Róisín Ingle: I didn’t have a period for 240 days and then one arrived like Storm Betty on steroids

I haven’t wanted to go anywhere nice for a while. For a few days, during the worst of it, I barely wanted to get out of bed. I’d been left on my own in the house. The other inhabitants were away for a few days and instead of tackling all those things on my to-do list I succumbed to the listlessness. The bed was a ship. A raft. I used my phone to order my dinner and didn’t bother with plates.

This happens sometimes. The Lethargy. I don’t usually tell anyone but I’m writing it down because better out than in. I think it might be something to do with the perimenopause which we’re allowed to talk about now, since it was discussed on Joe Duffy. (Thanks, Joe.) I didn’t have a period for 240 days and then one arrived like Storm Betty on steroids. I took to the raft.

When The Lethargy strikes I batten down the hatches. I don’t answer the phone or take any notice of the knocks on the door. We don’t have a doorbell. We don’t even have a door knocker so these are knocks made by hand or more precisely by knuckles. I keep meaning to get one of those magical doorbells that can play Jingle Bells at Christmas time and Happy Birthday when it’s somebody’s big day. The knuckle knocks on the door seem medieval in comparison.

I lie on the bed raft and stare at the walls. We painted them a dark kind of greenish blue. I say we, but I just chose the colour and watched as it was carefully applied. We can’t decide on curtains so now the windows are covered by paper blinds we bought on Amazon that keep falling down. I stand on a stool and put them back up. They fall down again. The blind metaphor leading the blind.

Friends, bad singing and Love Actually: Miriam O’Callaghan, James Kavanagh, Marian Keyes and more on their Christmas traditions

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Róisín Ingle: I’ve always been a sucker for a dark or sad song set around Christmas

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Which of the three Pauls nominated for the Booker prize will win? There’s only one Paul for me

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Róisín Ingle: When red storm warnings rage it’s worth remembering the words of Joan Baez

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The world’s in a state of chassis which makes it apt that Seán O’Casey’s trilogy of Dublin plays are being restaged to great acclaim by Druid theatre company. The chassis feels unreal sometimes. Gardaí patrolling the ATMs where people are queuing up for free money. Murderous wildfires on Maui and a hurriquake in southern California. A sea monster eating up Clontarf Baths and spitting it out again. I think that’s what somebody said about one of Storm Betty’s misdemeanours. She didn’t knock or stay long but still managed to make quite the impression. Again, a bit like my period.

I have many thoughts about Helen. She occupies the part of my brain that used to be occupied by viral bed retailer Mattress Mick

The Lethargy lifts briefly. My mother comes around for dinner. I’ve made fish pie but it feels like cheating because I didn’t bother with the faff of a bechamel sauce and made the pie from a recipe by a famous chef who writes instructions for people who can’t cook. We talk about the dead. My Uncle Nago, one of my father’s brothers, has died. I remember him coming around to our house when I was a child. He was funny and kind and worked in construction. He had massive hands like shovels which he’d measure against mine. Michael Parkinson has also died. “Everyone is dying, everyone dies,” my mother, the philosopher, says. “Life goes by in a flash,” she adds. She lives with small grandchildren and this morning one of them, the youngest, observed her tentatively trying to get out of bed and declared defiantly “I’m never growing old”. We laugh and say we hope it keeps fine for him. (My mother is 84 today. Happy Birthday Ann. Still here. Still alive and (sort of) kicking. If I had one of those fancy doorbells I’d play the tune for you.)

When my mother goes home I get back in the raft. Scroll through my phone for distraction. There’s a woman everyone is posting about on social media called Helen who owns a shop in Monaghan called Sound Quality Gifts. It’s a shop full of things you never knew you needed but suddenly must have. The kind of shop that would give Marie Kondo heart failure. Helen has a catchphrase. She talks about some of the stuff she sells – a memorial lantern say, or a chopping board on which ‘Irish mammy’ sayings are etched – and then just intones in her mesmerising Border-adjacent brogue “you’ll find it here, at Sound Quality Gifts, Monaghan, Ireland”. They can’t get enough of her on TikTok. She now has her own merch and sells it in Sound Quality Gifts. (Monaghan.) (Ireland.)

I have many thoughts about Helen. She occupies the part of my brain that used to be occupied by viral bed retailer Mattress Mick. I’m thinking Helen has done a fair bit of line dancing in her time. It’s the way she half-walks, half-jives around the shop in her videos. She wears a lot of denim. I’d say she makes an excellent pot of tea and never minds people popping around to her house unexpectedly. I bet Helen has a novelty doorbell.

Sound Quality Gifts. Monaghan. Ireland. It sounds like a kind of paradise where nothing bad happens, like Tiffany in New York if Tiffany sold massage guns and umbrellas shaped like helmets and gemstones that will help heal you after a divorce. If you need a wee bit of cheering up or a reason to get out off your raft, Helen is your woman. I think it might be time for a road trip. To Sound Quality Gifts. Monaghan. Ireland. With my mother. While we’re still alive and (sort of) kicking.