`She's gone into purdah," they say, meaning: gate locked, post unopened, telephone off the hook, social life in abeyance. Some excluded friends see this as neurotic behaviour. I would find writing much easier, they assert, if I relaxed at intervals and had a night - or at least an evening - on the tiles. They won't concede that I'm good at recognising my limitations. I'm a one-thing-at-a-time person and by temperament inclined to get rather involved in other people's lives. If combined with a normal social life, my work would suffer from the distractions - other people's plans and problems, joys and stresses.
Also, while working on a travel book I need to remain, mentally, in the country being written about, to avoid brooding over Ireland's problems. It may seem that in purdah I lead a lonely life, my only companions for months on end dogs or cats or both. But this is not so. While reliving a journey, one retains the companionship of certain individuals met en route. These are more than "raw material" - the memory of their friendship and hospitality keeps me linked to faraway others.
There are seasonal variations in my writing days. I rise at 5 a.m., then, during summer, enjoy a swim in the Blackwater river, followed by my main meal of the day, a substantial breakfast of homemade muesli (known as Ma's Mess) and home-made bread with Knockanore or Bay Lough cheese and a few pint mugs of strong tea. In winter, breakfast happens first, while I listen to the World Service news, and exercise happens later when I cycle 20 miles or so, weather permitting.
Most of the day is devoted to the current book - not necessarily writing: at some stages much background reading or checking of facts is involved. The first longhand draft is severely pruned, then becomes the second roughly-typed draft. The third draft is polished for the publisher with the aid of a scissors and sellotape to avoid more re-typing.
For years numerous friends have been applying heavy pressure regarding a word processor. This machine, I'm assured, would save me countless hours, days - even weeks - of tedious labour. It would not produce a typescript but something called a floppy disc - or is it "disk"? Anyway, however it's spelt, I can do without it. Those well-meaning friends deplore my being fixed in a rut from which the rest of the writing world has long since escaped. But I like my rut. I'm comfortable in it - and what's the hurry? People nowadays forget that when God made time he made plenty of it.
Moreover, I am so allergic to technology that an ugly machine dominating the workplace would certainly dry up my meagre flow of inspiration. And the likelihood of my pressing the right buttons in the right sequence is remote. Nor do I want to see my mortal prose on a TV-type screen; I only want to see it on paper, where it's supposed to be.
NB: I go to bed at 9.30 p.m.
Dervla Murphy's new book, One Foot in Laos, will be published next month by John Murray