Review: Introduction from Exploring English 1: Short Stories we did for our Inter Cert, Edited by Augustine Martin

Gill & Macmillan €15.50

Dermot Bolger

ON the Saturday of the FA Cup Final in 1972, I sat my entrance exam into secondary school. Following a letter of acceptance, I bowed out of primary school a month ahead of schedule and commenced an extra-long summer that remains extraordinarily vivid in my mind, because three things of personal import happened.

First; I commenced my first paid employment as an underage helper on a Palm Grove Ice Cream delivery van, which dispensed largesse of choices to shops along the chain of small seaside towns that necklace the north Dublin coastline. Second; I began to scribble down my (often conflicted) thoughts in words that became lines and, I gradually realised, poems. Third; I inherited my big brother's Intermediate Certificate English textbooks and, most especially, Exploring English Book 1, edited by Augustine Martin.