I went to St. Louis' National and High Schools in Rathmines. We were taught by a mixture of nuns and lay teachers. I remember queueing up to enrol, and holding my Mams hand. My friend and neighbour, Catherine was standing behind us in the queue with her Mam. Because of this we luckily ended up in the same class all through National School.

I remember being in awe of the parquet flooring (which we later spent hours polishing with rags under our feet) and the huge religious statues that were everywhere I looked. The nuns appeared so intimidating with their large square white wimple head dresses, long black dresses and wooden rosary beads around their waist. It must have been quite a shock to my five year old self. 

Some of the incidents from school are embedded in my brain. One such incident was the day at the bus stop. As I said, Catherine was my best friend at the time and we went to school together each day. She lived a few doors away from me. We went to school in Rathmines and although it was 'walkable' we always got the 14 bus.

My memory of the bus queues was of them always being very long. There were so few cars I suppose. Catherine would call for me in the mornings. She was the eldest of seven children and always had younger siblings with her as there were about four or five of them in national school at the same time.

One of the teachers in the school was Miss Reilly. She wasn't our teacher at the time but her reputation went before her and we were all afraid of her. Highfield Road had lots of big houses and she lived in one of them. She was from the country so in hindsight she was in a bedsit or flat but in our ten year old heads she was from 'the big houses' which made her even more scary.

One particular morning Catherine was late. I knocked at her house but they weren't ready so I went on ahead on my own. I was waiting for the bus and was about third in the queue. After a while the queue lengthened and Catherine and her entourage came around the corner. They stood beside me and mingled their way into the line of people. We thought nothing of it. When the bus came it was nearly full and the conductor would only allow the first ten or so people on. Off we went to school without a care in the world.

About an hour into the morning, the loudspeaker in the corner of the room 'ding donged'. Sister Madeline's booming voice came out saying, “Catherine Byrne and Geraldine Mahony report to my office immediately”. We were petrified going down that corridor. We had no idea what we had done. Turned out that Miss Reilly had been about twelfth in the queue and the queue hopping had caused her to be late for work.

Our 'punishment' was to be sent to spend a day in another class. We were delighted to have a day away from the tyrant of a Nun who was teaching us in 4th class. It was like having a day off.

A couple of years later Miss Rielly became our teacher for 6th class. Let's just say it wasn't a happy schoolyear, I don't think she ever forgave us for making her late that morning!

Of course some of the nuns were lovely. But the tyrant nun who haunts my memories of National school is the nun we had in 4th class. She wore an eye patch all of the time she taught us. She was from Northern Ireland and had a strong accent. For some reason unknown to me then or now, she took a shine to me from day one and without a doubt I was her pet.

I hated it. I hated being singled out to 'go on a message' or get the 'nice' jobs like being in charge of the library. I felt that it made some of the other girls in my class dislike me. She kept a wooden ruler in her top drawer that she called 'Trixie'. She used it regularly and had a ritual whereby you had to 'thank' Trixie after she slapped you with it. The mantra was.... “thank you Trixie for helping to make me a better person”.

There is only one ocassion when I remember her slapping me with the ruler. On a Saturday her chosen few were supposed to go into the school to help tidy or decorate the class. I explained to her that I wouldn't be able to go in one particular Saturday because I was going to my cousin's wedding. She wouldn't accept it though and insisted I come in.

Needless to say my Mam and Dad told me to ignore her and not worry about it. But Trixie was produced on Monday morning first thing. My Dad was down at the school the next day. I can still see him standing outside the door of the classroom wagging his finger at her but I don't really remember there being any consequences.

Back then there was milk and sandwiches supplied to some National Schools. From memory Monday was cheese, Tuesday was corned beef, Wednesday was a bun, Thursday was corned beef again and Friday was jam. I hated those hard square sandwiches, leaking cheap margarine from the sides. They mostly ended up in the bottom of my schoolbag. Even the little buns were hard as rocks. The small glass bottles of milk would be left on the windowsil for hours and on warm days ended up almost curdled - disgusting. But that nun used to make us drink it at the top of the class if she saw we weren't drinking it at the desk.

On the last day of every school year the Principal would go from class to class and tell us who would be teaching us the following year and what classroom we would be in. At that time we were in prefabs and couldn't wait to get into the main school so we had been eagerly awaiting this day. I'll never forget her words and I can remember the incident like it was yesterday 'So girls, next year for 5th class you will be in the same classroom with the same teacher”. It was like a bad dream. 

A vivid memory from Secondary School was one that happened quite regularly. For domestic science class we had a 'partner' for cookery.  The nun who thought us cookery had a very pronounced lisp. I presume we learnt to cook and bake a few things but all I remember ever making was soda bread or scones.

Everytime, without fail, she stood in front of us and said “ssifth the ssalth and the sotha thogether”. Before she even said it we would be falling around laughing. Probably not unusual that I don't remember any more dishes. We spent most of those classes out in the corridor!