Sally Rooney disappears up her own etc

Well I'm about 30 years older than her and went to Trinity in the 1980s. Was life a bit different then? Hell yeah.

When I was a "normal person" in Trinners, condoms were ILLEGAL!!! In the budget announcement this week, they are to be provided FREE to people in their early 20s.

Free Frenchies!!!!!! What wouldn't we have given for them back then?

In fairness the Student Union at the time, led by one Joe Duffy, heroically defied the law by making Johnnies available for sale in the SU shop. Only problem was you had to ask the rather severe old matron who served behind the counter to fish you out a packet from under the desk. No self-service picking them and hiding them in the shopping basket beneath the Evening Herald. And that was enough of a prophylactic to deter many a shy spotty youth.

Most reliable way to stock up for the year was to take a load of old 5ps with you when you went to Germany to work for the summer. They were the same size and weight as the old Deutschmark coin but only about a sixth of the value. So in that land of the civilised where nearly everything was available from an automatic vending machine, you could amass a year's supply of frenchies, fags, chocolate bars etc at a discount in excess of 80% if you had planned ahead and brought a tenner's worth of fivepences.

Screw "Ever greater European Union"; the amount of Irish 5ps left in their vending machines every summer was the real reason the Germans wanted the euro. :)

True fact.

Anti Baby Condoms!!! I haven't heard that for a while. Ah the memories!!!

I remember one doctor (I think his name was Andrew Rynne) fulminating on TV about how ridiculous it was that doctors had to write prescriptions for condoms. To him it was a trivialisation of his powers which were granted to doctors so that they could use their expertise to limit the availability of powerful pharmaceuticals to situations in which they were beneficial and to regulate dosages for the same reason. Condoms, by contrast, were "harmless pieces of rubber. An Aspirin is infinitely more dangerous and is available over the counter," he raged.

Wish we had more doctors like him today.

Can you imagine what those puffed-up prima donnas would say if Irish factories were offering beer for sale on the shop floor as BMW did? (I worked a couple of summers there myself but then, who of our age didn't?) It didn't seem to do BMW any harm. But oh, the pearl clutching we would have to listen to from the likes of Alcohol Action Ireland and their charlatan cheer leaders in the medical profession if somebody tried doing tht here!!