Our decline into anti-urban bliss began with a drive by. Not a movie but a new-build bungalow clad with old stone. "Nice lawn," I heard myself say as we cornered sharply, me at the wheel, grass in the eye. Rose laughed.

Middle age begins when you start talking about lawns. Worse, it's those very words. Nice lawn.

At least deep in the country we're eating better. In a hundred years time a group of pesky anthropologists, looking for a best seller, will be passing through rural Ireland asking questions like how come these guys live till a hundred and fifty one?

I will be there with the answers. It's in the diet. Come see the garden. We'd stroll over the ancient lawn to the vegetable plot. Let me give you the run-down, I'd say.

We hatched our last plot for Saturday eating after a Friday visit to the nation’s (culinary) capital. Kinsale used to have a good reputation for food. It lies at the apex of a deep water harbour where now the nation's yachts compete for berth space, two mounds of Celtic earth and a castle dead ahead.

I keep coming away thinking it’s one for the tourists.

In the bistro I opted for magret de canard and it was almost fat free. Who eats magret de canard without fat? And I ordered it especially because I was in a French restaurant and imagined they’d know what to do with a duck. Are we now breeding lean ducks?

I ordered it along with the cheap wine option, ready to cut through the dripping duck lard. But where I expected sweet succulence, there was none.

It’s a world gone mad.

We had to make up for a disappointing night and almost as soon as we got home we plotted. At this time of year we have to think what’s in the ground though, lucky us, we’d also bought a John Dory fillet.

I have baby turnips and beetroots by the dozen almost pushing themselves forward to be picked.

Along the road blackcurrants are growing still, some rotting because nobody has picked them. They need cooking.