DO you know we lit the fire in the room a few nights last week! I know, it’s crazy, the middle of June and the fire lighting in the grate.

As Yeats used say long ago ‘All’s changed, utterly changed’, and you know t’wouldnt be as bad if we put it down to advancing old age or something like that - but no, it’s not that, whatever it is at all!

Ah yes, the times surely are a changing and it seems like we have no control over it. Fifty years ago this very month, I finished my schooling with the Leaving Certificate Exam. Now, I know I wasn’t the brightest student, or maybe I simply didn’t study enough - one way or another, I was very disappointed when the results came out.

Back in 1972, I got eight or nine Honours in what we then called the Inter Cert and I kinda thought for the Leaving I might surely get four. It never happened and my confidence that I’d do well in English and History was shattered on the morning of the results in August.

Yes, I got Honours in Irish - I think it was an A1 - but that was it. It came as no surprise at all that I failed Pass Maths. My Maths result showed I got NG, which was the equivalent of less than 13% - half a century later, I still can’t do division or multiplication, I can add and subtract reasonably well but it takes time.

Yes, I was very upset at my Results, though in fairness I had absolutely no plans, no ambitions, or even a preference for any particular job or occupation.

Going to university or any third level college was not high on my priority list back in 1974 and failing Maths was a guarantee that a lot of ‘doors’ were closed to me.

I enjoyed school in so far........

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