Diary of a non-Fresher

THE new "Fresher's Diary" in Education and Living made me go all nostalgic, so I went up to the attic and dug out my own diary from the Sixties. My language was less - refined in those days and you will just have to excuse it.

Thursday, August 15th

The Leaving results are out, and so am I. This is not coincidence. I return at two in the morning, confident my, parents will be asleep. They aren't. Doom laden would be a fair description of the atmosphere. "We'll talk tomorrow" says my father. I am filled with guilty, apathy and beer. I eat fourteen chocolate goldgrain biscuits with a bowl of greengage jelly and go to bed.

Friday, August 16th

It seems my results might get me work as a farrier's apprentice or a trainee ball inflater in the local toy factory. My father warns me that the blacksmith's trade is on the way out. So am I.

Saturday, August 17th

I discover that my pals Jimmy and Seanin have let me down badly. The two cute hoors are off to UCG to do Commerce and Vet, having pretended they weren't doing a tap of work. Jimmy is already trying to patronise me with talk of what a B.Comm might "lead to", the little gobshite. Senin is even worse. I have to hold myself back from vomiting when I hear him use the phrase "the professional classes."

Sunday, August 18th

My mother, between sniffles, asks me forlornly what I intend to do with my life "now" (apres le deluge sort of thing). I tell her I still have hopes of playing the piano in a bordello. She brightens up: "I wish you didn't have to go to Italy though."

Monday, August 19th

Maureen, my girl friend of two years, is gone all cool on me. On our favourite walk along the backwaters of the Moy, I spoke to her about the life of the intellect, the freedom to roam through life without constraint or conformity. She suddenly spat on a nettle patch and said: "Twould serve you better to put the head down and get a right job." Have I lost her too.

Tuesday, August 20th

My father has had a word with the bank manager, who may be able to "swing something." I tell him I will devote my life to beachcombing on Beartra Island before soiling my soul in such a grossly commercial enterprise. "You'll get sense some day I suppose" is his reply.

Wednesday, August 21st

Seanin, the Veterinary Surgeon to be, takes me aside and asks me to call him "Sean" from now on. To my dying day, I tell him slowly and deliberately, he will be Seanin to me in private and public. I think this may be the first sign of what psychologists call a "rift" in our relationship. To think it is only a week since he and I were deriding the middle classes and their materialistic outlook.

Thursday, August 22nd

My father says Miss Cartright, the local librarian, may be willing to take me on as a part time assistant. Is he mad? The whole town knows that Evvie Cartright, though 40 if she is a day, has only one thing on her mind, and it is not books. Desperate as I am to lose my virginity I am not that hard up. Still, I would be in contact with literature, and the life of the mind.

Friday, August 23rd

Jimmy is wearing a suit. His mother, who bought the thing for him, still expects him to "grow into" his clothes, so it is about three sizes too big, and the pinstripes (pinstripes!) are forced into a zig zag pattern, making him look like a demented puppet. God help us all. He reminds me of the eastern dude in last week's Lone Ranger episode.

Saturday, August 24th

I have indeed lost Maureen, and to Seanin, the little rat. Already I hear they are "thinking of getting engaged." Oh, Maureen, Maureen. Wait till Seanin has his hand stuck halfways up a cow's arse in five or six years time, and see how you feel about him then, I think darkly. I cannot believe this is the woman to whom I gave my heart.

Sunday, August 25th

A dull, dull day. Tomorrow I start work, in what my father calls the real world. It is a waste of time trying to discuss Sartre with him.

Monday, August 26th

I begin work in the library. Though I have a fair bit of experience with women, I have never been so nervous in my life. Miss Cartright however is all smiles and very considerate. She tells me she wants us to "establish a proper professional relationship. This is a relief. Then she shows me how to turn the pages of a book without crushing them. Obviously she has to lay her hand on mine to do this. I must say her skin is attractively cool.

Tuesday, August 27th

I am in the library studying the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System when Miss Cartright, hovering at my shoulder, asks me gently about the experience of being a flower child in the Decade of Love she feels she has missed out. I advise her that the decade is over rated. Certainly it is for me, so far. I go to the pictures on my own. {CORRECTION} 96090700089