I REALISE I am impatient, but after so much talk about the Universities Bill I wish they would just pay it and be done with it.

That may be poor accounting but what can you expect as Edwina Currie remarked in her interview with Nuala O'Faolain the other day, "I remember the first time I met an Irish accountant. I laughed because I just couldn't believe it. An Irish accountant!"

Many will accuse Edwina of paternalism, or as Nuala suggested, maternalism. They are wrong.

I ought to know I was that accountant.

The year was 1970 or thereabouts. Edwina was then in her early 20s and I was perhaps a little younger. The occasion was a small dinner party in Wimbledon to which I had been invited as a result of some simple audit work I had done for one of the guests.

The connection was fairly tenuous, and the other guests were, known to me only by reputation, so naturally I was a little nervous as I faced the ranks of gleaming cutlery, the cream linen napkins and the enormous walnut table attended by two imposing butlers.

Newly qualified, and fresh from a brief stint at Stokes Kennedy Crowley (as it then was), no doubt I exhibited many of the typical characteristics of the young Irish accountant, from a rural background, suddenly catapulted into the London social whirl.

Anyway, when Edwina and I were introduced in the drawing room from where the pock pock of tennis balls could be heard from the famous courts nearby, things happened just in the way described by Nuala.

"An Irish accountant!" she shrieked merrily.

"Quite", I replied. I had found this simple word remarkably useful in the circles wherein I was suddenly moving it seemed to imply everything while confirming very little. Perhaps it appealed to the accountant in me.

"Good Lord", trilled Edwina, shaking her dark and rather attractive tresses.

"Quite", I repeated, a little more nervously.

Then, without the slightest warning, Edwina launched into a wordy defence of traditional cash based accounting methods and a simultaneous tirade against the newly fashionable accruals system. I realised later she was testing me. She was always that kind of woman.

I was mesmerised. Edwina is today a very striking lady of 50, but on that evening almost 30 years ago, in her coffee coloured taffeta gown and a diamond tiara, she was even more stunning. And to hear her talk in knowledgeable fashion of my own occupation was possibly the most erotic experience in my professional career. In truth it was the only one.

Not only that, but I entirely agreed with her cash based accounting systems are the only ones I have ever had and time for. I suddenly found my tongue, and made my own robust defence of conventional methods in the business, as well as outlining the deficiencies in competing systems.

The company was spellbound, and Edwina herself was intrigued. No doubt she found it unusual that a young man should defend the old ways, or perhaps it was the first time anyone had agreed with her on anything. She was a little brash, I suppose. I guessed correctly that she would change in time, becoming rather more brash.

At any rate Edwina now moved a little closer. I could see her pupils dilating as she asked if I had a speciality.

As it happened, I had.

"Turf", I told her, as the butler refilled our glasses of Monet Chandon.

"Turf?" she whispered, her eyes huge. "Do you mean peat?"

"Pete is my partner", I responded "D'ye know him?"

This was our only misunderstanding of the night. The dinner was for me an enormous success when the distinguished gathering discovered I was an Irish turf accountant, my name was instantly made, with my fortune soon to follow. Though the world of London society is tightly knit, those fortunates allowed in are there for life.

That was my good luck. As for Edwina and I, well, we became an item for some time, regularly pointed out from Cheltenham to Finsbury Park, from Richmond to Royal Ascot.

In the end it all fell apart over some simple cost benefit projections - Edwina's, not mine. As a young turf accountant, the future for me never lay any further away than the end of the next race, and Edwina's horizons were always that much more distant. {CORRECTION} 97022500003