Learning to Love Ireland Read Online Free PDF Page B

pleasantly surprised to find Access interesting and less difficult than Excel. It certainly wasn’t easy – we were just skimming the surface – but I didn’t feel as though I was in enemy territory.
    I was becoming more confident. It wasn’t that I understood everything. ECDL made you realise how much there was to learn. But I knew now that I COULD do whatever needed to be done. After years of feeling queasy about computers, I was beginning to like them.
    I knew that I could even cope with Excel if I had to.
    I learned many other things on the course...
    ...Young Irish people were self-assured and independent. They ate sweets and crisps non-stop. Smoking was more widespread in Ireland than in Zimbabwe, although we had once been among the world’s leading tobacco-producing countries. Irish society’s view of unmarried mothers had altered radically. Twenty years ago, young girls who fell pregnant were ostracised. There were two girls with us whose babies would arrive before the end of the course. Peter (very much a family man) was particularly solicitous of them. Both were intelligent and capable, and they never complained. There were state benefits available for young women in this situation...
    I had tried unsuccessfully to order an ECDL text book from a local bookshop (the one that wasn’t well acquainted with Shakespeare). Evelyn had been photocopying notes for us from a friend’s book, an expensive and time-consuming process. I happened to mention my problem to one of the older students.
    â€˜I’ll get you one,’ she said. ‘I bought a copy for myself in Wexford last Saturday. They had several on the shelf.’
    She presented me with the book the following Monday. The shop in Wexford had sold out, so she had driven to Waterford, another 58 kilometres and bought it there.
    She wouldn’t let me pay her for the fuel.
    â€˜Ah, sure, you’re grand,’ she said.
    Towards the end of the course, we were required to find a two week ‘placement’. This entailed working for a recognised business so that we could put into practice what we had learnt. Our ‘employer’ would not have to pay us – FÁS would continue to fund us and provide insurance cover.
    Most of the class struggled to find businesses that were prepared to have their routines disrupted, even for a brief period. Since I had no contacts, I had little chance of being placed. Peter agreed to accept the research I was doing for ‘Reading the Future’ as a substitute for placement. After all, he said, I was utilising Word extensively, and spending a great deal of time on the Net.
    The four months had gone by swiftly and productively.
    On the final day, Arthur gave me an exquisite water-colour of Enniscorthy town.

    My CV was looking a whole lot better now that I could add ECDL to it. Applying for jobs continued to be the same depressing exercise, however, as hardly anyone bothered to acknowledge applications.
    Like everyone else on the ECDL course, I’d applied for a job at the new Dunnes Store to open shortly at the Gorey Shopping Centre. Like everyone else, I’d been interviewed. And like most of the others, I hadn’t heard a word since the interview. Elizabeth, one of the exceptions, had been offered a job and was being trained in Arklow.
    I was also helping Larry edit Once an African. This was not an easy job, as we frequently argued about my suggestions and alterations.
    â€˜You have just eliminated the most important section of my chapter,’ he’d say through gritted teeth. ‘What are you trying to do? Make it into some bland, grammatically correct essay?’
    We’d both read Stephen King’s book On Writing. He comments: ‘the road to hell is paved with adverbs’. I went back through my most recent draft of It’s a Little Inconvenient, the book I was writing about the situation in Zimbabwe, and scoured my manuscript for