THE women were well dressed and very well groomed. They looked to me as if they were thirtysomething but it turned out they were fortysomething. They meet for lunch every month. We got chatting because they said they couldn't believe anyone wrote the word Esq on a letter like I had said last week and they were glad to meet me and set me straight on things.
Once upon a time they worked together in an office; they had made a vow they wouldn't lose touch. They had also decided they would never drone on about their children like all other lunching ladies seemed to do - there would be a quick update and that was all. Then they would talk about real things.
Their husbands didn't come into that category, they told me once assured there would be no way of identifying them. One husband was a workaholic and the other a golfaholic. It was hard to know which was the harder to bear.
Neither of these men had shown any evidence 20 years ago that this was how life would turn out, but the women were philosophical. Things could be much worse. The men were not violent, nor cruel, nor unfaithful. In many ways they were decent husbands and fathers. It's just they were no company, the women said.
Come the weekend, it was a winter league, a captain's prize, a medal competition... that was the golfer. And the worker would have spreadsheets, the laptop and could we have a bit of hush, and was she mad of course he couldn't go out shopping.
Take next weekend: the golfer was going on a long-arranged four-ball outing, and the worker was going to a think-in about business practices. And even though people would say they should be shot for complaining, the two women had been saying life was a bit samey, wasn't it? Like next weekend, it would be get up, get hair done, do the shopping, come home, maybe arrange to meet a friend, watch television.
No, they hadn't got to the stage where they would prowl the town looking for action. In fact they would hate action, supposing it was presented to them, but they wished they were young again, when they would have a thousand things to do with an empty weekend.
I said sitting at a desk out in the Burbs (as a friend of mine always calls suburban living), I often dream of all the grand things I could do if I could only just get myself out of the chair.
"Like what?" they said. "Go on, name a few."
Right, there's an amazing seminar on next weekend at the Industry Centre, UCD, about gardening. It's for people who want to get huge, bold new ideas about gardens from international experts. In the audience there will be enthusiastic gardeners, who may have many acres to plant or only what can be easily walked in five minutes. There will also be those who run nurseries or gardening centres who want to know the secrets of planting bold and creative, gardens.
there will be slides and apparently whole new approaches to planting clumps of flowers according to size or colour or texture.
This is seriously artistic gardening and they say you re not likely to get such experts all gathered again in one room for a while, so you shouldn't be surprised it costs £55 for the day including lunch., (You must book in advance with Koraley Northen, tel: 01 278 1824.)
THEY thought about it: they both had gardens. I was very pleased with it myself as a suggestion for them because if they were going to have this more or less singles lifestyle forced on them for the rest of their days, wouldn't it be great if they became garden experts. "Something else," they demanded.
Right. Suppose they thought that deep down inside was the ability to write a film script, then next weekend could be the time to unearth it. John Sherlock, who created Peyton Place, and who was creative consultant on almost everything, from Butch Cassidy to Shogun, is holding one of his two-day master-classes. You go next Saturday morning and work until 6 p.m. the following day, and you come out on Sunday evening knowing how to write a screen-play. That's what they all say, the people who have taken the course.
He has highly satisfied students, who each pay £195 for the weekend without a backward glance. They never have more than 40 people in a group so it doesn't get unwieldy, and apparently there's huge bonding between the people who sign on.
Would they have to have had experience? Apparently not - you learn about character, structure and how to create tension and build up suspense.
Well, they might. But they didn't want me to think the husbands were so bad they had to take up a whole new career and go to Hollywood. I said they could work from home and gave them the phone number of the course: 01-608 2688.
I TOLD them far too much, I suppose they were in headlong flight from me by the time I had looked up the list of Irish Times training courses in leadership skills, and management by motivation, both of which I'd love to do and will do one day. I had phone numbers for all kinds of things and I nearly followed them home with ideas. They probably looked more fondly on their missing husbands after all my suggestions.
But the waitress was interested in all my ideas, except they were a bit too dear. Was there anything much cheaper happening next weekend, she wondered. She was a first-year university student, as well as working in the restaurant, and had a few days off and was looking for ideas.
Right, I said. She could go up to UCD on Arts Day, which will be on next Friday. The whole place will be taken over in the effort to raise money for the Simon Community and there will be a totally carnival atmosphere.
She could start at 11 a.m. at the Kissathon, and then move gently on towards the Don't Forget Your Toothbrush show which is run by Sean Moncrieff and she might win a holiday somewhere, and then through a variety of other activities which will all be listed on the boards. All the bars, restaurants and cafe's will have music of one kind or another. There's going to be films and comedians and laser karaoke. And about 11 p.m., 12 hours after the start of kissing, there might be more kissing at the Final Fling Ball.
She said it sounded mega and wondered how did I know so much about it? Did they have it way back in my day?
No, way back they didn't. But they have had it for 12 years now, and it's a roaring success. They have raised more than £100,000 for the Simon Community, proof enough for good-matured people students are indeed generous and will go to no end of trouble raising money for soup and blankets for those who didn't get as good a deal when fates and futures were being handed out.