The most damning thing I can say about my old school is that the teachers simply didn’t care about the pupils they were teaching. Obstensibly, it should have been a good school; it was in a middle-class area and the student body was probably 66% middle-class and 33% working class. My friends hate me using the word ‘class’ but sometimes it’s a good shorthand. In this situation, one would expect the expectation/entitlement of one class to interact with the hunger of the other class. It should have been ripe for everyone to feed off each other and encourage the students towards higher education and/or entrenpeneurship.

Here’s some examples. Only the first one is likely to have changed.

• The students were graded into A1, A2, B1, B2 classes. Imagine being in the B2 class! I was in the A1 class and therefore was taught latin. There was a computer room but only the B1 and B2 classes were allowed to use them…
• I was a cheeky sod (still am)and I always questioned everything (still do). Being ‘disruptive‘, my parents were called in by the Geography teacher. My mother takes no prisoners and, soon enough, herself and the teacher got into it. Her final position was that I only had to do Geography for 40 mins a day whereas he had to do it for 8 hours a day. Whose commitment was likely to be wanting? He had no answer to that!
• We were trained to be office drones. The CAO forms (University application forms) were never handed out, never discussed, even though I think our civics teacher wrote a mass-market book on the subject. As well as the computer rooms, there was also an art room but again only the B1/B2 classes got to use them.
• It’s sorta funny now but, on a Friday, both the teachers and the students used to take off their ties, go to the local pub, and drink beer!!

I could go on but I’d only get twisted and bitter!!

Thanks to my parent’s support, I did go on to higher education in the end and have travelled halfway around the world using my qualifications. In a strange quirk of fate, I’ve ended up back in my old neighbourhood. But there’s no way I’d send my children (t.b.a.) to my old school.

If I did have children, I’d definitely send them to a Northside school. But I’d want it to have a good mix of Irish and foreign* children with an emphasis on mixing the academic and the creative. *Not sure what the PC term is for ‘foreign’ but I think a cultural mix can only be good.

So ends the rant lesson.

Anyway, Guillamene is just outside Tramore in Co Waterford and they’re ‘NO’ signs everywhere. Needless to say, there’s a committee who look after the place.

Originally, it was a men-only swimming area so NO women were allowed. The sign is still there but it’s just a reminder of times past. Now, there’s NO fishing, NO radios, NO diving, NO dogs and more that I can’t remember now.

Strange place, anyway. A stone’s throw away is Newtown Cove which is much nicer. Though I wouldn’t throw a stone because it’s probably not allowed! Newtown Cove holds one special memory for me.

One time, when I was younger and drove cars like the Toyota Starlet (oh, the shame), I used to visit friends in the area. One warm evening, I drove very enthusiastically down the boreen (small road) to this beach.

I’d just bought The Stone Roses’ Second Coming and their first song, Breaking into Heaven, burst out of the speakers as my car flashed underneath the overhanging trees lining the road.

And then, just as the intro crescendoed into the main body of the song, my car burst out of the tree’s shadows and into the sunlight. It was a magical moment as the music, the (car) speed, the location and the weather all combined to create an experience that was more than the sum of their parts. It was only later that I discovered that the song was called Breaking into Heaven. Years later, I now have bigger cars but I’ll always remember that day.

I’m still trying to recreate that moment (with music!) and break into heaven.

I don’t know if they flipped a coin but the decision probably had something to do with the paperwork and the midwife’s teabreak. Having said that, the indecision…the midnight hour…the workaday Friday versus the leisurely Saturday probably explains a lot…about who isadubis.

Aughrim in Co Wicklow won the 2007 Tidy Towns competition. Apparently, one of the local councillors said that ‘pride’ had now been restored to the town after the 1691 Battle of Aughrim.

Only problem is…the Battle of Aughrim took place in Co Galway on the opposite side of Ireland. Still, I guess it’s easy to get confused over something that happened over 300 years ago…