Cormac MacConnell: Unlikely birth of a career in journalism

Water issues have saturated the headlines for so long this year, and drenched the corridors of power above in Dublin and beyond.

The land is bone-dry from lack of sufficient rain this month, and the pavements are ringing with the footfall of protesters against water charges — all combining to direct my memories down a watery road.

No comment whatever here on the rights and wrongs of the ongoing national water dispute. I am simply recalling childhood and boyhood recollections of my first contacts with water, in the rural reaches of the Ulster of the 1950s, when the world was very different to now.