When the clouds come down and the mountains disappear I feel myself disappearing too. As long as I can see the beautiful scenery I never regret coming here, but on days when a white-out envelops us it’s no consolation that the horizon is still out there somewhere.

I feel trapped and lonely and lost and disorientated. The frightening things of the world are overwhelming.

‘I need to get out. I can’t sit here all day,’ I told the builder boyfriend who came through the French windows beaming with the satisfaction derived from cutting out old stock fencing to make way for the all-weather gallop he’s promised me.

Just like in Surrey, there are lefties here who oppose hunting and then let their dogs chase down your horses

His smile evaporated when he saw me sitting at the kitchen table on my laptop, typing into the website of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, and I could see in his face that he was wondering why it was not enough for me to have my dream Georgian farmhouse in West Cork…

We all know that people are the same wherever you go. I keep humming that song. I can’t get it out of my head since a neighbour came by while the BB was gardening out at the front and told him that he wished we hadn’t put a fence around our verge because people can’t pull onto it any more when two cars need to pass in the narrow lane.

The BB explained that they were driving on our water pipe. ‘Isn’t that your land the other side?’ he asked this chap, pointing to the opposite verge. ‘Couldn’t you let people pull in there?’ The man said no, he didn’t want his grass driven over and ruined.

Then there’s this lady who exercises her dog by letting it come through our fence. When the horses are in the field they bolt as it runs around them. I admit that I thought this wouldn’t happen in Ireland.

But just like in Surrey, there are lefties here who sign up to every animal-rights charity going, oppose hunting and then let their dog chase down your horses. So where did I want to go to get away from this, and whatever it was I was doing on the website of the MHRA?

‘Anywhere,’ I said, before suggesting we drive to the end of the peninsula. ‘It’s terrible out there. We can’t go to the beach.’

‘Davey needs to go somewhere,’ I said, referring to the younger spaniel. ‘He chewed the duvet in the night.’ The BB said: ‘He’s frightened of the wind.’

I suppose I am too. I had got out of bed in the night and walked into a wardrobe before finding the door. I stumbled down the stairs in the dark and groped my way outside to find a warm wind blowing in circles.

The next morning the horizon had disappeared, and my fears started getting the better of me.

We put the dogs in the car and drove to the head, where the waves were crashing against the cliffs. The sea was a churning green and white froth. The beach was a mess of seaweed, like so much tangled hair.

Poppy and Dave were whimpering with excitement so we got out and tried to walk but the wind and spray crashed so hard against us it was impossible to make progress. I started to run and kept running. The dogs ran with me and we hurtled down this beach. I was soaked through when I got back to the car where the builder b was sheltering.

I hadn’t so much run the dogs off as run myself off. He raised his eyes to heaven as I explained that this had done the trick.

I didn’t want to go on the website of the MHRA any more. I didn’t have the batch numbers anyway. I would just have to pipe down and do what everyone else does, presumably, when there’s a rare tumour in their mother’s neck. It’s rare in terms of what the medical professionals say – a one in 300,000 chance – but also not rare in the sense that so many people seem to have rare things wrong with them.

The fiftysomething farmer next door has a brain tumour. The other day, when I emailed a local charity about two cats needing re-homing, the owner replied to say she needed someone to take them because she has a tumour she is not expected to survive and is growing weak.

The same day, I contacted a potential interview subject and he emailed back a time to meet, with smiley emojis. That was Friday afternoon. On Sunday he was dead from heart failure.

If all this is normal, then my reaction to it means there’s something wrong with me. Because I’m putting two and two together and running down a beach.