I remember the morning of 9th December 1980.

Working as a volunteer houseparent in a Roman Catholic special school for boys with intellectual disability, I was in the kitchen getting boys’ breakfasts ready along with two other volunteers.

The radio brought the news that John Lennon had been shot in New York the previous night.

One of the other volunteers, a man of strong Christian fundamentalist views, looked up and said, ‘was he a Christian?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. (I knew perfectly well what he meant).

‘Well,’ he …

The mind rewrites the script of the past.

Once the sound of The Bee Gees would have once been a cue to change channels.  Partly, listening to The Bee Gees would have invited scorn and derision from friends who regarded Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple as defining the boundaries of music; partly it arose from a dislike of the musical Grease.  Yet, the 1976 single You should be dancing still evokes memories of that long, hot summer, particularly a Sunday evening in the North Devon town of Ilfracombe.

In …

Ten to eight and the school gates are opened by the caretaker. Driving into the empty car park, I recalled times driving to a school twenty years ago.

Day pupils there were expected to arrive no later than ten to eight in order to have books and other things necessary for the day sorted before chapel at ten past eight.

The traffic through south Co Dublin in the years before the motorway was so heavy that leaving the arrival until ten to eight might mean not arriving at the school …