An Irish Times piece on Saturday by Shane Hegarty has pre-empted today’s blog rant but had not appeared when I brought up the subject with two friends on Friday night (during the earlier, more coherent stages of my birthday celebrations). I announced that I found it hard to stomach the fact that my local community college, in its list of evening classes, was offering a course entitled “Angels in Your Life.” Presumably, I spluttered, this New Agey rubbish is being subsidised by taxpayers’ money (I’m not sure if I even said, “hard-earned taxpayers’ money.”) My two friends shared my opinion of this pseduo-spiritualism (is that tautologous?).

Then, I went too far. I began to slag off another course on the menu, on Enneagrams, which seems to be yet another gimmick designed to exploit people with fragile egos. But one of my interlocutors halted me in my tracks: “Ah, Enneagrams, now there’s actually something to that…”

Meanwhile, the Zetetic Astronomy group will be meeting in the sixth-year common room…