‘One Paper at a Time' - My leaving cert journey so far
For the composition, I chose to write a speech debating the motion 'Truth has become a valueless currency in today's world'.
The word 'valueless' threw me at first – I had to pause and really think it through – but I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did. I felt confident coming out of the exam. That first wave of relief walking out of the hall was unmatched.
That confidence carried me into home economics, but this time, things were tougher. The food commodity question focused on cheese, which was not the topic I had hoped for. Like many others, I was banking on proteins, but we got lipids. I pushed through and answered every question, drawing on all the preparation we had done over the years.
That night, I was absolutely shattered. I was mentally drained but full of hope.
I woke up the next morning at 6am to study for English Paper 2 – the paper I had been dreading most. It felt like the real test, the one that could make or break me. My nerves were sky-high. I walked into the hall physically shaking, heart racing, palms sweaty. I whispered a quiet prayer and hoped for a fair paper.
Like many others, I was hoping for Patrick Kavanagh, Gerard Manley Hopkins or Eavan Boland to appear in the poetry section. When I opened the paper and saw both Kavanagh and Boland, I was spoiled for choice. In the end, I went with Boland, a poet whose work I had really connected with throughout the year.
The cultural context question on power and control suited me perfectly for the comparative section. Then came King Lear and a question on victims, which was right up my alley.
The three hours and 20 minutes disappeared. I walked out of that exam hall with a grin from ear to ear. The hard work had paid off.
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Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Irish Examiner
Terry Prone: When it comes to woodlice, I'm Albert Pierrepoint — fast and efficient
If you found the weekend a bit hot, you get a sympathy vote. But I put it to you that you did not have to deal with indoor wildlife, a growling toilet, or an upchucking cat while facing the prospect of strangers walking through your bedroom. As I did. If you live in a Martello tower, you do not have air conditioning. You can't afford it, for starters, because old buildings are always trying to fall down or apart, and prevention is costly. But, even if you had the cash, how would you even begin to manage the air inside walls that are nine feet thick? The fact that a tower is circular, though, does provide advantages. The main one being in high summer, that you can open windows on all sides, thereby providing enough of a draught to prevent dwellers from keeling over. Opening the windows does complicate things, though. You get ghettoblaster hard rock from the beach at such volume it makes you wonder if you're going to get palpitations synchronous with the beat. You also get daddy long legs, which are the certified eejits of the insect kingdom. They don't do anything useful, but because they're so self-evidently harmless, you feel guilty about killing them. One of the lesser-known consequences of climate change is that I become a killer during the summer months. Always pretty ruthless about bluebottles and wasps, this year I've added in woodlice. I'd need to confirm it with Éanna Ní Lamhna, but I am convinced that we have an unprecedented outbreak of them currently. If my home were occupied only by me and the woodlice, co-living would be a happy option, but during the summer months, visitors come for the tour, and you don't want tourists trying to compete with woodlice for floor space. Early on in her career, Specs, my cat, used to hunt woodlice, giving them pokes with her front paws to make them go faster and be worth pursuing. Other wildlife, including big spiders, can put on an impressive turn of speed if cat-nudged, and that speed speaks to a primeval feline need. Woodlice don't seem to be capable of increased speed, and so Specs gave up on hunting them. Instead, I have to stamp on them and then vacuum up the corpses. You might interpret 'stamp' as vicious, on my part, but you would be wrong. If I have to kill wildlife, I am committed to being the Albert Pierrepoint of insect execution: it is going to be fast and flawless. Albert, you will remember, was an English hangman who did away with 600 criminals (a handful of whom may have been innocent, but let's not go there). He did nixers in this country. In fact, he did nixers here frequently enough to become, effectively, our locum executioner. He prided himself, did Albert, on the science he brought to his trade. He weighed and measured and timed to ensure that the condemned human fell through a trapdoor and had their neck simultaneously broken by the rope. This obviated the bad hangings, which amounted to slow strangulation, causing kindly relatives of the person being executed to drag on their legs to speed up the process. Bad hangings after the Nuremberg trials led to reflex leg movements that became known as the 'Spandau Ballet', and gave rise to the name of that band. When it comes to woodlice, I'm Pierrepoint: fast and efficient. Not quite as fast as my late husband used to be with earwigs, but his aversion to earwigs was total. He saw them as the embodiment of evil. But then, anything with more than two legs inside a house draws the family into disrepute. Wildlife can put on an impressive turn of speed if cat-nudged, and that speed speaks to a primeval feline need. Picture: iStockphoto I remember preparing a man for a major promotion interview in my kitchen, once. The job was so important and evoked such media interest that if he'd come to our offices, he might have been spotted, and two and two might have been added together. Hence, my kitchen in a previous dwelling, a camera on a tripod capturing his every answer. He was doing pretty well until one question seemed to cause him to silently freeze. He was looking, not at me or the lens, but at the floor behind me. A glance back revealed an audience of one. A curious mouse. I flailed at the mouse with a newspaper