Sir, – The more I’m extending into my pension years, the less enchanted I’ve become by the summer solstice, finding it difficult to comprehend why it arrives so early each year now!
Be that as it may, there was one summer solstice I thought could never come quickly enough.
Mid-summer’s day 1969, a Saturday also, was to have heralded the end of the torturous Leaving Cert for me. However, due to Leaving Certificate papers having been “stolen” from De La Salle School, Churchtown, on June 12th, 1969, I was among the many who had to traipse back to examination halls on Friday, June 27th, and Saturday, June 28th to sit a repeat of the English and Maths exams.
Over the years since, the summer solstice has engaged me at times with notable ritual, as in the year I found myself inside the Arctic Circle, while occasionally scarcely registering at all but never without 1969 sending a shiver down my spine. – Yours, etc,
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MICHAEL GANNON,
Kilkenny.
