My misanthropic father would have embraced social distancingHilary Fannin: At what point did Irish people get over proximity and repulsion?Fri Jul 03 2020 - 06:00
‘I felt something furry move under my hand. Man alive, I am terrified of rats’Hilary Fannin: ‘We’ve had a lot of sick cats recently,’ said the vet mysteriouslyFri Jun 26 2020 - 06:00
At the start of the pandemic I felt energised. Now I feel seasickHilary Fannin: I’m so glad to read good news headlines, so why am I struggling?Fri Jun 19 2020 - 06:00
Dozing on a Dublin beach but failing to tune outHilary Fannin: You can sleep on beaches abroad without tuning into the surrounding chatterFri Jun 12 2020 - 06:00
Pets are getting confused by the working from home new normalHilary Fannin: Pets don’t understand why owners are on Zoom calls in their trackiesFri Jun 05 2020 - 06:00
The old man and the sea: A view from Dublin’s shorelineHilary Fannin: I feel as if I’ve been watching Dublin’s coastline change foreverFri May 29 2020 - 06:00
A note pinned to the boy’s back read: ‘Please look after Billy. He has no home’Hilary Fannin: My brother-in-law was found abandoned, aged two, in wartime LondonFri May 22 2020 - 06:00
Thank you, Gwyneth Paltrow, from the heart of my phlegmatic bottomHilary Fannin: What better time than a pandemic to seek advice from the Goop?Fri May 15 2020 - 06:00
Hilary Fannin: I wonder how I’ll manage the bigger world again after the pandemicThere has been a simplicity to life within the quiet trajectory of these suburban streetsFri May 08 2020 - 06:00
Hilary Fannin: I wouldn’t recommend colonic irrigation as a pandemic DIY projectIn too many conversations in the past week or so, the talk has turned to weight gainFri May 01 2020 - 00:06
I finally tackle the tumbleweed of my life and clean somethingHilary Fannin: A dusty souvenir boat transports me to an island in the PacificFri Apr 24 2020 - 06:00
Coronavirus and me: I have not improved my mind or my liver in any wayHilary Fannin: I am so far from providing inspirational quotes to anyoneFri Apr 17 2020 - 08:14
‘Dear Stay At Homes’ ... A letter from DJ John Peel to my husbandHilary Fannin: A clear-out of old papers unearths a handwritten letter from ‘Fat John Peel’Fri Apr 10 2020 - 06:15
Lockdown, death metal and freshly baked bread on the family WhatsAppHilary Fannin: ‘Recipe is a weird word when you’re dyslexic,’ my brother writesFri Apr 03 2020 - 06:03
We wanted to embrace the grieving family but we couldn’tHilary Fannin: Mourners stood apart to celebrate a man who believed in solidarityFri Mar 27 2020 - 05:52
I can’t ever remember the city being so still, so quiet . . .Hilary Fannin: In the bookshops, shoe shops, the opulent shops, you could almost hear a pin dropFri Mar 20 2020 - 06:00
I can’t ever remember the city being so still, so quiet . . .Hilary Fannin: Grafton Street was deserted. I went into the bookshop. One other customerFri Mar 20 2020 - 06:00
‘What’s a vagina?’ the cat asked quietlyHilary Fannin: ‘It’s nothing you have to worry about,’ I told her softly. She’s getting oldFri Mar 13 2020 - 06:00
Ireland, 1987, when we adored Le Piat D’OrHilary Fannin: A dinner with old friends led me to reflect on past and current concernsFri Mar 06 2020 - 06:00
Hilary Fannin: A trip to Belfast feels like a much longer journeyBelfast’s so near my home, yet it demands diligence to navigate and to understandFri Feb 28 2020 - 06:00
We carry these wounds through memories with us throughout our livesHilary Fannin: After our family home was repossessed my siblings had to care for themselvesFri Feb 21 2020 - 06:00
According to my lingerie research, it’s basically less hassle and more economical to be a manHilary Fannin: A better idea, this Valentine’s Day, might be to learn the habit of self-loveFri Feb 14 2020 - 06:00
The evening after the girls’ night out... Chardonnay, anyone?Three Dublin women take the train to Belfast for a night out. Hilary Fannin listens inFri Feb 07 2020 - 06:00
Working from home has its disadvantages – lying around, eating cold lasagneHilary Fannin: You sometimes end up poring over adult-education leafletsFri Jan 31 2020 - 11:35
Hilary Fannin: What I wish my spouse and I had done the morning of our weddingIt’s not romantic, but you can never have too much resilience in a marriageFri Jan 24 2020 - 06:00
I’ve long given up trying to be cool and aloof. Now I’m an expert at small talkThe pleasant, largely meaningless drivel we engage in must have mental-health benefitsFri Jan 17 2020 - 06:00
