Roisín Ingle is a journalist with the Irish Times. On Saturdays she writes a personal column.
Whenever I do something she seems to do it after and then write about it as though it were a brand new experience. On a large scale: I had twins, then she had twins. On a smaller scale: I read “The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared” for my bookclub and she read it for her bookclub; my children had lice; her children have had lice since Christmas.
Unreasonably, I concede, I find this mildly annoying. It is particularly unreasonable in the case of that book because every bookclub in the country read it. But yet.
I remember, years ago, reading about some woman who was dreading Mary Kenny having grandchildren. Said she, “She always does things just after me and somehow she always does them that bit better.” I suppose I should be grateful that Roisín Ingle’s approach is self-deprecatory. But yet, I am not.