Does anyone care about my kitchen? Feel anything other than vague nausea at my "glossy magazines" name drop? How and when did I turn into this squawking nouveau hysteric? One of those boring women who divulges the minutiae of her sad, shallow life imagining she is entertaining.

A few weeks ago, I was in Kenya having dinner with a group of charity workers including a couple of missionary nuns. They were both extraordinary women needless to say. Whatever your religious standing . . . whatever you think about the church as an institution . . . missionary nuns rock. There's no two ways about it. It was the last night of an emotionally exhausting trip and . . . to be honest . . . I didn't have a lot of room in my head, or my heart, for any more bad news with regard to poverty, Aids, genital mutilation etc. I was feeling pretty wrung out. Therefore it was at my somewhat reluctant invitation that the nun I was talking to started telling me about her work.

She works in a country run by one of the more dangerous African dictators (which is why I won't even mention her name or his), where she helps give homecare to about 400 people with Aids.

More or less on her own. She cannot accept official funding, she has to operate under the radar. So a few people she knows in Britain and Ireland fundraise for her. She detailed with moving clarity exactly where so-and-so in Cork had a 30th anniversary party and put a hat around and so on.

The money gets put into a bank account in Dublin and once a year she comes over, takes out 10 grand and smuggles it back into one the most corrupt and dangerous countries in the world where she hides it . . . under her bed I presume. Every day this woman is risking her life and doing it with a kind of jolly humour that marks her out as one of those many missionaries who deserve a sainthood but will never get one because they are under the radar of whoever gives out sainthoods these days.

More than that, she was a nice woman. Motherly and funny and warm. So when she said "How are you?" it all came out. Every bit of nonsense I had been storing up for the past week. Not Morag, the caring individual with a social conscience. Morag, the silly, spoiled housewife who's waiting to get her kitchen knocked and re-tile her worktops in case a glossy interiors magazine want to come and photograph her house. The nun nodded and smiled and appeared entertained. Afterwards I consoled myself by hoping I had provided her with some distraction from the hardship of her life. In actual fact I learned that what marks out a true saint is not just helping the unfortunate, but listening to the whitterings of a pampered 'fortunate' and making them feel like they matter.