The first stones cast

There I was two weeks ago, bearing my soul to the nation, worrying what my upstanding neighbours in Manorhamilton would make of the whole Byzantine story. Take it from me, you can say what you like about your marital status, but you don't mess with the three Cs: coleslaw, Chinese or clothes.

There were dark mutterings emanating from the kitchens: "Like we don't know the difference between coleslaw and Caesar salad?" I should have known that with only two restaurants in town, it was probably not the brightest idea to slag them off. My portion of chicken Kiev in The Granary last night was definitely smaller than it used to be. I think I've been put in culinary limbo until I build up my brownie points.

Then there was the Dragon Inn in Bundoran and the fistful of leaflets which were stuffed through my letterbox last week. "There you go," I enthused. "The spirit of free enterprise is alive in the north-west". To think that a casual mention by me in The Irish Times, of how much I missed having Chinese take-away, would spur the Dragon Inn into building up their client base in Manorhamilton?. "How do the take-aways stay hot," wondered Tony. "Do you think they put the wok in the back of the van and cook it on the 16-mile journey?"

Cynicism aside, I rang the Dragon Inn, only to find out that (a) they don't do deliveries and (b) the last time they did a leaflet drop in Manorhamilton was a year ago. This means that somebody has taken pity on me and surreptitiously stuffed the information in my front door. Since this is a very small town, the identity of the Dragon Inn leaflet-stuffer is bound to be revealed soon. In the interim it's making me a little bit jumpy.

And then there were the issues of the clothes. There was a gentle lynch mob of affronted Manorhamilton mothers at the school gates. "Birkenstocks and track-suits, thank you very much," they chorused, in a Mexican wave. It proved totally fruitless to try to explain that I was really referring to the "organic lifestyle gang", because that would only get me into more trouble.

Anyway, I'd already had an arrow from that department when I'd received a letter from a man in Westport, complaining about me coming to Leitrim armed with poison. "Put away that weedkiller and show your son the old fruit trees," it read. So I took Leo into the garden and picked the damsons off the tree just in case it was the Dragon Inn-leaflet-stuffer in another guise - you never know when they'd be watching you.

But it's true that I don't wear the same clothes here as I'd wear in Dublin, partly because 95 per cent of my wardrobe is black, and partly because I'm just plain chicken. Clothes which have been resting in black bags for the past couple of weeks seem to have suddenly lost their cool, and make me wonder why I would try competing with the young ones in town. I could maybe "out-platform" them in my nice, black suede wedgies, but I wouldn't dare to compete on the skirt front. Blink and you'd miss some of the outfits they wear going to Enniskillen to disco.

It's like an issue of respectability which never impacts in a big city, but suddenly makes you conscious of your age in a small town. Last week, I was kept awake for hours from 2 a.m. by a group of teenagers shouting and roaring at the corner. Since Tony was away, I called the guards and gingerly opened the front door to find my neighbour Joanna standing at hers. With my newly honed rural peripheral vision, I spied a 16-year-old girl making her way down the side entrance of my house, having shouted gleefully to her companions that she was going "for a pee".

"Get off my property," I roared, something I wouldn't contemplate in a fit in Dublin, and which made me feel like a sad, middle-aged character in a J.B. play. They all scarpered, and as I closed the door I caught sight of myself, charmingly decked out in my grey fleece, my tracksuit bottoms, and yes, the platform wedgies, the only thing I could find at that hour of the morning. "Let she who is without sin cast the first stone," I thought to myself, and so just to make up for it I wore my black leather trousers all the way, to Kinlough for dinner the next night. I suspect it's just going to take some time before I'm brave enough to wear them to Mary's for a pint.