Ups and downs on the Brookmount Road

If anniversaries serve any purpose at all, it is to prompt us to reflect upon a particular time and place in our lives.

This year, St Conor’s Primary School celebrates half a century of education on the Brookmount Road.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a Mass was held to mark the beginning of a long list of events designed to honour this keystone anniversary.

However, while the school preoccupies itself with manufacturing more moments of official commemoration, the real acts of remembrance – organic and unorchestrated – will be taking place in private among the thousands of past pupils who attended St Conor’s over the years.

When I visited my first school last week, I was caught off-guard by the amount of memories that came back to me as I walked through the halls and peered over the playground.

From old photo-laden walls, out stepped faces that I recognised well; some of which I have not seen since we signed each other’s shirts on our last bittersweet day of P7.

I wondered how they looked now, and where they might be today.

As I rounded the corner of the corridor – the one that leads from the canteen to the lower half of the school – for a spilt second, I felt myself, once again, being swept up in the momentum of the hungry herds, as we stampeded our way towards lunchtime, sandwiches to inhale, and playtime to enjoy.

Almost every classroom and cloakroom held a memory, some happy, some less so, but almost all, in retrospect, funny.

I remembered my teachers: Ms McLaughlin; Ms Elkin; Ms McCrossan; Ms Henderson; Mr McGlone; Ms Darcy; and, maybe the best of them all, Mr Logue.

It is strange how time tinges the tone of the past.

Even things that were scary or sore at the time, now make you smile.

I guess we are just built to sentimentalise our formative years.

When I was at St Conor’s, playtime punishment was doled out at ‘The Wall’; a place where those who broke the rules of the yard were sent in order to reflect upon their transgressions.

Last week, as I stood with my back to the bricks, I remembered a few of the ridiculous reasons that I ended up there – and out of nowhere came a deep, happy laugh.

As I toured around, I felt some of the same feelings I felt 20 years ago; their force diminished, their character the same.

Standing outside my Primary One class, I felt the twinge of nerves that crippled me in my first few months at the school.

Looking down at the mobiles, I re-regretted my decision to hide in that bloody cupboard for an entire lunchtime.

I revisited friendships and feuds, fights and make-ups, and cringed at the thought of unrequited romance and Valentine’s Day cards unanswered.

All these moments of ecstasy and embarrassment came flooding back with an unexpected poignancy.

It is true that we are given to romanticising our early years, and there is no doubt that the childhoods we remember having probably bear little resemblance to the childhoods we actually had.

However, no matter where you go, there will be good and bad, friends and foes, happy and sad.

That is life, whether you are eight or 80.

Anyway, all I know is that I am glad I had these ups-and-downs on the Brookmount Road, and, after a few jars this weekend, I am going to sing the school song loud and proud…

‘For we are the children of St Conor’s…!’