Upfront

I'VE HAD MY share of "bathroom floor" moments over the years. That's an official Eat, Pray, Love-ism for the uninitiated. Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her moderately successful book – now a widely panned moderately successful film – about a couple of moments she spends with her nose pressed to the cold bathroom floor when everything becomes clear and she knows which direction her life must take, even if it causes untold upheaval. Gilbert ends up eating, praying and loving in Italy, India and Indonesia, because she is brave enough to follow the wisdom she picked up on the bathroom floor. Lucky her.

Most of my bathroom floor moments have involved cheap cider. The upheaval that resulted was obvious, the only exotic trips were to the chemist for painkillers. But my under-the-duvet moments, although unlikely to lead to a phone call from Oprah any day soon, are the real deal. I had one the other morning: today, I realised, just for today, I am not going to be a nag.

The inevitable inner dialogue ensues. But can you do it? Really? Are you not by now so programmed to nag that the resistance will cause some synapses in your brain to smoulder, glow red and then, finally, explode? Perhaps it’s impossible. Like Vincent Browne waking up one day and promising not to sigh. And, anyway, if you don’t nag how will anything get done around here? Regular readers probably won’t be holding out much hope for my non-nagging day. I heralded the introduction of the frankly overambitious non-nagging week a while back, and it lasted about seven and a half minutes.

Sure enough, before I even get out from under the duvet, I’ve had to bite my tongue for fear of nagging him about the duration of his shower, his decision to wear good shoes instead of trainers to the shops, and his porridge-making methods. I don’t even eat porridge.

Suzanne from Fair Cityis partly responsible for my renewed commitment. She's been nagging Damien, her soap husband, with a zeal that even I can't match. In fairness, he'd been a lying toad about lots of things, and he jacked in his lovely debt-collecting job just because he didn't like getting money back from people who hadn't two cent to rub together. The wimp. "It's a recession, Damo, get over it," is what I recall she said to the crestfallen lump, her nagometer set to harridan. But when she found out that he had copped off with the beautiful, if miserable, young one from next door, her nagging turned into something else. There's no easy way to say this. Suzanne set about poor Damo with a snooker cue.

Ordinarily, I’d just see this for what it is: a soap opera’s desperate attempt to get a rake of headlines while looking as though it is trying to highlight an oft-neglected social ill, in this case domestic violence as meted out by women. But because every time I look under the stairs I see the box containing my own Damo’s snooker cue, the contrived soap scenario kind of, shall we say, hit home.

I am happy to report that for once in my life I made a decision and I followed through. Instead of opening my mouth to criticise I did something useful. I made a stew. Cleaned the floor. Put on a wash. And another. Instead of moaning I took action to improve the issue I would normally have moaned about. It was a dream of a day. The most productive one I’ve had in ages. I liked myself better. I liked everything better. On the grass near the fancy-pants playground in St Stephen’s Green, I lay on my back and looked at the sky and felt at peace. The bells from the fancy-pants playground reminded me of trips to ashrams in India. Eat (pray and love) your heart out, Gilbert.

Naturally, on a day when I've bitten my tongue beyond all recognition, I deserve some reward from my Damo. A little foot rub as an accompaniment to The X Factor, perhaps. But he doesn't seem to have noticed. "Rub your own foot," he says. I think after all these years nit-picking, I deserve that. And I also think that this non-nagging thing can't be just for one day. It has to be for life.

I know I will fall off the wagon – the nagon, if you will – but I feel sure I am going to be an ex-nagger one day, the way I became an ex-smoker. It is eminently doable, and I am going to do it one day at a time whether anybody, including him, notices. I have set my nagometer to zen. Everything looks better. A snooker cue is just a snooker cue. And I can hear the bells.

THIS WEEKEND Róisín will, despite the reviews, be going to see Eat, Pray, Love. It's got Javier Bardem and pizza. Lots of pizza. How terrible can it be?