Mary’s Musings In her latest observations Mary O’Rourke reflects, amongst other subjects, on the return to school, the beauty of Co Mayo, Elizabeth Bowen, Enda Kenny..and King Lear
The work on the greenway was just beginning and Anita would take off every day on her hired bicycle, and Ann and I at our leisure would visit Mulranny beach or the lovely town of Newport and later on into Achill and down around the beaches, where Anita would join us having pedalled her way there.
Hello to all the readers of this lovely magazine, Senior Times.
continue what appear to be, as of now, decent figures with regard to the exit from lockdown.
regular basis, so it seems like sometimes I have a front row seat for the Leaving Certificate.
I am so glad to have recently seen it around and about in shops in Athlone, and I am sure it is the same in Dublin and other regions. Looking back on when I last wrote in February, we were talking then about children going to school, but sadly at that time I think it was the removal of some young people from schools because of the spread of coronavirus.
But in the meantime, all is well. The sun is shining, the vaccine difficulty seems to have been ironed out satisfactorily, and we are looking forward to the month of May when, all things being well, there will be much more opening of facilities. My fervent hope is that the hairdressers and of course the barbers will open early in May. We all look so weird, not just with the colour misplacement but the length and general look of the head of hair we are wearing at the moment. So here’s hoping for May hairdos all round!
Sometime recently the Department of Education and Norma Foley said that they were not making the Shakespeare questions obligatory for the Leaving Certificate, but that there would be a choice. When I telephoned each of my grandchildren, I said to them ‘Is that very good news?’ But both of them, individually and separately, said they were going to do the Shakespeare play King Lear. Now it happened that each of them had a separate word of praise for their English teacher, but they had enjoyed the whole drama of King Lear and were looking forward to doing an answer on him. I thought that was a very good outcome, that the Bard of Avon is still held in high regard in Ireland anyway, and certainly among young people. Of course, King Lear is a great drama. Each of them has taken the choice of doing
And here we are on April 18: the sun is shining (in Athlone anyway) and all over the country a million young people are back at school. I always feel that figure is so staggering. We will not know for about two weeks or so, Dr Ronan Glynn tells us, if in fact the return to school of such huge numbers will have an effect on our climb out of the pandemic. But fingers crossed and a fervent prayer it will not, and we will 24 Senior Times l May - June 2021 l www.seniortimes.ie
Back to education: as the readers of this magazine will know, I have a granddaughter in Dublin, just turned 18, and a grandson in Athlone, just turned 18, both of them doing their Leaving Certificate. I telephone each of them on a
