Just a little drop [atom] of chlorine, valence minus one
Swimming through the sea, diggin' the scene, just havin' fun
She's not worried about the shape or size of her outer shell--
it's fun to ionize
Just a little atom of chlorine with an unfilled shell.

Somewhere in that sea lurks handsome sodium
With enough eletrons on his outside shell plus another one
"Somewhere in this deep blue sea, there is a negative
for my extra energy
Yes somewhere in this foam, my positive will find a home

Then unsuspecting chlorine felt a magnetic pull
She looked down and her outside shell was full!
Sodium cried "What a gas, be my bride,
And I'll change your name from chlorine to chloride"

Now the sea evaporates to make the clouds for rain and snow,
Leaving her chemical conpounds in the absence of H2O
But the crystals that wash upon the shor are happy ones,
so if you never thought before,
Think of the love that you eat ... when you salt your meat!

Ann and Kate McGarrigle

An espresso education
I will cede ground to very few in my twitch to the Right during this strange year of mine. Most of those to whom I will give ground are, bizarrely enough, current or former colleagues. Eleven years ago we were eight or nine of us sitting nightly banging tables in a pub in Ray Street and setting the socialist world to rights, nationalising banks and organising strikes and pig-sticking napkinned effigies of even the milder remnants of Major's flatulent joke grubbing parlo-rabble and then, basically, reorganising everything again, terribly well, except of course for the ordering of taxis or the saying of no or the walking with both feet without openly giggling at the miracle of balance.

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Today, I find that at least half of them have written books, tracts, denouncements, all these lovely Lefties so thunderously disillusioned by the Blair years that the pendulum has, as pendulums tend to, swung back rather a long way. So I murmur, when we meet. I murmur away in a mimsy fashion, about not quite seeing where they're going with it all, and personally still agreeing with strikes: the fact that nothing works very well any more I can as easily ascribe to deregulated privatisation as to Blairism (What? What? Define Blairism. Define bubble-custard), and when I do say I am, yes, actually a bit fed up with people who are meant to ease my way through transport or mornings or stations or tea-buying, yet can't speak English - not a word - I do so in, I am afraid, a small voice. I suspect I need - we need - to regain some Wit, and raise, if not our voices, then at least our eyebrows a little more. With courtesy. Just to, you know, get served.

What I have never ceded ground upon, however, was education. Even in my worst mad-left excesses, red in wine and blood and T-shirt, I would somehow find time, and slippers, and a pipe if it was handy, to suck on, and a cardy, and pontificate about school nonsense, absurd educationalists, in a way which would have had Tebbit flapping his hands in embarrassment and hastily strapping on a hemp CND bra for the solidarity like.

Which is why, of course, I spat and harrumphed away, practically found myself an Iron Cross and a fascist little catamite, at the news that there will, now, apparently, be an NVQ available in coffee-making. Of all the silly little ... I then, however, did a terribly dangerous thing. Don't try it at home. I started to think.

I read the small print. And of course I was waiting to read some nonsense along the lines of some three-year course in 'sports management' (find someone dull who can run or throw something. Make money off them. Flee. Watch them implode during the yet to come but already savagely bad Olympics year during which everyone with a flicker of a brain will be in France or Greece). But 40 hours this course took, in all. Forty hours to make perfect coffee.

For anyone who's ever tried, it can be a bugger. A time- and money-wasting one. I have had, down the years, a (student) caffetiere, which is as rubbish as all the grown-up ones but with more fag-ash in the top; the resultant coffee was still, as it always is, always, cold. A fabulous scientific bubbly thing which I cleverly put my head and ear through one morning after a break-up: I wept more for the fabulous bubbly thing. Eight of those screw-together espresso things you put on the hob which help you to wake up very quickly at 7.30am by burning your hand badly while throwing them in the bin. Something which involved pods, which might have worked had I only been able to open the metallic packaging without a chainsaw.

My current favourites are a gorgeous cream retro beast which I'm sure would make great coffee if I could ever remember to fill it with water rather than simply grinning while I watch it gently burble and smoke; this, coupled with a Gaggia bean-grinder which sounds as if a helicopter is landing in your ear, helps me wake friends. 'Friends'. It is, in shor

Pub Etiquette
The crucial thing here is the "round" system, in which each participant takes turns to "shout" an order. To the outsider, this may appear casual; you will not necessarily be told it's your round and other participants may appear only too happy to substitute for you. But make no mistake, your failure to "put your hand in your pocket" will be noticed. People will mention it the moment you leave the room. The reputation will follow you to the grave, whereafter it will attach to your offspring and possibly theirs as well. In some cases, it may become permanently enshrined in a family nickname.

Irish Time
Ireland has two time zones: (1) Greenwich Mean Time, GMT and (2) "Local" time. Local time can be anything between ten minutes and three days behind GMT, depending on the position of the earth and the whereabouts of whoever has the keys. Again, the Irish concept of time has been influenced by the thinking of 20th century physicists, who hold that it can only be measured by reference to another body and can even be affected by factors like acceleration. For instance, a policeman entering a licensed premise in rural Ireland late at night is a good example of another body from whom it can be reliably inferred that it is, in fact, closing time. When this happens, acceleration is the advised option; shockingly, the relativity argument is still not accepted as a valid defence in the Irish courts.

Ireland's Weather
It is often said that the Irish are a Mediterranean people who only come into their own when the sun shines on consecutive days (which it last did around the time of St Patrick). For this reason, Irish people dress for conditions in Palermo rather than Dublin; and it is not unusual in March to see young people sipping cool beer outside city pubs and cafes, enjoying the air and the soft caress of hailstones on their skin. The Irish attitude toward the weather is the ultimate triumph of optimism over experience: Every time it rains, we look up at the sky and are shocked and betrayed. Then we go out and buy a new umbrella.

Green
Strangely enough, Irish people tend to wear everything except green, which is associated with too many national tragedies, including 1798, the Famine and the current Irish soccer team. It's possible that green just doesn't suit the Irish skin colour, which is generally pale blue.

Gaelic Games
St Patrick's Day brings the climax of the club championships in Gaelic games, which combine elements of the American sports of gridiron and baseball but are played with an intensity more associated with Mafia turf wars. The two main games are "football" and "hurling", the chief difference being that in football, the fights are unarmed. There is also "camogie," which is like hurling, except that in fights, the hair may be pulled as well.

Schools rugby
St Patrick's Day also brings the finals in schools rugby, a game based around the skills of wrestling, kicking, gouging, earbiting, and assaults on other vulnerable body parts. The game is much prized in Ireland's better schools, where it's seen as an ideal grounding for careers in business and the law.

Religion
Ireland remains a deeply religious country, with the two main denominations being "us" and "them". In the unlikely event you are asked which group you belong to, the correct answer is:"I'm an atheist, thank God", then change the subject.