Diarmuid Torney: The costs of acting now will be much less than the costs of doing nothing.

WE all have that dream. The one where, after our working lives come to a natural end or even an unnaturally premature one, we get to do the stuff time and circumstance had stubbornly ruled out.

That wish list varies, of course. It might be wheeling golf bags around dewy, early morning fairways, doing sunset selfies in seven continents or simply planting carrots in the room outside and listening to them grow.

It depends on lots of things, not least the financials of course.

My notion was modest enough but one that I had in arse pocket for decades. Of doing the university thing. So here I am. Third year and all that.

But this is where some of the illusions of living that dream come apart a bit at the seams. Enough, at least, that you can see the stitching.

One of the things that people expect when they finally bolt the door on their careers is that they also get to lock away the life-long stress that shadowed it. Without any chance of parole.

But for me at least, anything worth committing to has to be a proper challenge and that most likely means competing with myself. My most unforgiving critic.

So here I am. Living the dream. Stressed. Over the next two months I have four chunky essays, involving endless research in the library and unearthing elusive primary sources from God knows where, to submit.

Then there’s course assignments, response papers, a presentation and endless readings. Just tapping the list out on the keyboard raises the mercury.

I don’t expect or require sympathy. This is a bed I bought and dressed. I am committed to lying on it.

But occasionally I get nostalgic for my work world where I knew what I was doing, or could at least give that impression. An existence of pointless meetings that filled the gaps between procrastination and going home. The sense that, really, I would always muddle through.

Trinity has stretched me in ways I never imagined it would, borne out of the arrogant presumption that the University of Life had me more than prepared for the hallowed halls. I mean, how difficult could it be?

But I’ll get there. I’m not drowning, just waving. Next up, post-war decolonisation and Clement Attlee. Deep breath…

A child could see through shameless Shinners

WHEN you reach your 60s, childhood is something that only offers fleeting glimpses of itself. Things half remembered, rewound and then, more often than not, misinterpreted.

But I have no problem remembering where I was when I first saw RTÉ news footage from the Derry civil rights march of October 5, 1968. In particular I recall that clip of a pleading protester getting brutally batoned in the stomach by an RUC thug. Nothing compared to what was to come, but the image packed a visceral punch nonetheless.

It was with this stark footage that the North first entered my consciousness in any meaningful way. Other than Georgie Best, the place had barely registered before.

It wasn’t only me. Despite the occasional parish pump speechifying and maudlin rebel songs, the truth is few in the south gave a fiddler’s.

When nationalists in the North spoke of being abandoned to an apartheid state they weren’t gilding the lily. The real tragedy is what happened next, of course: how the civil rights movement was hijacked by the sectarian, murderous Provos.

More than a little irony so in watching Sinn Féin cynically claim part ownership of this peaceful, constitutional organisation during last week’s low-key anniversary commemoration.

Even my 12-year-old self would have seen through that. Shameless.