What surprised me most was the resentful tone of the caller. “I know by the sound of your phone you’re not in Ireland,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Florida,” I confessed.

“Well for some.”

This man had telephoned me on Saturday, 3am my time. He was just back from a week’s skiing down some Alp or other.

Yet my location made him cross.

Never mind that I was already seated at my computer, ready to serve. As far as he was concerned, I was skiving off. The very fact of where I was drove him nuts. He demanded to know how warm it was and made Rottweiler noises when I told him.

Have you noticed that people on ski trips never consider themselves to be idling expensively? They always emphasise the duration, as if skiing were a prison sentence or a boot camp. They’re “just back from 10 days’ skiing”. But if you’re somewhere warm, you’re automatically on holiday.

“You’re in your own place, right?”

Right. I didn’t make it worse for him by pointing out that a) visiting our tiny three-room house was cheaper than his five-star resort hotel, b) it didn’t require investment in Hazmat suits and skis, and c) because of the weak dollar, food and daily necessities are so cheap in Florida, it makes the price of the airline tickets look good.

Instead, I told him about the cockroach, the snakes, the turtles and the sharks. The cockroach is bigger than your average mouse. It lives in the storeroom under the house, and no exterminator can kill or even discourage it. Not that anyone around here admits its real identity. Some clever Floridian PR person a long time ago renamed cockroaches palmetto bugs so you don’t feel so bad about having one.

In fact, any PR people working for Irish local authorities who are offered redundancy packages should head for Florida. They'd have so much more fun. The local authority on Sanibel Island has just put out a press release stating that sharks are hanging around the dredging works at Blind Pass bridge. The statement goes no further. Its writer assumes that we can work out for ourselves that swimming at Blind Pass is only for thrill-seekers for the next few weeks.

I love Fingal county council dearly, and during last year’s floods they gave me free sandbags. But they don’t often issue exciting life-or-death press releases.

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