I’d say that’s the whole point of it. Sure the women’s book clubs are just an excuse to meet up and guzzle wine for the evening.
Exactly. I think I posted about a mens choir in Timahoe in Laois. They meet up under the guise of Mental Health to sing songs and down pints. They do a bit of singing at weekends at the local mass and it was a grand aul thing. Well its only gone and blown up, they’re all over the country now, even going to play Electric Picnic. There’s nearly 40 of them in it, including the local priest and its a right pinting session by all accounts. And the aul dears cant stop it either, because its good for mental health. There’s lads in it from the early 20’s to the early 80’s. The aul hoores 
In fairness I had two great English teachers, John Crowe and Frank Farrelly. They had a real love of the language and encouraged some great writers in the city, principally Jim Nolan and the poets Sean Dunne and Liam Murphy. Crowe got into terrible trouble over Liam Murphy. There was some fucking anniversary or other and Brother Duggan commissioned Murphy to write a poem for the booklet. Although ostensibly a tedious honorific to Brother Duggan, the first letter on each line spelled out Duggan is a Fucker. Some little cunt of a swot tipped off Duggan the night before the anniversary, all the booklets were destroyed, Murphy was expelled and Crowe given a warning as to what he was teaching the boys.
I still have a photocopy of the poem at home. A copy of the booklet was saved.
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We must have done the leaving the same year
Useless Priest Can’t Say Mass.
I actually have an autographed first edition of that.
I think you’re may be my age. I did think I had a few years on @Kyle. We skipped most of the poems, which suited me as I have never really had any love for poetry. I thought Hamlet was brilliant, Emma was fine and the Playboy of the Western World was awful cliched stage Oirishness
It went in 4 year cycles
Macbeth, hamlet, king Lear , Othello
Hard times, Emma, Mayor of casterbridge, ???
Hard Times was Hard Going
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I thought it was alright, dreary enough obviously but they were good characters
Mr Gradgrind.
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No, I’m younger than you, I think. Hamlet and Emma alright. I think the year ahead of us did Hard Times. Dickens is tough going. Read A Tale of Two Cities recently. It’s relatively short for him. We did Great Expectations for Junior Cert but teacher more or less abandoned it half way through and did something easier instead. He wasn’t the best teacher in fairness. He’d probably say we weren’t the best students!
Wuthering Heights
I do an unreal wuthering heights on karaoke
The pleasure awaits me
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A blast from the past