The television was on in another room, with someone zapping from station to station. I could hear outbreaks of music, incomplete advertisements and sawn-off statements from half-familiar voices.
With a 10-second slice of time, I realised a) that the programme was Questions & Answers, b) that the half-familiar voice talking at the time belonged to Pat Rabbitte, and c) that he was talking about me and clearly upset about a recent column written by me.
Then the zapper operator cut him off, opting instead for a nature documentary about the parenting skills of penguins, and I went on with what I was doing.
It would not have been so a year ago. Back then I was a politician. A different species, with a built-in guilt monitor influencing even what you do late in the evening at home.
Before I left politics, I was afraid to miss a current affairs TV or radio programme. The one you missed was the one that started a crisis or brought down a government.
If you heard yourself mentioned in such a programme, unless the mention came from a close political friend and colleague, a deadly cold fear came over you. What had you missed? What had you got wrong? What had you said which was now being interpreted in some negative way?
Now, if I watch TV, I unashamedly watch it for enjoyment and, since one of the most boring aspects of TV is the unending bumper-car collision of politicians prating about what this present Government is achieving (as opposed to what the last lot failed to do) or about how in 1982 your lot failed to grasp this nettle, that means avoiding a great many current affairs programmes.
Although hearing oneself mentioned by Pat Rabbitte inevitably carries the probability that one is being criticised, when one is earning a living at writing rather than at public representing, any mention is useful.
Which is not to say I'm going to write a thank-you note to Pat for trying unsuccessfully to case me as a racist, but I sympathise with him as he readjusts to what I've always felt was his best role: opposition killer wasp.
Adjusting to the loss of power is bad enough. Adjusting to the loss of a seat is much worse. When defeated at the polls, there is always an unfinished misery involved; a sense that things are not finished, that another go would re-establish a career.
At the same time the defeated politician finds himself or herself in a cold unprecedented isolation. When the politician is without function, friends drop away and constituents go elsewhere. The name is dropped off invitation lists, which at first seems like a calculated insult.
The truth - that it is an uncalculated insult to someone who effectively no longer exists - is even harder to bear. All of this is sodden through and through with feelings of defeat, regret, personal failure and rage at colleagues.
Leaving politics under one's own steam, undefeated, as I was lucky enough to do, is not easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than on the toe of the electorate's boot.
Going by choice is fraught with fears. Top of my fear list was a doubt that I would make a living. Second was the possibility that after a month or so I would become depressed. Third was a feeling that anything other than the politics in which I had been steeped for all of my life would be a boring second-best.
It is such a relief after 12 months to say it ain't so. The mortgage payments are up to date and there's food in the fridge. Writing has put me in touch with people and ideas I would otherwise have missed.
I'm amazed by the amount of mail I get from readers of The Irish Times, for example, and retrospectively chastened to find that the volume of mail is perhaps 10 times greater in response to a nonpolitical column. The Internet has made instant response possible, and I find myself in animated debate with correspondents from all over the world.
Just as I was never any good at personal marketing in my constituency, I'm no good at personal marketing as a freelance. I listen to all the good advice about networking and I don't do any of it.
I may have to if the food in the fridge runs out, but so far work has arrived with its hands up, like the programme I do on Teilifis na Gaeilge with Alan Dukes. It goes out once a month. I'd happily do it once a day, so good is the chemistry between us and so rewarding is the unstructured interview format.
A friend of mine gave me a lecture when I was leaving politics about matching income to outgoings. It was updated Micawber stuff and it frightened me to death, because at that point adding up my projected outgoings and my hopeful financial incomings suggested break-even was just barely possible.
One of the factors I forgot at the time, when I was confessing frivolous expenditures like manicures, was unfrivolous expenditures like raffle tickets. Every politician is a sitting duck for the raffle-ticket seller.
No politician can afford to be seen as ungenerous or unsupportive of whatever worthy cause is in question. If you're not a politician it doesn't cost you a thought to indicate that you have a couple of pet charities and, other than those, the world will have to get along without your financial aid.
The financial difference this makes is unbelievable. Going back over my finances of the past couple of years, I discovered that in one four-month period I had spent £1,100 on raffle tickets. My bank manager's equanimity in this current year is justified not so much by my pulling in lots of money as by saving on "political" spending.
Much as I hate to contribute to the well-charted unwillingness of people in other walks of life to get into politics these days I have to admit that I think they're dead right. The last year for me has been as enjoyable as a 12-month mitch.
If I go to the supermarket, I come home with groceries, not with a list of constituents' complaints. Furthermore, I can now say that in print and not dread the immediate reaction, which is: "So she didn't like being approached when she was shopping and asked to do things for her own constituents?"
The most successful politicians in the next 10 years are going to be the smiling service-providers. The ones who welcome the local ombudsman role, who are delighted to send letters to Government Departments chivvying them into doing what they're going to do anyway, who concentrate, at all times, on being likeable.
The ones who have no problem taking every idea through committee after committee rather than making a decision on the merits. The ones who are tough as titanium while giving an impression of soft affability. To me, that's the job specification from hell.
Of course, there are things I miss. I miss the wonderful camaraderie in Leinster House. After the general election, I had to make a conscious decision to stay away from the place, otherwise I think the withdrawal symptoms would have been worse than they were. Being present without the possibility of participation would have been torture.
That loss is balanced by the possibility of having dinner with close friends on a Friday night: up to my resignation that could only happen during August, and even then tended to be tainted by political discussion.
"Been there, done that" sounds dismissive. I'm very conscious that it was a huge privilege to have been there at the time I was there and to have "done that" in relation to the issues of the day. But now, my political past is prologue and my relationship with former constituents radically different. Now we're just friends or nodding acquaintances.
Of course, there are still medical cards to be accessed and sanitation problems to be tackled. For those matters and others, Margaret Cox is your only woman.