After I graduated from college in Dublin, I set up house in a studio flat at the top of a house in a tiny, one-street town in the Irish midlands.

Just after I graduated from college in Dublin, I set up house in a studio flat at the top of a ramshackle house in a tiny, one-street town called Granard, County Longford.

I had just turned 20 and I had finally landed a 'real' job as a primary school teacher.  In that attic flat, there was, of course, no residential telephone. It was the early 1980s, so this was way, way pre-cell phones or internet.