`My Mother told me you're a soiled priest," declared Eve in the course of what a politician might describe as a frank exchange of views on the relevance of homework. Her question generated rare anticipation and attention among her classmates. Images of Daz and Fairy Liquid filled many minds.

"To begin with, the vulgar expression is `spoiled priest' and, to conclude, I'm not now, nor was I ever, a priest." The class plunged into a state of anti-climax but Eve had not yet got her freezer full of flesh. "But you were going to be a priest, weren't you?"

"I was also going to be a politician, a pop star, a pilot, a footballer, a builder, a train driver - everything a teenager of my time wanted to be. But here I am, a teacher, and what you see is what you get. I had my teenage fantasies too."

But Eve, determined to know all, continued her cross-examination. She knew something of my background and I couldn't afford to give status to such a stigma. So I revealed all - well, nearly all.

The school principal had been the first to identify my spiritual capacities. "I intend to study for the priesthood, Father," I informed him one mild May day in 1963. "Sonny," said he, "your qualities make you fit to be Taoiseach or to be hanged, but a priest you most certainly will never be."

Only the week before my mother had told me: "If you become a priest, there are two things you will never be short of: a good meal and a packet of cigarettes." To a half-starved boarder such allurements were irresistible. Unfortunately, there was an as yet unstirred primal urge which she neglected to bring to my attention.

Aunts and uncles were delighted to hear of my vocation. Like manna from heaven, ten shilling notes, one pound notes, even five pound notes descended on me. They viewed the donations as a kind of investment, an insurance policy for the after-life - purgatory, hell and indulgences were big issues in those days. I was truly carried away by the spiritual and material affluence of it all.

The vocation lasted for three weeks but fear of disappointing my parents and relations postponed abandonment for almost three years. By then, a girl not much older than Eve is now came to spoil my parents' dreams. I often wonder what would have happened if my Eve had not appeared for this Adam. I wonder even more about the fates of those who hung in there, were ordained, and . . . ?