We were all trying to place someone whose name was mentioned, and we were failing hopelessly. We knew vaguely where she lived, and someone said that you always saw her walking along the road with a dog. But that didn't really single her out around here.
Someone else said that she always wore a hat, but again an awful lot of women did - and she used to wear knitted gloves and pull them off finger by finger in shops. But too many people did that for it to make her special.
And then someone said that we must remember her, she was very holy. And that did it, we all remembered her. Immediately.
It's not a word you'd use about people now, and it's not even a term of high praise these days. But years ago it meant something very specific. It meant that you saw the person dropping into the church all the time, and maybe helping to clean the brasses.
A holy person knew all the responses to the prayers, and the words of hymns. A holy person would be at confession every time you'd go yourself, and might be doing the Stations of the Cross.
I used to be a bit jealous of holy people because I thought they had the inside track somehow, and they might smile a bit to themselves as if they knew something we didn't.
Holy people were not necessarily killjoys. They wouldn't feel they had to report you smoking or being seen on the crossbar of someone's bike. They didn't try to convert you and drag you in to Benediction or the parish Retreat or anything.
They were usually quite content in their own way of going on and confident that everyone else had enough spiritual connections, so they did not feel called on to carry some kind of a mobile pulpit everywhere announcing that the end was nigh and that socks should be pulled up sharply in readiness for it.
I never minded holy people, in fact I liked them and envied them the kind of club they seemed to have joined which brought them great peace of mind.
It was saintly people that I took against. There were quite a few saintly people about in my youth. Gaunt, most of them, which was a bad thing for a starter to the round-faced among us.
They never seemed really happy. You didn't associate them with laughing at all. Anyone who was described as saintly was usually a martyr to this or to that. They had an old rip of a mother-in-law who was a heart scald, but they were saintly in all their dealings with her and would give her pedicures, ignore all her grizzling and ingratitude and take her out for long spins in the wheelchair or whatever.
Or else they had some terrible ailment themselves, which they bore with the fortitude of a saint. Nobody was meant to know what unmerciful pains and aches they had, and yet we all did know somehow, so Saints must have told someone for it to get around.
And Saints felt things more deeply than other people. There was a Saint we knew once with whom conversation was very limited because we weren't allowed to mention a whole range of upsetting topics. The Saint, being much more sensitive than the rest of us, would quiver and nearly dissolve if a drowning accident, a car crash or world famine were even referred to in conversation. The Saint would collapse altogether at the mention of a murder and tremble at the evil of the society we lived in.
But this Saint didn't much like hearing about great things either, such as the carnival coming to Dun Laoghaire, or a picnic at Whitrock. Saints would shake their sad head and say it was great for those able to enjoy themselves. Great, really.
I went off Saints early on. But I liked Angels. Angels were people who did small unpleasant, helpful jobs for you. "Would you be an angel and take this letter to the post for me, or collect the dry cleaning or let me get ahead of you in the queue."
Angels are people who can be relied on in a crisis, who have a nicer personality than ordinary people. They don't sound off and tell you to do it yourself, nor do they groan and sigh like Saints and say they'd love to help but their dandruff is killing them.
Angels always have a safety pin, a plaster, change for the phone, a seat in their taxi, an ear to listen, and the reassurance that you didn't really make a fool of yourself at all, everyone else was much worse. Angels are in high demand.
But I think the highest praise is just the word Good. When we were at school it was the worst thing you could be. I remember the Good girls still and how they would sicken you. But either words change or we do, and the word "good" seems to have been greatly rehabilitated.
I have a friend in hospital at the moment, and I notice that everyone says about him, while wishing for his recovery, what a good man he is. That's the phrase they all use, and it's the right one.
They don't say he's holy, even though he may well have a very strong personal faith - and I think he has. It's not a word people use now in secular Ireland with any great sense of admiration.
Nobody in their right mind would call him a Saint: he doesn't claim to feel things more deeply than others, but minimises his own complaints. And Angel isn't quite right either, because that implies someone doing endless reliable but essentially trivial acts of random kindness for people.
This man is more than that. He has a decency and generosity of spirit that has always been catching. You're a better person in his company than you were before you met him, because genuine good will is contagious. It has got nothing to do with a Goody Goody or being a Do Gooder. It's just . . . good . . . on its own. The very highest and most sincere praise for a man whom hundreds of people are thinking about and wishing well today.