Colm O'Regan: Learning about going back to school all over again

After the longest summer holidays in recent history, kids are getting ready to don their uniforms again

Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

There is a photo somewhere of my first day. I had a green windcheater. The technology of it blew my mind. 

When the day grew too warm after fooling you with a cool morning, you could tuck it inside its own pocket, turn the pocket inside out and it became a little belt. 

I never got over the knackiness of this little ourobouros.

I remember very little about the first day itself. It’s merged with snippets from the days that followed. 

I know someone got sick on a table during Colouring. I remember being afraid of the toilets. 

In the classroom, I remember the word ‘tarbh’ and the picture of the bull on a small card. 

And those cards were stored in empty packets of the Drum tobacco the husband of my first teacher used to smoke. 

There were prefabs in which the mystical elders of 4th 5th and 6th class were taught.

 

A gravelly yard where I once lost a small toy calf and where someone fell and split their head open and needed stitches and their parents didn’t claim compensation because Sometimes Sh*t Happens And It’s No One’s Fault.

But I definitely remember the school bus. The roar of it coming up the hill that was a smoother sound than a tractor, more benign than a lorry. 

The smell of diesel and driver’s 20 Major. The absolute pre-Health and Safety state of it. 

Children standing in the stairwell, sitting in the windscreen and on the gearbox. 

We didn’t have seat belts in the car – why would they be on the bus?

That first bus-roar was the official end of summer.

This year, there has never been a summer holidays like it so the advent of the new school year is already surreal. 

Normally, the school holidays have a rhythm. Late June is all about the joyous release of tension. 

Usually, school holidays give a sense of endless possibilities. Days stretching ahead. 

All the copies and books and sometimes – through not always – trousers that are rendered obsolete at the stroke of a calendar. 

There is a sense of endless possibilities. Days stretching ahead. 

A particular shade of green and sunlight that is so brilliant that it feels like a flashback but you’re going through it in real-time. 

Then the long middle bit. A time we used to think of as boring but now you’d have to pay for it at a Mindfulness Retreat. 

Cloudy endless Sunday afternoons listening to hurling on the car radio.

And then the slippery slide of August. 

Queuing for second-hand schoolbooks, the first day you’d need long trousers, the harvest, the Rose of Tralee, the Horse Show. The end.

This year it’s either been the longest March or the longest August. I can’t tell which. 

The eldest is going to Big School. With so much going on – and nothing going on – we haven’t thought about it in the ‘our child is starting Big School’ sense. 

It’s very much been ‘our children are going to be out of the house. Imagine all that we will get done.’ 

We are currently experiencing the sort of productivity-delusion that usually people have about the days between Stephenses Day and the New Year.

But I know we’re probably not ready. I know there’ll be blubbing. 

I am tearing up now thinking about me tearing up this day fortnight. 

We were already a bit emotional watching the orientation video from the school. 

“LOOK AT THE LITTLE CHAIRS AND TABLES!”. 

An orientation video is better than a parents night in person because you take in way more information and aren’t distracted trying to ask the headmaster The Best Question Ever.

I think I can hear the bus.