REX Features

There’s a proverb that inexplicably all Irish children are forced to learn from the age of about six – Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin. It means there’s no fireside quite like your own. Naturally, as a child and then teenager I was entirely puzzled by it – it seemed so obvious, and so old-fashioned. But, here I am, literally by my own fireside as I type this and now I understand.

To many, co-working spaces – with their wittily named meeting rooms and breakout areas galore – are a dream. For me though, they’ve always seemed just a little too much. One of my biggest anxieties as a freelancer is figuring out the lay of the land each time I work from a different magazine, newspaper or client’s office; do I have a desk? Where do they keep the caffeine? Then there is the very testing matter of connecting your seemingly incompatible laptop to yet another WiFi, server or if you’re truly cursed, printer. A desk-renting situation seems to me to be just this same nightmare, but one must pay for the privilege. I meet friends for dinner most evenings so those eight hours home alone each day are actually a real joy. In between working I’ll find time to recharge my batteries, prepare some sort of meal from scratch and not give any more oxygen to whatever Brexit, Megxit or coronavirus hysteria is the conversation of the week.