and pointed out that we lived by the sea and didn't have cats, which was true at the time. The job aspirant was too polite to criticise, but you could tell he had lost confidence in the whole process. Rodents, where I now live, are assassinated or prevented by Specs, although I worry that, now she is headed for her 20th year — which is pretty advanced for a cat — she may put in for retirement. In fact, I was discussing this with her on Friday morning and advancing the theory that her life, in common with that of most humans, would be greatly improved by not retiring. Humans who give up the day job end up walking the Camino or — worse still — walking the Salt Path, and you know where the latter gets you. Well, OK, it got the one who wrote the book about £11m before things came apart a bit, but the future doesn't look promising — in publication terms — for her. Specs reacted to my advice by throwing up on the coverlet of my bed, which had been washed and dried only the day before. 'You're adding to the water shortage,' I told her, as I turfed the thing into the wash for another go-around. I had an urge to go and confess to Uisce Éireann because I was already failing with the upstairs toilet, which went on strike during the week and had to have its innards replaced by Bryan, who describes himself as a handyman, and is. Very handy. Usually. In this instance, something seems to have gone slightly wrong, because, downstairs quietly reading a Robert Crais thriller — there are few more rewarding pleasures — I registered a sporadic growl. Now, if wildlife large enough to growl had come in through the cat flap, Specs would muster her not-extensive courage and knock hell out of it. She didn't even rouse herself from sleep for a minute in response to the growl. I timed it. It seemed to happen about every seven minutes. I wandered the house, leaving Elvis Cole, the Crais private eye whose business card describes himself as 'the biggest dick in the business', face down on the arm of my chair. All became clear. The growl was coming from the upstairs toilet, which was managing to lightly spray the tiled floor of the wet room with every groan. 'Hell,' I thought, 'if short-taken visitors arrive before Bryan does, they can use the downstairs loo. 'I'll find a way to frame malfunctioning lavatories as an amusing aspect of the narrative of Martello living.'
RTÉ News
a day ago
- RTÉ News
Start of excavation work 'momentous', says Tuam relative
The daughter of a woman whose child died in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home has described as "absolutely momentous" the beginning of excavation work at the site in Co Galway. Annette McKay's mother Maggie O'Connor was sent to an industrial school when her mother died in 1936. While there, she became pregnant after she was raped by a caretaker when she was 17. She was then moved to Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Ms O'Connor was separated from her child after the birth and was moved to St Anne's in Loughrea. It was there where she was told that her baby, Mary Margaret, had died in Tuam. Ms McKay spoke to RTÉ's News at One programme about her mother's experiences and the subsequent investigations and inquiries into the deaths at the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam. "Even a thimble full of Mary Margaret, to place that baby with her mum, would mean everything," Ms McKay said. She explained that her mother did not speak about her experiences in the home until she was 70. "It was the birth of my first grandchild that upset her very much, which was not the case for my mum loved babies and it brought out this harrowing tale about her baby; her bonnie baby, Mary Margaret," she said. "It was just unreal, how could we have lived all our lives, and she get to be 70 and we didn't know about this terrible, terrible thing that had happened to her?" Ms McKay said that her mother had been moved from Tuam to St Anne's in Loughrea, and she had been told that it was the women who the nuns regarded as "troublesome" or "wanting to spend too much time with their babies" who were moved from Tuam. "There was no bonding with that child to be allowed," she explained. "So mum was pegging washing out in Loughrea, and the nun came behind her and just said 'the child of your sin is dead' and they threw her out the same day - that's all she ever knew about that baby." She said that her mother was traumatised by her experiences in the Mother and Baby Home. 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"Years later, in a story in an English newspaper: 'A terrible discovery in the West of Ireland of a grave containing a septic tank containing the bodies of 796 children'. "I knew she was on that list. And she was." A team of Irish and international forensic experts have today broken ground at the site of the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam. The excavation will take two years and will try to identify the remains of the infants who died between 1925 and 1961, more than 11 years after Catherine Corless first drew attention to the burial site. Ms McKay described as "absolutely momentous" the beginning of the work at the site today. "We were there last week, and the team gave us a chance to see what the site looks like now. It's forensically sealed and they were preparing to work. "I describe that journey as a chance to say goodbye for now." Ms McKay said that the day also feels "very hard and emotional". "I've had my DNA taken because I'm in the group described as old and vulnerable," she said. "Because I'm on the advisory board, I do have this bird's eye view of the discussions around DNA techniques, what's possible, what's not possible, the ages of the babies. "The way they've been lying in the water table, commingled remains; it is technically very, very difficult, but I have to have hope. "Even a thimble full of Mary Margaret, to place that baby with her mum, would mean everything."
The Irish Sun
4 days ago
- The Irish Sun
‘We've seen population dropping', says principal of Cork island school at risk of closure as perks for pupils revealed
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