. They visited every music store in Brooklyn and every film location in Manhattan. Elly was working there for the summer and she joined them. We have a great photograph of them outside Tiffany's, which Elly - a major Audrey Hepburn fan - insisted they visit. Sometimes I look at Elly and Jack and I can't believe that they are so grown up. For the first few years after they were born, I used to write notes in the back of my Penelope Leach and Dr Spock books - comments on what they were saying and doing at different stages. They love reading those accounts now and I'm really sorry I didn't keep it up.

I'm amazed how much you forget, though at the time you think you will remember everything. It seems like yesterday they were babies. And yet I feel they have always been in my life. Seeing them develop into such interesting people has been the best thing in my life.