My mother used to tell me that her mother was from southern Wales, and her father was from the Irish border. It always intrigued me, this idea of an Irish Catholic marrying a Chapel girl from the outskirts of Swansea. His family had emigrated from Ireland in the early 1900’s, when my grandfather was a toddler, and there was a lot of drama in there – both families disapproved, and religion was apparently a real battleground in my mother’s youth. The only thing my mother and grandmother would say about the place where his family were from was that my grandfather would never speak of his Irish background, as there was prejudice against the Irish in London in the early part of the 1900’s, and that his family always claimed to be from London whenever they were asked.

When I spotted a competition to write a play that was only open to those of the Irish diaspora – or those whose parents or grandparents were displaced from Ireland – I thought I would give it a go. The stories I’d heard from my mother would have to be toned down, as nobody would ever believe them in fiction, but they were a great start.

No, actually, the great start was to be able to prove that I was the grand-daughter of an Irish exile. I started digging into the census records, marriage records, birth and christening records. I found my ancestors, all right. To be sure, he claimed to be born in London. Because he was. So was his father, and his mother, and his grandfather all born in and around Southwark. I think I got as far as her “Welsh” parents (born in Southwark) before giving up on the idea that I had this colourful Celtic heritage.

I was left with this feeling that my mother had a great skill in telling the stories, stories that were almost Irish in their depth and colour. If she was here today, I’d raise a glass of the dark stuff to her. I’d pour it over her head for telling fibs to a gullible child.

Happy St Patrick’s Day to everyone out there who is – or thinks they is – Irish.

Today’s been spent getting on with the kitchen. It needs it. My husband’s been re-setting the larder door on its hinges and putting architrave around the frame – now the door is in place and the latch is back on, he’s moved on to continuing the job of tiling the kitchen wall.

He hasn’t done any tiling since his hips began to give him serious trouble, in summer 2019. He was digging around in the tiling cement and he asked; “Are we allowed to go out to a DIY place and get some fresh tiling cement?”

On the face of it, yes we are – the builders merchants are all still open as “essential businesses” – but equally, no we aren’t, as we are only allowed to go out for essential shopping trips, medical appointments, exercise under strict rules or to care for a vulnerable person. It’s been frustrating. We have spare time and want to keep occupied but we can’t, without breaking the rules.

It seems completely crazy that we have to ask a builders’ merchant a few miles away to post us the nails or paint or tiling supplies we need to make good use of our time – that we worry about driving three miles to a local supermarket in case we’re stopped by the police for not having gone to a food shop two miles away instead. We’ve learned today that a Suffolk hardware store that has been in business for 200 years has closed. Walking around that shop was a delight, and we’ll miss our trips there. I’m sure the current lockdown dealt them the final blow.

In better news, I have repaired the statue that I broke by dropping it on a stone floor and touched up the paint (the floor survived, thanks for asking). And this morning I heard that a story I submitted to a competition is through to the shortlist. Fingers crossed.

We’ve been threatened, we’ve been warned, and finally, we got the snow we deserve. My friends up north have my permission to laugh, take the mick and share photos of REAL snow… but down here in the soft South of England, we’ll take an inch of snow and play in it till it’s muddy slush.

I took the chance to stay indoors writing. A friend passed on some magazine calls for short stories with prompts that were so odd that I think none of my writing friends will be sending in submissions. No idea what an American magazine will make of our local version of Bigfoot, but I will be sending in the story and hoping they find it odd enough to publish. I’m now fired up with another idea for a weird story and will be spending time tonight and tomorrow writing it out.

Having got a story written out, I was up for a walk in the snow. Down to our local open space for a walk (yes, it is allowed under our local restrictions; even so, I tend to go there only when I am fairly sure there will be few or no other people there). If you’d told me two years ago that I would be avoiding contact with other people to this extent, I would not have believed you. It was a reassurance today to see that there were no footprints in the snow on the way to the wood.

Snow still coming down while I stood in the field and looked across to the woods. There was snow on the aconites, on the snowdrops, on the beech leaves, snow still coming down, blowing off the roof of the cabin. There’s a periwinkle flower covered in snow, I kid you not. Flowers are incredible.

I went home smiling, woken up and cheered up by my walk, and joined my husband and our two surviving cats in the warm house. Tomorrow I will write out my second idea and make sure I have the right format for the first before submitting it to the magazine. If they don’t like it… I have plenty of places to send the story of the Crazy Cat Lady.