Two components of the village held more fascination for us than all the others put together.  One was the village pump, which could be persuaded, after several minutes of wheezing and croaking, to produce a rust-coloured liquid.  This eventually turned to water but it never lost its rusty taste. The other was Lenihan’s shop.  Inside there was all kind of trove; penny toffees, bulls-eyes, blackjacks, gobstoppers, and gallon sweets of all shapes and sizes.  One shelf was devoted exclusively to those clear jars – dozens of them – which never seemed to empty.  Some days all we could do was gaze longingly at them and watch enviously as other teeth bit into succulent toffees, other hands dipped lollipops into firmly clutched fizz bags.  There were times when I hated Margaret and Tessy Lenihen; they never had to pay for anything and could dip their pudgy little hands into any jar they wished.

Of the pubs Culinane’s was marginally more interesting than Nugents – if only because of the orchard at the rear.  Here one could eat one’s fill without too many distractions.  And sometimes Bridgie Culinane was willing to pay us a shilling or so for a few hours spent picking the apples.

Nugent’s had little to recommend it – although we were sometimes rewarded with a sighting of old Mrs Nugent by squinting through the side window. Dressed in black from head to foot, her face was often the same colour, for she invariably sat in the hob of the open fireplace.  Her main pre-occupation seemed to be going to the church to pray. She had a path worn to it according to John Mullins.  Strangely, this devotion hadn’t rubbed off on Paddy, the son who looked after both farm and pub.  We concluded he must be a pagan.

There was another son, Edmond, but he was mad. What form this madness took I never found out, but he spent most of his life in the Mental Home in Waterford, occasionally cycling out to the village for a visit, but always returning again before nightfall.

Once inside the school walls we had little choice but to learn..  It was a prison from which there was no escape – not until we had finished sixth book anyhow. And by then a mixture of beating, bullying and cajoling had ensured that even the stupidest of us had learnt something.

There were two classrooms.  Mrs Coffey took everyone up to third book and the Master took fourth, fifth, and sixth.  Some in the sixth year had been kept back a year or two and John Mullins, who also looked after the school grounds, was often heard to remark; ‘Christ, there’s some hairy youngsters going to school these days.  A few more years and they’ll be drawing the pension’.

Both teachers used the cane indiscriminately, the Master bolstering it with a variety of other persuaders.  These included grabbing you by the fleshy bit under your chin and raising you up ‘till you were standing on your toes, then dragging you around the classroom and wiping your nose on the blackboard to make his point.

Nothing fazed us though; the pain and humiliation was swept from your mind as soon as break time came round. Bottles of milk and bread-and-jam sandwiches were hurriedly devoured before the serious business of playing could be attended to.  Marbles were the currency of the playground – a boy with a pocketful was wealthy indeed.  Three would buy a Buck Jones or Roy Roger comic; four conkers equalled one marble, and one with a star at its core could easily be traded for a fizz bag.

The bigger boys, scornful of anything thought unmanly, climbed the trees in Walls fields, sometimes hanging upside down making monkey sounds, or participated in vigorous games of hurling and football in the playing field behind the school.  There were occasional inter-school matches, at which our ill-prepared teams usually got hammered.  The girls’ lavatory always attracted its share of attention, the gaps between the walls and the corrugated roof acting as a magnet to the boldest of us.  The hysterical shrieks of those girls inside, at the thought of some dirty-kneed, runny-nosed boy seeing the colour of their knickers, sometimes brought the teachers out.  But by then all the peeping-toms had vanished.

The front playground was left almost exclusively to the girls, and here the chalk outlines of hopscotch and other girly games were on almost permanent display.  Skipping, too, was a game almost exclusive to this area, and some of the routines were very elaborate and required a high degree of skill.  One of the most popular was a chanted ditty which got progressively faster, until the contestant either completed five rounds or got knocked out.  Most of the words pertained to the local priests;

            ‘Tis going to rain said Father Keane

            ‘Twill in a minute said Father Sinnott

            ‘Tis only a shower said Father Power

            ‘Arra go on! said Mary Dwan

I wonder who Mary Dwan was?