In primary school you're still thought of as a baby and you're looked after. I went to the national school in Rialto for "low babies" (junior infants) and "high babies" (senior infants) and then to the Sisters of Mercy in Weaver Square, off Cork Street. After that, the preparatory school for Synge Street, St Teresa's Christian Brothers School, which is still there on Donore Avenue.
I remember I had a great teacher in Rialto called Nano Sweeny - she died only in the past six months, well into her 90s. I always remember, and told her before she died, that she had gorgeous legs - even in low babies I recognised that. I enjoyed my time in Rialto very much, and with Sister Rosary, the main teacher in Weaver Square. Then it got a bit rough.
The Christian Brothers schools were tough places and there was a great deal of corporal punishment. There was one year, third year in Synge Street, which was a year of utter misery. We had a very tough Christian Brother and he beat the you-know-what out of us every day, just on principle. I remember for that year most of us went in pretty much terrified every day.
The classes were huge in those days and the conditions were awful. In Synge Street, although it was a very well-established Christian Brothers school, we were actually taught in a tenement building; an old private house converted into classes. The classes were wildly overcrowded, so I suppose they really had to be as tough as they were.
It was a mainly working-class school. I remember that every quarter an envelope would be given to you to bring home and it would come back sealed - and there is no shadow of a doubt that in quite a number of envelopes there was no money. The fees were, I think, supposed to be £4 and 10 shillings a quarter, but I know the envelopes came back, on many occasions, absolutely empty and no remark was ever made about that, good bad or indifferent. No one was treated differently because of it. They were fair in a way - we were all universally punished.
It seems extraordinary to me that corporal punishment is totally and completely abolished. It has always astonished me how absolutely my own girls looked forward to school. They were delighted to go in every day and I never remember experiencing quite that feeling of looking forward to going in each day. Most of my memories of going to school were that I was pretty bloody miserable going in every day.
That's the downside, but the upside of all of that was that we got a fantastically rounded education. We had fantastic English teachers. When I think of the grammar, syntax, punctuation and the whole use of English, it amazes me even today how wonderful that education was.
In sixth year we had a Christian Brother called Brother Liam O'Leary, and he was a dote. He's long since dead now, but he was great. He never lifted a hand to us - all he had to do was to look disapprovingly over his glasses at us and that was the height of it. I remained a good friend of his until he died many years later. However, I still wanted to get out as soon as possible. The turning point was after the Inter Cert. We'd all had such a terrible, terrible time with this particular Christian Brother that I was hell bent on leaving school altogether. I was going to take a job in Findlaters, a huge grocery chain at the time, as a messenger boy.
My mother was desperately upset, and, on the promise of being given a bike, a new bike which was then £15, I agreed reluctantly to go back to school.
There's no shadow of a doubt that that going back to school at that time was one of the greatest influences of my life. What I did in terms of education in the two years was fantastic and if I'd left and gone as a messenger boy I certainly wouldn't have gone the way I did in life - it was a crucial decision.
In conversation with Olivia Kelly
