Calling all couch potatoes

With the festivities all over for another year, thoughts inevitably turn to summer holidays. So whether you want to shed the kilos gained over Christmas or learn a foreign language in time for les vacances, now is the time to consider enrolling for the evening class you put on the long finger last October.

Community schools, the VEC colleges and numerous private course-providers are all gearing up for the new term, and most will be enrolling new students during this week. There is a huge number of 10-week courses on offer, from yoga and aerobics to personal grooming, languages, cookery, art, pottery and sports tuition.

With some knowledge of information technology and computers now almost essential in all jobs, this could be the right time to upgrade your skills in this area - or to overcome your technophobic fears and get to grips with a computer keyboard once and for all.

There are all sorts of introductory courses on offer in this area, and it is simply a case of picking the one that meets your needs best and abandoning the warm fire for a couple of hours a week to do it.

Most of the VEC colleges and community schools circulate details of their courses directly to homes in their catchment areas, which is one way of finding out what's available locally.

Also, the Wolfhound Guide to Evening Classes in Dublin, the Guide to Evening Classes in Cork and the Guide to Dublin's Evening Classes all carry comprehensive listings for the 1997-98 period.