I have been inundated with a phone call requesting further selections from my Ballina diary of the late 1960s.

January 20th, 1969

An unusual amount of post has arrived this morning. Included is a very colourful brochure from Rootes of Dublin, distributors of the Hillman Minx car. Though it was addressed to my father, I took the liberty of opening it before my mother finds it, is predictably bamboozled by flashy car colour and appearance, and forces father into a rash decision before proper consideration is given to engine size, gearbox ratios, suspension arrangements and other important technical specifications.

The Hillman actually looks a very attractive vehicle in this excellently laid-out magazine. According to the brochure, "The two-tone version is a subtle colour blend of the purest silver and Mediterranean blue, suggesting the purity of the Arctic Circle and the passion of the Mediterranean."

I think this is very nicely put. I may recommend the car to father and urge him to make up his mind quickly for a change, because according to the distributors, there are very few of the two-tone models still available and "the would-be purchaser would need to move very fast, almost as fast as the Minx in top gear".

January 24th

I have only now discovered that Sebastian Hoban took Sally out for a drink the night before he returned to Sligo. Mother was apparently hysterical when she found out that Sally went out to meet him in the same sweater and skirt she was wearing all week.

I asked Sally about Seb and her initial response was "Who?" Allied to her dress arrangements, which are rarely elaborate anyway, this would reassure me about her lack of interest in him if I had not finally begun to learn a little of the wiles of women.

On the other hand Sally was quite happy to recall, for my edification though certainly not my mother's, eleven drinks in five public houses.

I put it to Sally that Sebastian hardly had a reputation as a wild carouser. "No", she replied pityingly: "he couldn't even hold down the first five pints".

January 26th

Back to the library. Miss Cartright's incipient dementia over the advent of the new year and all its dramatic potential - one might have thought she had got used to new years by now - eased off noticeably this morning, a welcome development not altogether unconnected with the mountain of filing awaiting us.

However, keeping Miss Cartright's spirits down is like putting pressure on a balloon: it merely pops up somewhere else.

If I am to be a writer I will need to practise using such figures of speech.

Predictably then, Miss Cartright later works herself up into a state of near-hysteria again as she tells me about the spiritualism course she discovered in the build-up to Christmas.

Apparently she is in touch with some Eastern swami or mystic who is "cleansing" her mind. This morning she asked me brightly if I knew the sound of one hand clapping: needless to say, I didn't.

Good luck to the swami as he wanders through the strange labyrinth of Miss Cartright's mind, with all its cluttered bric-a-brac. She too must cope with her demons, I suppose.

January 27th

I am shocked to read through my most recent diary entry and note a cruelly cutting reference to Miss Cartright and the passing of the years.

None of us is immune to Father Time, I must remind myself. I myself am in my twentieth year, meaning that perhaps a quarter of my life is already over (if I am not prematurely crushed by a passing bus), and what have I to show for it? Very little. Miss Cartright at least is mistress of an independent existence, while I still depend on my parents, in the autumn of their own sadly jejune lives, for a roof over my head.

January 30th

I am increasingly suspicious about young master Sebastian Hoban. Why, I wonder, does he not work in Ballina, the "Insurance Capital of Connaught" (according to the Western People), where he could undoubtedly find a job?

Has it perhaps something to do with the hushed-up business three years ago involving the Hobans' neighbour, the amply-endowed Margaret Kinevan, and the regular disappearance of her enormous underthings from her clothes-line, despite a close police watch? I think it has.

I may have to warn Sally, though it is not in my nature to circulate unsubstantiated and possibly slanderous gossip. Family is family, after all.