Hello to all the Advertiser readers.
I am compiling this on Tuesday, which readers will remember was a wild day with very high winds, very heavy rain, and straight after a most beautiful Monday morning when the temperature reached 12-13 degrees and the sun shone all day.
However, these are vagaries of spring weather and at least we have the knowledge that, come the end of the week, the warmer, finer weather will return again. It is amazing in these difficult times how much the weather weighs on one, and how much your mood is influenced by what is going on beyond the windows.
We didn’t talk at all recently in these columns about education, and now education is top of the list of priorities for the Government and for us all, as living with COVID-19 will allow a gradual re-opening.
Monday this week saw the opening of special classes in mainstream schools and it was really good to note on TV all the students coming back with their Mam and running to meet their teacher and to meet their friends whom they hadn’t seen for a long time.
There was a lovely little boy who ran towards his teacher clutching in his hand a bunch of daffodils, and the love was so apparent on the teacher’s face as he ran straight into her with the daffodils ready to give her, delighted to be back.
Next week, in early March, it is hoped that junior and senior infants and first and second classes will return to primary schools, and of course the Leaving Certificate classes to secondary schools.
Ah, the Leaving Certificate. Readers will know that I have mentioned before – I have a granddaughter in Dublin who is just 18 and is doing her Leaving Certificate, and I have a grandson in Athlone who is just 18 and who is doing his Leaving Certificate as well.
For many weeks and months now, both of them have shared with me in telephone calls their unease and their inability to understand what is happening to them and what the outlook will be.
Then last week as we know, after a few union flurries, the Leaving Certificate was announced which will be a hybrid one consisting of the written examination starting on June 9 with the first paper to be English 1, and then those written papers are to be combined with calculated grades.
That result certainly seemed to please the students. On telephone calls that night to both of my grandchildren, it appeared that their minds were now on a far more even keel and they were planning what way they would work now that they had some proper facts about their Leaving Certificate.
So for now, harmony of a sort is restored. In her various media appearances, the Minister for Education, Norma Foley, conveyed a sense of confidence and compassion which I thought was very worthwhile.
After all of that, my mind went back all those many, many years to my own Leaving Certificate, when it seemed to me that the examination was always held in very warm weather. We would be sitting in a huge examination hall with the windows wide open, and my overriding memory is of the ceaseless hum of the lawnmower as the work was done outside, and we sitting inside with furrowed brows, seeking to get the right answer to whatever was the question on the paper.
Be that as it may, at least now there is a definite date for the commencement of the written Leaving Certificate, June 9, with English Paper 1. I am sure there will be many a flurry before then, but it is good for all concerned that there is a definite plan and a definite date for the implementation of that plan.
Let’s all hope that the gradual re-opening of schools works out for everyone – parents, teachers, students, managers. All are working hard and all are filled with good intentions to ensure that life goes back to normal in the schools of Ireland.
There was great rugby viewing over the weekend. Connacht had a fine win over Cardiff Blues, with the final score 32-17. Munster also had a fine win over Edinburgh. These games were in Conference A and Conference B of the Guinness PRO14.
Many were disappointed that Jack Carty, having played a confident and assured game for Connacht, was not then included in the final list for playing in the Six Nations this weekend. We cannot understand how Jack Carty, such an assured player, was left outside looking in. Jack is 28 now and is due his really big break based on his record to date. I am always disappointed when they give the line-out for the Six Nations and you see Ulster, Munster and Leinster well represented and Connacht the one province that is left out.
The rollout of the vaccine is proceeding well, and of course the availability of the vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel for all of us.
In the next few weeks, I hope to get my appointment for my first vaccine, to be followed three weeks later by my second vaccine. It is only then that we will feel free to leave our homes, in that we ourselves will be relatively free health-wise, and then as the vaccines continue to roll out, more and more people will feel that much safer.
Like many others, I am beginning to feel the void left by not having conversations or even brief meetings with other people, with my friends or colleagues with whom I haven’t had a decent conversation for a long time. Oh to be able to go out and meet somebody in a café and have a good conversation!
Yes, that day will come, and we just have to keep our minds steady and walk through the pandemic in its many labyrinths.
I say to all the readers: stay at home and stay safe; it will not be much longer now until you will be able to go out, get into your car, and drive off. Oh, I long for that day.
That’s my lot for this week. Hope to talk with you all next week.
Slán go fóill.
Mary O’Rourke
