"I found myself only an hour from Dublin. I was driving down from Cavan, through Navan, and south along the new bridge over the Boyne. Down the road lies Dalgan Park, home to the Columban Fathers. In what seems another life now in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I had spent over four years there as a student. Finding that, vocationally, I did not have the necessary staying power, I left to lead the life I have led since."
So says Declan Hassett, whose book, All Our Yesterdays, will be published by Mercier Press in Cork on October 19th. Hassett, former editor of the Evening Echo in Cork, has no regrets.
"Though I had never actually gone back to Dalgan, in all those years I had never lost the gra for the place and I always savoured the fine memories which it held for me . . . Dalgan, the building, has not changed at all. The rich wooden-floored corridors leading to the twin doors of the seminary chapel are still spotless and shining with that comforting smell of polish . . . I have never regretted the going to - or the leaving of - Dalgan.
"Looking back now, my return to civilian life must have been a real disappointment to my father. My mother said, even before I went there, that I'd never survive without the company of girls. She was right. Dad never once made me feel that I had in some way let him down, dashing his hopes of having a priest in the family. His only concern was that I would be happy in whatever I did. He met me at the station platform. It was good to be home."
No doubt this book, which contains many reminiscences, will particularly strike a chord with those who also passed through the portals of religious life, only to pass out when they realised it wasn't for them.
It will be distributed through Easons, which has already put it on its Diamond Collection List.
In a down-home style, Hassett writes about growing up in Cork, what it was like to be a child of the Fifties in the city, and how things have changed since.