Freya my niece was doing a spoken word thing at her fifth-year graduation.

I swear to God they graduate from everything now. Montessori had a graduation last year.

They were all done out in their little gowns and caps and they all queue up to get an oul’ cert and a bag of jellies.

Pure dotey but they’ll be graduating out of nappies next. Though I wouldn’t be giving anyone a gown for that.

Anyway, they were graduating from “normal school” before the Leaving Cert year starts.

We settled in. There’s a bit of a mass first. Freya is up the front throwing eyes at me about the mass. Indoctrination she says.

Although this is one of the new masses. Or at least that’s what I call any mass with a guitar on stage.

My own mother would have none of it if she was here. She’s not dead, she just didn’t want to miss Nationwide. A guitar has no place on an altar she says.

After the mass, the talent show starts. Two Ukrainian lads do their national anthem. No word of a lie, the whole crowd were ready to go out fighting by the end of it as if the Wolfe Tones were on the stage.

Next, it’s Freya’s turn. “Planeticide,” is the name of this piece, she says. I close my eyes. This won’t be pretty.

Going on about the environment around Kilsudgeon is a hard sell. They just about tolerated us in the Tidy Towns until we started asking people to stop spraying the ditches and they nearly called the guards. “Baby steps,” warned Gordon, the chair.

Well, Freya isn’t one for baby steps. I know well this’ll be full, 100% Greta. But she’s my niece and I love her and if she bulldozes a few paths for us to sound reasonable telling people to ease up on the Roundup, no harm.

“This is dedicated to the one I love,” she says. And mouths a name. Kyle.

Of course! I forgot the boyfriend. Young Kyle Shaughnessy. As silage a young lad as you can get, but somehow him and Freya are doing a line. He’s her first boyfriend. Larry Shock is his father. There’ll be no green peace at Larry’s.

“Tearing the system down from within,” Freya said she was doing. But they’re dead keen on each other.

He’s already brought her out “hauling grass” as even she’s started calling it now. She got him to cut down the middle first to let the hares get a chance to get to the ditches.

Poor oul’ Kyle’s way of life is getting hauled over the coals here now anyway.

“Love is blind but with one eye open. There’s shadow round the edges

“You kill biodiversity with your slurry but I’ve seen you plant hedges

“A mass of contradictions, IFJ fictions, species conflictions.

“Your stocking rates are too high and your nitrates are higher. But love is highest.

“You say you’re reclaiming but the land is inflaming, it’s always the saming but I know we’ll be untaming.”

That’s a bit harsh now because it was never proven it was Larry set fire to that furze during nesting season, but then it was never proven it wasn’t either.

I look around for Kyle. He isn’t hard to miss. The neck is red on him from the embarrassment. The poor lad is being nudged now by a few of his silagey buddies.

“The land of the fatters, nature in tatters but I love you and that matters.”

She finishes. Up he is out of the chair clapping and he’s got the phone out recording all proud.

Honestly young lads these days are a different breed. They don’t be half as embarrassed about everything like they used to be.

When Denis went out with me first, he wouldn’t even hold hands up the town.

“What did the father make of that Kyle?” I says to him after. “He’ll be grand,” says Kyle.

“I told him there’s grants coming for all of this green stuff. We might even have Freya do a show in a shed”.

Love (and a grant) does conquer all.