(…) What we’ve seen is an underinvestment in education. And that means that people don’t know how to think, and that’s certainly not meant to be an insult to anyone: everybody  has to be taught how to think. It’s not natural to be able to weigh evidence and to be able to, crucially, realise that you might be wrong about something. (…) I think education is becoming a national security issue now.

Sometimes it is a good idea to read the paper, I would have missed this article about Brian Cox and his quote (see above), as I was catching up with last (!) weekend papers. We get the Irish Times delivered to our house every Saturday but at times it takes a while until I find the time to read it.

Since it wasn’t cold outside, not windy, and it didn’t rain (honestly – if this sounds to you like a mild Irish summer’s evening… this is exactly what it felt like), and Pádraig and I were on our own, we decided to go into town to see the lights and hear the buzz.

It was a great walk. Since we were there, we decided to go into the GPO and check out their new visitors’ centre telling the story of the historic role the Post Office played in the Rebellion (revolution?) in 1916. And what a visit that was! For the first time ever, we went out into the courtyard of this historic building where there is a very unusual monument to remember all the children caught in the crossfire of these historic days. There is also a wall with the names of all of those who were killed in 1916 fighting for Ireland to gain her freedom (compare that to the ‘wall’ in Glasnevin cemetery!).

Tonight, we’re both exhausted, but in a good way. Just thinking that we’ll have to do a bit of training before we’ll be able to do the Camino next year…