I don’t think life is that short at all, I feel as if I have already lived about five different ones and more to come. And when, for research purposes,  I went on to Death Row in Philadelphia,  I could smell the length of time there. And if I ever get bored I am shocked at how long a day lasts. And yet if you decide to get sick so you can stay in bed with a hot water bottle and a small paperback, it goes so fast, ah it’s gone already, I wonder could I do that again to-morrow. I never was a boy so maybe that makes a difference, but I was a girl who did really cycle into the village in 1950s Monaghan, we had no next village, that we called a town. And was the journey exciting or what,  the possibilities of who you might meet on the way! And if you didn’t meet anyone, except old people over 30, that was ok too because you always had the flowers and the wind and taking your hands off the handlebars. And the next time, when surely you would meet someone uproarious. On the other hand life could be so short that I do not have the time to be thinking about it at all, so short but I don’t know it yet.

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Evelyn Conlon is a writer. Her books of short stories and novels include My Head Is Opening, Taking Scarlet As  Real Colour and Skin Of Dreams. She is the editor of Later on: The Monaghan Bombing Memorial Anthology.