Who’d spend €67 on Gwyneth Paltrow’s This Smells Like My Vagina candle?This lump of wax with a wick in it has flown off Goop’s shelves. How gullible are we?Wed Jan 15 2020 - 06:00
Hungry, angry, sober and skint is not a good state to be inHilary Fannin: It's no wonder the second week of January is the most popular time for divorceFri Jan 10 2020 - 06:00
Happy New Year? Loneliness is one of those shadowy topics that festers in silenceHilary Fannin: Columns that garnered most reaction this year were often about darker subjectsFri Jan 03 2020 - 06:00
How was Christmas? ‘I am grateful when season starts to subside’Hilary Fannin: I’m always pretty grateful when the Christmas season starts to subsideFri Dec 27 2019 - 06:56
Hilary Fannin: Don’t lose your Fitbit in the turkey and other Christmas adviceFor last-minute gift ideas, try a bamboo toilet roll from Gwyneth Paltrow – only $30 eachFri Dec 20 2019 - 06:00
They let my father die. He would not have wanted to live like thatHilary Fannin: He’d hastened his own death with amber whiskey and a frisky little MerlotFri Dec 13 2019 - 06:00
The schoolgirl wanted desperately to read a book. Her mother could not afford the €5‘Your daughter has stolen a book. We found it wrapped up in her school jumper’Fri Dec 06 2019 - 08:29
Do you know what your ‘arousal template’ is? You are missing outHilary Fannin: All you need for Christmas is sex positivity and an aubergineFri Nov 29 2019 - 06:00
My 40-year school reunion: We hadn’t changed a bit? Of course we hadWe had survived, thrived even, finding our paths through a patriarchal networkFri Nov 22 2019 - 12:31
‘We take so much for granted. We think we are safe, here; but how safe are we?’Hilary Fannin: I offered myself that day as a conduit, a pen, a keyboard at her disposalFri Nov 15 2019 - 06:00
Changing rooms: I feel like my privacy has been invaded, my wellbeing rockedHilary Fannin: Who stands before a half-naked middle-aged woman at 8am and asks when her baby’s due?Fri Nov 08 2019 - 06:03
Today is the day of the dead. Time to make a festive altar in my home. Or notHilary Fannin: I think about buying flowers and leaving out bread and wine for all my thirsty old ghostsFri Nov 01 2019 - 06:00
I’m having palpitations. My doctor suggests turning my phone off at nightHilary Fannin: I sleep fine – apart from the flatulent cat, the pinging phone with messages from Perth– seriously, I sleep just fineFri Oct 25 2019 - 10:13
‘Your car has had a heart attack,’ said the mechanic. ‘It’s dead’Hilary Fannin: Its old boot used to hold my mother’s wheelchair and my sons’ broken bikesFri Oct 18 2019 - 06:00
We asked the concierge for a packet of fags. He looked as if we were trying to score smack‘Do you think we’re in a hotel?’ I asked my friend. ‘Maybe we’re about to be euthanised’Fri Oct 11 2019 - 06:00
‘You had to speak fast and loud in telephone boxes then, while trying not to breathe in’Hilary Fannin: Sometimes I long to be somewhere that’s not embroidered with memoryFri Oct 04 2019 - 06:15
They’re mad yokes, babies, when you think about itHilary Fannin: Sweet, enchanting, innocent, vaguely edible-looking babies. Keep an eye on your wallets, that’s all I can sayFri Sept 27 2019 - 06:00
Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling: Our heroine on the cusp of 30Review: Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen continue their acute observations of a safe social worldSat Sept 21 2019 - 06:00
‘I walked past a hungry man begging. Then I turned back’Hilary Fanin: I’m good at scooting around the city, throwing sausage-flavoured gins into myself without a flicker of remorseFri Sept 20 2019 - 13:31
Is there still Sex in the City at 60? Maybe if you can afford $3,000 facialsHilary Fannin: Feeling lonely in your middle years? Take Candace Bushnell’s adviceFri Sept 13 2019 - 06:00
Family skeletons? My family are old hands at brutal excavationsHilary Fannin: In truth the past loses its potency the closer you get to being the past yourselfFri Sept 06 2019 - 08:30
What’s a ‘push present’? A gift given to woman who has pushed out a babyThere’s one gift I would wish for every new mother and it’s not a piece of jewelleryFri Jun 28 2019 - 06:00
What women like Rosaleen McDonagh endured: deep loneliness and isolationIt is not time yet for our collective memories, like old buildings along the docks, to be pulled apartFri Jun 21 2019 - 06:00
Where are the best women's toilets in Dublin?Hilary Fannin: Time stood still; minutes felt like hours behind that indifferent door. I was locked in the toiletFri Jun 14 2019 - 08:22
