Have you ever purchased a thriving basil plant from the supermarket and brought it home full of hope and recipe ideas, only to watch it wilt and die a few days later on the kitchen window sill?
An affair, the ultimate betrayal and a deal-breaker for couples or a bump in the road that can be ironed out with co-operation and support? Affairs are divisive, in more ways than one, and though a feature of human behaviour since the Stone Age, infidelity remains shrouded in silence and taboo in Ireland.
In an interview with BBC’s Breakfast to promote her new 1,000-page memoir, legendary singer and actress Barbra Streisand (81) made a surprising declaration about what she’d like to do next. “I haven’t had much fun in my life, to tell you the truth,” said the superstar member of the rarefied EGOT club, having won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. “And I wanna have more fun.”
It’s Black Friday, her kids are home from the shop with their sweets to watch The Late Late Toy Show and Pippa O’Connor Ormond (38) is video-calling me from the “dressing room” in her K Club home.
Well, the erstwhile Irish mammy won’t like this question but the evidence is suspicious: has the tradition of over-boiling vegetables put an entire generation off them? (Off the vegetables, we mean, not the mammies, of course.)