Missy's all growed up! Queenie's not far behind!

Missy finished her finals today!! Hooray!! I celebrated by sending her down to the liquor store to buy me a bottle of Casillero del Diablo with the last of her pocket-money.

Well, the children's allowance will be in tomorrow.

I am joking. Missy's not my child, she's my roomie. But she may as well be my child tonight, because I'm that made up for her. And she has a good job all lined up in a public sector organisation. I tried to talk her out of that, I think she should go to Yerp and live in a bus shelter for the summer, but she wouldn't listen to me.

But no, it's all good. She's about to have those great few years when you've got some money and no sense yet. And you can always do a postgrad if it all gets too scary.

I remember the day I finished my finals. Oooooh, yes, I remember that day well.

I sat in the Exam Hall in Trinity College Dublin (immortalised in the film Educating Rita of course) for three hours writing the English Literature General Paper.

The General Paper.

You could be asked about anything that was on any of the courses that were taught while you were in university. I shit you not, boys and girls. Back in my day you had to know stuff to get the omnusdomnus day out in the black gown and the morter board. None of this 'I'll put the questions up on the intranet for you and it's your own fault if you don't remember to look them up' shite they have going on now, even though you'll probably sue me over it if you do forget, you litigious little creeps.

I remember there was a question on the use of weather as a metaphor in the works of William Shakespeare. And I was about two thirds of the way through the essay when I remembered The Tempest.

Tempest is a two syllable synonym for storm, by the way, Business Studies boys and girls.

A synonym is like a competitor, only less aggressive.

Anyway, back to that moment. It was a classic FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT moment. Except I was having it in a seventeenth century Classical style hallowed hall of learning that North Americans have to wait two hundred more years to have a fuck it moment in, so who cared what mark I got.

But still. I had made a complete mess of Modernist Poetry, having lost all my notes to a randy he-goat in a Norman castle in the west of Ireland the previous summer. So I had reckoned on doing well in General Paper. Why I don't know, because I couldn't perform brilliantly on the spot if you glued me to it with ultragleam toothpaste.

I was young back then.

After I started breathing again, I realised I hadn't read the play for three years. I mean, how many times in your life are you going to read The Tempest? Once. That time in Madrid when I flew over to teach those rich kids and the senor took one look at me and locked me into the apartment for the summer until I escaped when they brought me to their house in the Pyrenees. It was a long humid July. I read The Complete Works of Mr. Wm Shakespeare. In chronological order.

But I remembered enough. Thank God for the Senor. I knew he'd come in handy some day.

Anyways, we finished eventually, and Trish and I walked out into the heady air of adulthood. And Myles Corcoran was standing there with a big bottle of Smirnoff Blue Label Vodka, care of one William Whyte, who was in Oxford. And something else, I can't remember, was it chocolates, or flowers or something. I remember it was wonderful anyway.

And Trish and I went round to the flat on Westland Row and sat there, just the two of us, and drank the vodka. And watched the sun set all red and orange and pink, through that great big window we had in the living room.

And then everyone we knew on the planet turned up around seven pm. So I rang my mother and asked her if it was okay if I used some of the rent money to buy some drinks. And she said 'oh yes of course', because she was so relieved I'd actually done it. And proud too. And Luke and someone else went down to Quinnsworth on Baggot St. and came back with enough. And they had got a bottle of tequila, and I have a vague recollection (it was thirteen years ago) of not allowing anyone into the flat unless they had a slammer.

But then I had to stop, because someone threw up in the hall.

And then that guy arrived, that used to wear a dickie bow to college. No, not Tony Wall, he was already there. The other guy, that was on the CSC with him. And we made him play strip poker.
And he wouldn't even take the dickie bow off, because he knew we were stacking the cards against him.

That was a great summer... the summer of 1992.

Missy and her friend had a bottle of Bacardi Breezer each and went off to see The Lion, etc.

To each their own.

I should have organised a party for her, shouldn't I!

She's not doing anything till she gets her marks. But well done girl. It's all ahead of you now.