Donal Digan - "The girls are better at it than the fellows"

Learning purely for the love of it

Hula-hooping, the Wild West, cooking, singing, training the Jedi way - you don't need 'ologies' to get the most out of the huge range of night classes now available writes Fionola Meredith

One evening class where you would expect to see plenty of young men signing up is the traditional motorcycle maintenance course. But it turns out that such classes are pretty thin on the ground these days, and where they do happen, it's just as likely to be women who are wielding the greasy spanners.

Donal Digan, director of adult education at Pobalscoil Rosmini in Dublin, which offers a bike maintenance course, says that with traffic congestion worsening in recent years, many people, both men and women, have opted for the nippier motorbike, and they are keen to learn how to keep it running smoothly. Course tutor Martin Cummins talks them through the spark plugs, chains and sprockets.

"The girls are better at it than the fellows - they really get their sleeves rolled up," he says.

original article
Irishtimes