If it were London, he might be sitting in a leather armchair in some gentleman's club, reminiscing about the good old/bad old days. This being Dublin, he was in Davy Byrne's moral pub, wondering at the enterprise of today's students in comparison to his own lot in the Thirties and Forties.
He had just read a letter from a grandchild in America, an about to graduate student who was earning money to keep herself going during the upcoming academic year with its prospect of a Master's degree. (It used to be just an MA in science or economics or literature, or whatever. Now it's all Masters.) Anyway, his point was entirely of admiration for the younger generation. In his day, he was explaining, the summer was for resting. For recovering physically from the strenuous life of study, sport and the social whirl of the university. For reading novels which had nothing to do with the academic course, for visiting relatives to tell them of life in the big city, for taking modest exercise, like walking, in the long evenings. For unwinding.
There were, of course, not so many university students then. The competition was not so fierce. And there was little money about for diversions. A big proportion of students were on scholarships; otherwise they would never have entered the sacred walls. Six bottles of beer, he said, constituted a party at his rooms in the college. All the more reason, you might say, for such students to work in the vacation. Answer, or one answer: there weren't many jobs about. Dublin, for example, was not dotted with the multifarious coffee shops and eating houses of today. Not many students frequented hotels like the Dolphin - or would get jobs there, if they tried.
One way of earning was to coach or grind other students or schoolboys or girls for exams. But how, he mused, did we really put in those months, living with our parents, depending on their handouts? Quite easily, he thought Andy most of us had no great financial expectations at that time. And, of course, we walked everywhere, or cycled, for recreation and to save on transport. Today the young go out into the world to pay, or supplement pay, for studies and to keep themselves in a reasonably independent state financially.
"Were we awful slackers?" he asked the air, and got no answer.