I have only ever been to Ireland before on press junkets, either for computer companies – and none of those since about 2001 – or, back in my much younger days, visiting the North to write about The Troubles. so my previous experience of the country has been either that they’re a bunch of ornery critters or that the place is filled with technology factories and posh restaurants.

Now that I’ve been actually living here for over a month, my view is slightly different, and probably even more strangely skewed. I live in a traditional cottage on the side of a mountain overlooking some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. I’m surrounded by deer and rain and not much else.

When I go out it’s to visit the butcher, the greengrocer, the fishmonger or the wine merchant or, as I’m doing right now, the giant Dundrum shopping centre. I’m here because, for the price of a cup of tea, I can have a free WiFi internet connection for as long as I have battery life – two hours and counting so far today.

The shopping centre – and what I hear on the radio – shows what ‘regular’ mortals do and think. Which seems, by and large, to be English. Or at least, be English in their habits. The shops and products I see here are the same as those I recognise from trips to London; the music on the radio is English and all the sports news concentrates on the English soccer Premier League. Irish sport is reported but always, always after the English stuff. Regular news is all about Irish politics and the miserable state of the health service here – frankly at times it seems like the Third World with stories of little old ladies being left, literally, to die on trolleys in corridors and children having a healthy kidney removed whilst the diseased one is left in. I paid €10.50 for a pack of homeopathic medicine that sells for €1.70 in France and a visit to the doctor costs €65 instead of the €22 I’m used to. People tell me that they routinely ‘save up’ illnesses so they can get value for money when they go to their GP, discussing several problems at once.

I haven’t been out socially at all since I arrived – I’ve only had a couple of days off, in fact. That will change next month when I head off home for the birth of Scarlett, due on May 10 but whom everyone thinks will arrive early. Not too early I hope.