I went to St Eugene's infant school in Derry. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy, but we all called it the "wee nuns". Now for quite a long time I thought it was called the wee nuns because there was a nun there who was very small, but in fact we were the infant school to the primary across the road which was known as the big girls' school.
We had two teachers there, Miss Kavanagh and, as we called her, Sister Saviour. Her name was actually Xavier, but we could never pronounce that. She was one of these nuns who looked about 150 years old. She wore the very traditional nun's outfit, so you could only see her face and hands. To us she was ancient.
After the two years there I went to the Christian Brothers. The mid-1950s was a very grey time in Derry. Economically, it would have been very difficult and the classes were enormous. My class had 54 boys in it and certainly one of the things I remember from school right up to the teenage years was huge amounts of boredom. Resources were very limited; we very rarely had PE or games in any organised fashion other than Gaelic football. That was something the Christian Brothers insisted on. Once you were identified as being not particularly good at Gaelic football, you were a spectator. I got pneumonia when I was nine and wasn't able to play. The Brothers took Gaelic football very seriously and really wanted the teams to achieve. Their approach was quite heavy-handed, so there were times I was actually glad not to be on the team.
They were probably consistent in their approach to education as well. They really wanted to get us through the 11-plus and I wouldn't have got the exam had I not been at the Brothers, because they really made you work. In that particular era there was a certain amount of violence used in schools, but there was a huge effort put into academic achievement. There were times there when I was happy, but I found the last couple of years very tough because everything was focused on the 11-plus. It was very hard work and extremely stressful. You don't use a word like stress when you're 10 or 11 years old, but there were boys sitting on the bus approaching the school in tears in anticipation of the day they were going to have. I don't think I ever felt as badly as that, but certainly there were times when I didn't look forward to going to school. That exam was a real oppressor of the educational system.
The Christian Brothers worked you very hard right up until the 11-plus and then they released the pressure. Brother Connolly was a fluent French speaker. He put on a lot of pressure to get us through the exam, but afterwards it was fantastic; we were doing singing and learning French and doing art and PE - the whole atmosphere lightened for the last few months of school.
You got the results of the 11-plus in the post and if you got a fat envelope that meant you passed, because the form would be in the envelope to take you on the next school and if you got a thin envelope, you didn't. That just adds more cruelty to the process.
But I passed and got through to St Columb's College in Derry, which was run by priests. So between the Sisters of Mercy, Christian Brothers and priests I've had an incredibly ecclesiastical education.
My older brothers had all gone through St Columb's and it had been a difficult enough regime, but by the time I was going through there had been a new intake of lay teachers, so the priests were very much in the minority. There was a fantastic art teacher there called Father McCann. Art wasn't part of the curriculum so he used to take an art class semiofficially at 5 p.m. on Monday evening. It was mostly very traditional painting and drawing, but he gave me a grounding in art history that has stood me in good stead to this day. He was a fantastic teacher, doing it all entirely off his own bat with very little resources. I enjoyed the time there and I'm still friendly with many of the people I was in school with, so I associate that period with good things.
In conversation with Olivia Kelly
