Getting picked to get the ‘role book’ filled in by all the other teachers…..woohooo! At least 20 minutes wasted visiting all the other classes! And who can forget their first time inside the staff room! Exciting times!

Having your drink bottle leak in your bag all over your copies, drying them on the radiator – typically your religion copy was ruined the day the priest was visiting.

The feeling of importance when on a Monday morning teacher was doing “our news” and your story made it onto the blackboard!

Trading sheets of fancy paper ;) The perfumed ones were always a hit.

Don’t forget the nits!!

An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti on leitheras!!Teacher said no!!So I peed my pants I was only 6 or 7!!so I had an excuse!those were the days my friends those were the days!

Boys getting to play with mala (playdoh) while girls had to knit.

Buntús! That black felt board with cardboard figures. Is it any wonder we all hated Irish! Then on a Friday we’d get the projector which our teacher could never use properly. The film was always in upside down or back to front lol.

Ann and Barry books :)

Winning the race to the toys and nabbing the phone ahead of everyone else. Ultimate toy.
Spraoi and Sonas annuals. The annual book fair. Getting no homework and a half day when the Lord Mayor visited the school. Getting cups of Oxtail soup in the winter because the rads weren’t warming up. Sammy stamps on a Friday. Going on messages for the teacher and ringing the bell.

Taking your time going to school in the rain so u get soaked and hope they send you home. But then they give you a second hand smelly uniform

I once got a rolo for playing the 2nd part of a tune we were learning on the tin whistle! Mine had a green top and I always envied those with a red top whistle – 3 years into my Music undergraduate now! Thanks Mr. Carroll!

Putting the marla on the radiator for an hour to soften it up, teacher being out so being divvied up amongst the other classes, the big thick pens with loads of colours that you were sure smelled of different fruits!!

Rushing to get the carton of milk with the picture of the trophy on the back of it. Getting put in the corner for colouring a bluebird blue (only found out last week they are actually blue and still havnt forgiven the teacher). Playing red rover with almost the whole school. Gel pens being the coolest thing in the world. Pretending to be a power ranger! Aw I want to he a kid again.

Racing to be first in line back after lunch :)

When the priest came in and took over the class for half an hour much to the teacher’s annoyance I suspect! Also, being the first in school to bring in a bright yellow highlighter!!
Girl of the week!
Getting your name put on the top of the blackboard, disqualifying you from getting a sweet on Friday.

using those Bic pens that 4 colours…amazing…even if you only used two of them…geometry sets and the first lethal weapon aka a compass used for all manner of injury… unbelievably crap school ‘tours’ with the exception of butlins which was of course seemed brilliant by comparison…getting lashed with a bamboo stick…particularly sore on the tips of fingers…yes it was by a teacher…getting detention for making paper airplanes…i would have thought some encouragement for engineering and aviation would have been more appropriate but no…detention…after school hours….im still bitter :-)

The ‘Parka-jacket’ with snorkel hood! Loved that damn coat…pockets everywhere.

I went to a very liberal, Jewish-friendly primary school. Then my family moved and I went to the Christian Brothers until I was done with school. It was like moving to a different, and far less pleasant, planet. So I don’t remember many details about primary school, except being taught that girls were human beings top, but, in my mind, it was Willy Wonka’s Factory crossed with paradise. Funny how memory works..

Going on the worst school tour ever – bus journey to see the shrivelled blessed Oliver plunketts severed head in a glass case. I was fascinated.l, but most of my classmates sobbed. A sherbet double dip cheered me up on the way home, all of us steaming with rain. Then my Mother ate me alive for not eating my sandwiches.

Ann and Barry Books. Wetting myself in junior infants because I was too afraid to ask could I go. God I sat there and marinated in it for at least an hour Ide say. Finally got the courage not to ask could I use the toilet but to inform to teacher that I had a small issue with a puddle on my seat. Also being told by certain class mates that they were not allowed to share their colouring pens. “My parents told me not to share them”. But mainly very fond memories of primary school.

Warm cartons of strawberry milk! Bleuggh!

When the English alphabet had a “zed” in it we had sugar on our bread as well as tea in the morning and cocoa going to bed. Sesame street killed poor zed :(
“Next time won’t you sing with me?” not quite as sensually pleasing as bread thick butter and a blizzard of sugar to a 5 year old hmmm.

Setting the mouse traps every morning and emptying the bucket under the leaky roof.

Anyone remember the mouthwash lady?
Disgusting…what was that stuff!?

Corned beef sandwiches and barely warm tea with distinctive ‘roughneck’ flask taste.

Spraoi & Siamsa annuals, gold dust!!

theres an “r” im Mala!!!!! who knew

Those big massive, colour-coded colouring posters you’d buy every year and NEVER finish!

Walking 3 mile uphill to and from school every day, in the bare feet.

We used to get 20p if our tooth fell out in school! Mrs. Murphy – what a legend.

The perfect school on Alive-O

Tara and Ben! And an ill conceived stab at phonics! Sorry, fonics! Very annoying given I could already spell!

Everyone’s name up on a sheet on the wall and red ‘x’s for good behaviour and black circles for being bold.

oh and carpet jackets! warmest coat ever!

Racing to be first in line, back after lunch :)

Streaching Blu tac across your hand and pretending you were the Man From Atlantis with his webbed fingers…

the marla! the benny bunny yogurt that was always warm, the fear of the cigire coming in but the hope he’d let u off home work. knitting while the boys played hurling. Irish Fridays, the “run” at lent where we had to run just over 2k and if u didn’t make it in.a certain Time u had too do it again. oh the joys of primary school then. they have it so easy now !

forming a conga line chanting, “boys and girls, join on!!”. no point to it but it was fun. oh, being scared of Barbara Keane, I met her recently and she’s not as scary as she was then!!

The whole class delighted to be singing Garry Glitter’s “do you wanna be in my gang?” accompanied by one boy playing guitar during our summer break party. I kid you not.

Having to wait back at 4 o’clock when school was over to play football with local lads in Jambo primary CBS. You could run around the yard with a hurley and use heads as sliotars during school breaks but play what the brothers thought was a British game was mortal sin

I remember having to do push ups for getting into trouble and having teachers dusting my head with the blackboard dusters. Ah, they were the days. Happy days.
Schools these days are too soft. Too much modly codling going on. I respected all my teachers as it was distilled in me to do so. Needs to be more respect.

the star chart

Tom and Nora was what we read and making paper mâché Halloween masks each year and our annual Christmas concerts, you always wanted to have a roll in that.

Buncleachtaí, Briathra na Gaeilge, Our Boys annual and the sickly smell of sick covered in saw dust in the corridor of Scoil Mhuire Marino.

The school nurse grabbing you by the testicles and asking you to cough – which was easy because you’d probably been standing for an hour in the corridor in your under pants with the rest of the boys in the class. I went to a co-ed school but don’t remember the girls queueing in the corridor in their underware.

Eating a large tin of peas on Sunday night. Happy days!

Longers