Return of Long Johns Ð but these are in a delicate pink!

Date Published: {J}

God be with the time when I prayed for snow and frost . . . now, I’m that timorous creature you see inching along gingerly by the wall, clutching any possible railing, and wishing that the City Council gave the same priority to footpaths that they do to the roads.

Of course, for the kids, the Arctic spell has meant a whole new series of games. They are the ones gifted with a sense of balance that is capable of keeping them upright – even if sliding sideways – and they know that if they happen to hit the footpath with a hand outstretched to save themselves, they aren’t inevitably bound for the emergency room of the local hospital.

For folks in my age group, chances are that surgeons will be breaking out the metal plates and screws to try to knit bones together again. And, as one of the surgeons pointed out to me last week, “we don’t just get these things in Woodies you know . . . the screws are €80 each, and the metal plates at €400 to €500 each”.

As I said . . . time was. I went to a school where the primary and secondary schools were side by side, but, in the rivalry between the schools, the secondary boys had a huge advantage when it snowed, because right beside their schoolyard, was an enormous field. Perfect for an endless supply of ammunition when it came to snowball fights.

Us secondary types went into that field and made enough snowballs to fight a war. The preparations went on for ages, but everyone from secondary came back into the school grounds with armfuls of at least seven snowballs . . . and all hell broke loose as the unequal attack began and the smaller boys were driven screaming into corners.

Somehow, we saw no injustice in the sheer size of the opposing armies, or the availability of ammunition. Maybe that was because, in our earlier years, we had also been among the primary ranks . . . and lived in the hope that our day ‘in secondary’ would inevitably come.

However, on one occasion I came off badly the worse of the engagement. The bell had gone for resumption of classes, the lines of pupils were forming and hundreds of us secondary types were lined up with armfuls of ammunition. I let fly with one snowball . . . as ill luck would have it, I narrowly missed one of the Brothers, it smashed on the jamb of the door, and scattered in along the floor of the jacks.

He turned with a look of thunder and shouted, “who threw that?”. Of course, it was greeted with absolute silence . . . but, after a pause, I inched up my hand into the air.

It was fair enough to be ordered down into the boiler room to get a shovel to clean it up . . . but I always had a great sense of injustice at the walloping I got from him as well. So much for the virtue of ‘owning up’.

I suppose it has to be judged against the background of the times. This Brother was a bit too handy with ‘the leather’, but there were others who simply should have been charged with assault.

Hardly any wonder then that, even as a man in my 60s, I still have a recurring nightmare about one Brother – a big, angular, blotchy faced, brown haired countryman who started each morning by battering most of us over phrases from that cursed M’Asal Beag Dubh, and by half ten he was only fit to hang on to a radiator and gaze out a window as he tried to regain his breath.

The sheer terror instilled by this man meant that I

sometimes dodged school lying out in the racecourse beside the school, and rolled about with stomach pain, physically ill at the thought of going to school. Of course, as time went on, I became a much more accomplished mitcher.

Anyone could mitch in early Summer when the countryside was receptive . . . I mitched for weeks on end in the depths of Winter. Like many another, I had a hand-me-down overcoat that must have belonged to a rather larger uncle, but it’s huge lapels, and the fact that it was nearly inches too long, provided real protection when mitching in Winter.

For more, read page 15 of this week’s City Tribune.