A sure thing for Germany

AS a kid growing up in Tallaght, there was a disconcerting period when I thought my father might be turning into a Jehovah's Witness, such was the religious intensity with which he scrutinised the Good Book.

It was some little while before I came to understand that he was in search of enlightenment of a different kind.

The hefty tome open before him on a nightly basis was actually the Form Book, although for all the joy he experienced with the nags - that move to the Bahamas, the south of France or Dalkey never materialised - he might as well have gleaned his information from some Old Testament prophecy.