Manoeuvres in deepest Maynooth

A cynical cove once said to me that the best thing about teaching was the amount of time you get to spend away from it. And, no matter how much we profess to love children and our jobs, most of us would have to admit that now and then we love a break from the classroom.

I almost said tedium there, but in the classrooms of this third millennium, this is rarely an ingredient, such is the pace of change. Come to think of it, far more tedium is generated by people yakking on about the last millennium, the new millennium and just about any other millennium anywhere to be found this side of Gortlettragh.

Anyway, you can imagine my cosy satisfaction when I heard just prior to Christmas that I was to report to Maynooth for training as a school planning facilitator. So, while countless thousands of my colleagues trudged back to school after the excesses of Christmas and Hogmanay, there I was on parole for a week in Maynooth to be immersed in school planning.

On my way out from Connolly Station on the Arrow, I gazed across the Slavic winter landscape, broken in the distance by Speaker Connolly's (the other one) folly, and the imperious spire of the ecclesiastical college. I hoped upon hope that I was not myself setting out on some voyage of folly.

I need not have been worried. Believe you me, I have been on enough in-service sorties to have feared the worst. Most in-career development courses that I've attended in the last quarter century have had a boredom quotient that would make Javanese cross-ply sewing appear absolutely thrilling.

School planning, as far as the primary is concerned - I know little about the second-level initiative - is in safe hands. I cannot remember when I came across a more directed, sensitive and enthusiastic bunch.

Even when chastened mildly by the tutor on sartorial nuances for facilitators ("You can't beat a jacket"'), it was taken on board, and great indeed was the number of square-shouldered ones who appeared next morning.

Anyway, we're off out to schools shortly to help in whatever way we can. We will, of necessity, be wearing our L-plates but we will not be found guilty of hazardous driving . . . just a nice, steady amble up the slow lane, for starters.