PATTIE DUGGAN'S enthusiasm for life and her mischievous sense of fun are infectious. Originally from Wales, she met her Irish husband to be while on holiday as a child with her mother's relatives in Wexford. She was just ten. He was 18. They married nine years later and have a family of four sons, one daughter and seven grandchildren.

"Having met him when I was ten I didn't see him again until I was 18 and then we kept in touch by writing," she says. "I was in Wales, he was in Ireland and we used to correspond love was very simple in those days. We got married when I was 19 and I had a family of toddlers by the time I was 25 so that didn't leave me much time for anything else. But I've always had an active mind and been an avid reader. I'd probably have been a teacher if I hadn't married so young."

Pattie had always planned to do something for herself once her four sons were reared, but when her youngest son was ten and the promise of freedom was on the horizon, she discovered she was pregnant. "This was a bit of a watershed," she says. "I suddenly realised that we were starting all over again and that if I waited for my daughter to be reared there would be no time left for me to catch up on all the things I wanted to."

So Pattie began doing things. She learned to drive, she got involved with the local ladies' club, the drama group and a local choir and subsequently became a founding member of the Baldoyle Musical Society in whose productions she sang and acted.

At the time she was overweight and not very happy about it so she joined Unislim, shed her excess pounds and became a Unislim instructor. I was so pleased with myself at the time that I wanted to share the Unislim `gospel' with everyone else which is how I became involved."

She spent 22 years working with Unislim and having already begun her romance with learning she encourage her groups to follow her example. "I used to say to the women `don't make eating your hobby' and because many of them were bored and frustrated at home they had ended up doing just that. I'd tell them about the different sorts of courses they could be doing to get themselves interested and involved in something outside the home and I think my enthusiasm rubbed off on some of them."

The list of courses in Pattie Duggan's repertoire reads like an extra mural prospectus in its own right. She began with a creative writing course with the Kilbarrack based community education group, KLEAR. She then enrolled at Colaiste Dhalaigh for Leaving Cert honours English and history. She adored the course and flew through honours English in a year and repeated it the following year "just for fun. I used to drive them crazy at home spouting bits of poetry at them over the dinner table.

Interestingly enough, she stopped short of taking the exam in history. "I see myself as Irish even though I was born in Wales and I found Irish history extremely painful and distressing and I chose not to do the exam," she says.

Courses in psychology, counselling and history followed and nine years ago she became a voluntary tour guide at Newbridge House in Donabate, Co Dublin. "I really love the guiding," says Pattie. "I'd love to work in tourism in some capacity as a guide where it would be possible to bring all the elements of history, architecture, culture and antiquities together."

Just recently, she has finished an art appreciation course at UCD and in between she took up set dancing and Yoga. "The set dancing was great fun but it's the Yoga I've stuck with and I do that every day. I suppose after 22 years with Unislim, healthy eating and living a healthy lifestyle are ingrained in me," she says.

The next academic endeavour is likely to be in the field of archaeology. Ultimately she would like to follow a degree programme. "I've been accepted by UCD as a mature student and I may come back to that at some point," she says. "Once I get involved with something I tend to go in at the deep end feet first and take it from there. So far I've always managed to swim. But I can remember sitting in the classroom in Colaiste Dhalaigh and wondering what on earth I was doing there. But once you begin talking to people you discover that everyone else is wondering the same thing!

"Mature students are very good for each other because they are very good about giving support. I'd encourage anyone, no matter how apprehensive they may feel, to take their courage in hands and give it a go. The satisfaction and pleasure to be had are just enormous."