TONIGHT, a very important event takes place - a reunion marking the 50th anniversary of the first junior infants’ class at St Joseph’s School on St Jospeh’s Road, Carlow.
It is not the 50th anniversary of the school itself, but of a class which completed its first cycle.
I was not a member of that class. I started there two years later. Believe it or not, I can still remember being brought there by my mother a couple of days before the start of the summer holidays, just so that I became familiar with my new surroundings, before starting in September.
It was the first time I tasted cocoa, and the first time I had any real dealings with the nuns, and even though I was often kept in after school for failing my spellings, I survived my time there quite well and was sad the day we were all lined up and marched up to The Brothers to complete our primary education.
It is amazing to think that very few changes have taken place to the building over the intervening years. Yes, it is slightly larger, following the construction of a new extension, but as I walked through the arch leading to the school playground, it looked as though this superficial change was about all that had taken place.
But then I took a look at the interior, and the first thing that struck me was a huge map of the world, and footnotes outlining how many students came from the various countries.
In my time, you didn’t need a map - we all knew where everyone came from - the chances are they lived on the same street or in the next housing estate. If you happened to live three miles out the road, you may as well have been from another planet. As for lads from Graigue - they seldom crossed the bridge, never mind go to a Carlow school.
Nowadays, St Joseph’s, like many schools around the country, is like a mini-United Nations. There are children from all over the world going to school there - some from countries I didn’t even know existed. Certainly, when I was a student there, I had never heard of such far- flung places. In fact, I can still remember the day a classmate returned from holidays in Lanzarote, and brought some volcanic rock with him. The poor chap had to give a talk to the entire class about his holidays, while the rest of us looked at him with open mouths.
While he spoke about the beaches and constant sun, we thought of either going to the Old or New Burrin for a swim. If we were lucky, we could look forward to an afternoon out at the weir in Knockbeg, but if we were very, very lucky, it was a trip to Courtown some Sunday afternoon.
The nuns, being the industrious people that they are, used to cut up clothes into squares, which we placed under our feet, and when walking the corridor, we acted as impromptu polishers. There was a rule for everything and, no matter what those rules were, they were never, ever broken.
It may sound a little harsh but, in the main, those rules didn’t amount to much, and while there was the stern face from the teacher whenever you did anything wrong, there were times aplenty when, having fallen in the playground or not making it to the loo on time, a much softer approach was adopted.
Along the way, despite my opposition, they managed to teach me my maths tables and, by the end of my time there, my frequent detention after school had become less and less - and my spelling that little bit better.
While some people may have a bad experience of their time in school, I genuinely cannot say that I had. Even though the memory often plays tricks on us and chooses only to remember the good times, I must admit that my time in St Joseph’s - as well as at The Brothers, and later at second level - can only be described as enjoyable.
The morning I strolled around the school recently, all I could see were smiling faces from the pupils, and equally smiling faces from the teachers. It was good to know that some things have stayed the same.