Among my many theories about life and change is a notion of three year cycles where changes of job or living pattern were concerned. I feel it takes a year to learn a new job or to adapt to a change, another year to master the job or to settle down, and a third year to do the job better or differently than it was done before.

In the cycle of adjusting to the family’s return to Ireland and my resumption of my responsibilities as Deputy Head of the European Commission’s Office in Dublin, 1978 should therefore have been a somewhat settled or stable year. And it mostly was. Of the four incidents which seemed to mark my personal memory most strongly, two resulted from situations requiring medical attention and two arose from invitations to participate in interesting, if not earthshaking, events on the continent.

The first medical situation arose from Anne’s acceptance of advice that she should have a hysterectomy. All went well with her operation and short stay in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital.

The second family hospitalisation of the year was a much more dramatic affair but, happily, also went extremely well and added every bit as positively to the family’s perception of hospital organisation and medical skills. The drama began in guesthouse accommodation in Mountcharles, Co. Donegal. It was August and Anne and I had decided to take Justin and Patricia with us to the north-west for a few days so that they might visit the Paulins in Portnoo and meet the Ashs, who were again staying in a rented house not far from the Paulins.

After the long trip north, Justin was in poor form and complaining of feeling sick to such an extent that Anne felt he should be put to bed in the guesthouse and the local doctor called. The guesthouse proprietor was understandably reluctant to call the doctor but Anne insisted and the local GP, a big man more like a farmer or a vet, duly arrived to examine Justin.

His first question was had we eaten at Sligo on the way to Mountcharles. Apparently, a number of people in the town were suffering from a form of food poisoning attributed to their eating in Sligo on their way home from Dublin. Anne was confident that Justin had not eaten anything that might have made him sick and was more concerned about a possible appendicitis diagnosis. The GP was equally concerned because he had had a serious appendix case the previous week. It was agreed he would call again the following morning to see if there had been any overnight developments.

We passed a restless night in the guesthouse. Justin seemed to have slept but was clearly not well, having survived the night which, the radio told us, had seen the death of Elvis Presley! The doctor arrived complete with a plastic Winchester full of a dose looking and smelling like Jeyes Fluid, which he duly administered to Justin, confirming his image of more vet than general practitioner. He said he was now feeling certain Justin had appendicitis and that if his temperature rose or there was no improvement in the course of the morning he should be telephoned immediately.

When we had to make the call, the doctor was as good as his word, arriving in minutes, putting his appendix diagnosis on paper and telling us to get Justin to hospital as quickly as we could, offering the choice of hospitals in Letterkenny or Sligo. We chose Sligo on the grounds that there was a direct railway line from there to Dublin so that we would not be totally car dependent should we need transport home for some of the party in the event of Justin’s prolonged hospitalisation.

Whatever our predicament, the guesthouse proprietor found it difficult to conceal her disappointment at our departure. We loaded up as quickly as we could and set out to get to Sligo in record time. The trip was nevertheless a highly uncomfortable couple of hours. At the hospital’s admissions desk the doctor’s note had the effect of an open sesame. Within minutes Justin was in a bed in a male ward with three of four agricultural looking adults. We were told that the locum surgeon had been called and that we could telephone in an hour to see when the operation would be scheduled.

As we were anxious to find accommodation near the hospital we went straight to the Sligo Great Southern Hotel which, at that time, had clearly seen better days. Although uneasy about having Patricia in a room on her own, we decided to check in.

Successive telephone calls told us that Justin had indeed been scheduled to have his appendix out, that the operation had been a success, and finally, that he was asleep and we could visit him in the morning.

When we saw him in the morning, Justin had already masterminded a way of getting out of bed via his bedside cupboard and chair, with movements like a mime-artist in slow motion. He was also mesmerised by his ward companions who had exotic injuries ranging from a gunshot wound to the hand to having fallen on a pitchfork.

Happily Anne’s good experience of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital was paralleled by the lasting positive impression left on us by Justin’s ten days in Sligo General. When in the following summer there was widespread praise for the hospital’s handling of the casualties of the murderous IRA attack on Lord Mountbatten the Keery family was not at all surprised.

Of my two landmark continental trips during the year, the first was taken as an extension to an office mission to Brussels. I stayed over a weekend to become one of the signatories of the statute founding the Quaker Council for European Affairs as an international non-profit-making association under Belgian law. The small Belgian and Luxembourg Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends had found the drive and resources to give Quakers a monitoring and lobbying outpost in Brussels, similar to those already established close to UN institutions in New York, Geneva and Vienna.

The second trip was an unlikely but splendid venture. With Anne more or less recovered from her operation, but with me on a stick with a sprained ankle from a slight fall on the steps in the back garden at Monkstown, we decided to avail of the seven-day charter trip to Rome, organised by the Kilkenny Diocesan Seminary, to allow friends of Vatican diplomat Tom White to travel to the Holy City to see him ordained as an Archbishop, an essential step in his promotion to serve as a Nuncio. Tom White had become a friend of Anne’s family after acting as a guide to her holidaying parents when he was a student in Rome. Anne had kept up the family friendship with Tom and with Tom’s cousin, New Yorker, Ida Gecox, who was devoted to him

The ordination party was put up in the Irish College in Rome, close to the Church of St. John Lateran where the ceremony took place. Although the College was rather spartan, Anne and I enjoyed it and were glad to be able to use the College’s small outdoor swimming pool.

For me, the highlight of the trip was the candlelit dinner under the college cloisters on the evening after the ordination. Each of the priests who spoke or offered toasts seemed to have roots in different Irish or clerical traditions. They spoke with styles ranging from the cool theological, to the rich classical, to the warm parochial. Such talents nevertheless seem wasted by the restrictions placed on them by the Roman Catholic Church, celibacy most notably.

Read more: 1979 – A Shoulder Injury and Boarding School