Never listen to the bull

I'm from a place called Loughill in west Limerick and I went to the primary school there. It was a four teacher school, just five or six hundred yards from my house and my father was the principal. He was an easy going kind of teacher and there was hardly any corporal punishment in the place.

We would walk to school with the neighbours and there was a very neighbourly atmosphere in general. The old schoolhouse was falling down and was replaced by a new school later on, but it was very much an extension of home and the neighbourhood with all neighbours children that were there. I went to second level in Glin. That involved cycling six miles, but it was a bit of an adventure because I got a new bike.

It was a nice school, though, it was unusual for the time because it was run by a man and his wife, James and Sheila Dore, and it was a co-ed lay school. That part of the country wasn't sufficiently wealthy to attract in the religious orders. There was a similar sort of school in Tarbert where professor Professor Brendan Kennelly of Trinity went. There was another one up in Abbeyfeale and one in Shanagolden.

There were about four or five teachers in the school and there were about 12 or 13 of us doing the Leaving Cert in 1961. It was a results school - the whole test of it was high exam results and there were no extra curricular activities. The school was on the side of the street and at lunch time we'd go around the town and if we played ball we played it on the big wide street in Glin. They used to have fairs on the street in Glin. There was a good one on December 4th and they used to stand the cattle all along the street. On that day there would always be bullocks with their noses pressed up to the Leaving Cert window, because there were no grounds at all to the school the door went right out onto the street. There were always people passing up and down the street so you could let your mind wander and look out at the locals.

There were seven off us in the family and we all went there. One follows the other and I was in the middle of the family. I had a younger brother and two sisters, who were twins, after me. Where that school stood is now a supermarket.

I thought our co-ed school was the norm, but then I went on to St Pat's in Drumcondra in Dublin to train as a primary teacher. It was the first time I was in a single-sex institution and I thought it was a bit weird, but that was the normal experience of my generation.

I always wanted to teach and I had a great interest in history. I used to read a lot - ours was always a house of books. There wasn't an awful lot to do in the evenings after you'd cycled home to a house that was isolated in the country, so you would read. There were a few farming jobs to do as well. We had a small bit of land and my mother was the farmer.

In general, I would have been happy in school, though I remember I fell off my bike and broke my arm when I was about 14 or 15 and I spent a night in hospital. I only spent two nights in hospital in my life and that was one. I fell near my own house and I remember the pain of it still. I got back on the bike and I cycled the other five miles to school and lasted the day and cycled back home again. I really didn't have too much choice as being brought to the hospital during school would have been considered a very remote option when you just had a guy with a pain in his arm. You didn't complain. I suppose I led a very stoic existence.

Apart from that, school was never traumatic. Of course, we did Latin. We were strong on languages and weak on sciences. I'd say I was no more studious than anyone else - I was a normal young fella.