I am now accustomed to being accosted by Mrs O'Brien on the subject of the "filth" I inflict on her two daughters. Last time the big issue was my choice of the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, where the liberal sprinklings of the word "c**p" upset her finely-tuned sensibilities. It was the time Albert Reynolds almost lost his job for uttering that word in an RTE interview. Mrs O'Brien argued that Albert's dismissal and my early retirement would save the souls of Irish adolescents.

The encounter last week took place in the cereal section of a supermarket. Her sensibilities were terminally traumatised by my exposure of Sara to a Michael Longley poem. A phrase in the poem "F**k the Pope" had greatly discommoded Mrs O'Brien. She hectored me at the base of a mound of Kelloggs cornflakes boxes.

Mrs O'Brien, who has a fluent command of educational jargon, was upset about my assault on her Sara's spiritual growth. "You are a scholastic guttersnipe," declared Mrs O'Brien.

"When your Sara was a first year," I retorted, "I had the dubious privilege of sitting behind her on a bus one Saturday afternoon. From the conversation I overheard I discovered that Sara could use that word as a verb, noun, hanging participle, and split infinitive. Linda knows every nuance, connotation and denotation of the offensive word; she can even use it as a term of endearment. Sara can take that word for walks.

"Indeed, so well do you control Sara's access to the television (as you once boasted) I noticed recently that in the course of a composition on soap operas, Sara consistently referred to the genre as `soap Oprahs'."

An enthusiastic audience had now gathered around us in the theatre of cornflakes. My bacon was saved when Sara herself came running from the checkout area, a location where she spends more hours than she does at school.

"What the f**k are you on about?" she demanded of her mother. "That poem is wonderful: I learned more about mindsets in Northern Ireland from that poem than I have ever learned at home or at school," stated Sara.

Mrs O'Brien gave Sara a stare that bore no resemblance to Sally O'Brien-and-the-way-she-may-look-at-you. I pointed at the Kelloggs slogan and said "I am the one who really provides `Fuel for Life'.

"I read the poem with her last night," said Sara the next day. "Mother wants you to know that she does not now intend to write to the board of management, the Minister for Education or the Archbishop. Your job is safe."