Comment of the year

The shame!

guilty party right here. i did that too ….*hand up in class* “mam?”

A 13-year-old student in one of my classes called me mam… I was 30 at the time so I was actually kind of insulted (even though technically I could be of the right age) but then school kids think any teacher who is not fresh-faced out of college is at least as old as their parents.
I also had the telly on wheels until two years ago (and there was even one floating around the school with a video recorder still!!)… I’m abroad now and reliably informed it’s been replaced with a laptop and interactive whiteboard. In fact now I think of it, I am getting old after all…
I remember myself at school always stressed about having to read, and once when I was asked, the first line was of the story was “There was a boy called Dickie Flitt…” Unfortunately I was so stressed and trying to look ahead at the next words that I accidentally read “There was a DICK called Dickie Flitt”. More than two decades later and I still cringe.

A child called me Grandad in class a few weeks ago. Guess it’s time to bring out the ‘Just for Men’…

Love that one. Did yis ever have a teacher get up and leave the class suddenly for some reason or another, while the rest of yis were all happily engaged in drawing deadly pictures with charcoal on those big sheets of paper… he’d arrive back in about 10 minutes later and there’d be a room full of minstrels looking at him!

I cleaned the duster once at school once by putting it clean through a window pane….war…

I was teachers favourite for that job in 3rd & 4th class, she thought I was a lovely good girl, trusted to be out on my own in the yard. So I would have a good giggle spelling out BUM on the concrete with the dusters. Bang them a few random times over the letters so it wasn’t immediately obvious and I’d have a laugh till the rain came.

The envy when someone else was picked to ring the bell!

who mitched ? …

Don’t start on that one. On the hop! Hidin your school bags, goin on gur!

The square piece of material , usually gingham that you practiced sewing on

Our school got a BBC Micro computer. Shared between 10 classes, 450 kids and wheel in once a week. Class messers were banned from even looking at it.

Oh god the rows I had at home because we didn’t shop in Tesco so couldn’t get tokens!

@Susan Marsh, it was Quinnsworth, not Tesco!

Quinnsworth and yellow pack everything lol

@Peter O’Phile I must have been later than you, because it was definitely Tesco for us!

That has just brought back so many great memories- can’t believe I’d forgotten that one!

The smell of the poster paints oh my god thats one that just came flooding back

Haha yeah, sunglasses, eye patches,mohawks and cigarettes all over the place…

And dicks. Lots and lots of dicks.

Oh shit. I said that out loud.

Hahaha…. only bold boys did that!

I know, what a laugh! but obviously you wouldn’t do it to your own copy, it would have to be someone else’s… the look on your classmate’s face when he realises that the diver is naked ( tipp-ex required ) and the hurler is about to lash a cat out if it, would be worth getting in trouble for!

We put periods on them. Sounds odd Now

Anyone remember chublets? Thick crayons. They used to get them out in boxes of about 50. I can smell them now

remember the real expensive colouring-pencils? they came in a stylish hard-paper packet, they were six-strong.. yellow, orange, red, blue, green and ….. was it white?

Is it not mala?

Had this argument at work recently finally the answer I needed, it is MARLA!!

I always thought it was mórla

We only ever called it marla.

I thought it was plasticine

Class Dave :)

Marla.
Comes from a marl hole.
Well that’s the connection I made in my head.

:-) Chris

Marla? I always thought it was Mala. “Mala head” was one of my favourite terms of abuse.

Marla and me!

If I had a tumour, I’d name it Marla!

Trying to win a “giant dazzler” on a manhole cover, conkers in the hot the press for a year, “tip n tig” in the yard, jeriatric nurses grabbing you by your little goolies while you coughed uncomfortably, your name written on the blackboard by that little snitch put in charge when the teacher left the room, the smell of the headmasters office as you waited outside for the inevitable “six of the best”. Damn you Journal.ie, wheres me Prozac?

It’s “márla” (in my opinion the fada is important as the first syllable rhymes with war not mar, however in wishing not to be a total pedant I’ll settle for marla so long as there’s an r).

It’s listed with the fada here: wikitionary listing for plasticine with a small p (you have to click show under the heading “translations”)

This Dictionary lists it as “marla” (without the fada) but crucially still has an r: irishdictionary dot ie

Frustratingly “plasticine” isn’t listed in the new official Foclóir (Dictionary) at all: focloir dot ie

P.S. have avoided using any links as I’ve tried to submit this comment a few times but its not working with the links included.

An ironic aside: an awful lot of people who take the high moral ground with regard to spelling and grammar* shoot themselves in the foot when arguing over the use of fadas by spelling fada with a fada! (i.e. fáda wich would be pronounced faw-da) Source: http://url.ie/gv73

*I’ve been guilty of this many a time and have no difficulty with labelling myself an unashamed Grammar Nazi!

Dónal, – when you mentioned that ‘márla’ rhymed with ‘war’, & then mentioned ‘irony’ in your next comment , I felt that I had to point out that ironically, ‘márla’ (plasticine) was born as a result of war:- it was developed by British chemists as a ‘quick fix’ putty, which would be insoluble in petrol & could be used to seal the bullet holes in the fuel tanks of fighter planes, some of which were right in front of the pilot, as in the Spitfire.
Kids loved playing with the stuff, so they developed a non-toxic version for the mass market.

Thanks for sharing that Harvey it’s fascinating and I do love serendipity of how my choice of words brought that though to mind for you :)

We did pronounce it morla as we had a mála scoile. More than fifty years ago but I can still smell it and feel it under my fingernails.

Maybe you should wash your hands then?!? :P

@ Harvey thanks, really interesting!
Growing up in Norn Ireland I’m sorry to admit that I only knew the word plasticine

hahahaaaa I just sang long with that one :-)

my little one started school in september and they still do that she says it at home now as well :)

Singing the Hail Mary as well! :)

Ha John I remember this.
Our school was like most schools beside a church. A bunch of us were given duties to go around and collect the empty milk cartons from all the classrooms and put them out in the shed. As you can gather the shed smelled rank from all the week aged milk cartons.

There would be a good number of days where we would blow up our own milk cartons and jump on them. What’s worse is sometimes the back of the church was open for ample bang effect.

Ah simple times

Blow it up? You mean you actually drank the warm milk before you jumped on it?

Begged my mam could I get Benny Bunny. Then bringing it home everyday when I remembered I hate milk!!!

Collecting fancy paper and fancy rubbers. God knows what answer you would get if you asked a kid if they had fancy rubbers today.

I had a big rubber when I was in sixth class that said ‘Homework causes brain damage’

@tasha
My daughter, 13, has a fancy rubber collection and we keep trying to get her to call them her eraser collection. She insists on calling them her rubbers tho, cringe

Sorty Claire. I hit the red thumb instead of the green one!

No prob ! That doesn’t explain the other two tho ;-)

One of these??

http://www.billybear4kids.com/holidays/ChineseNewYear/CootieCatcher.shtml

I made one only last week! Some things you never forget

Oh god yeah ha ha I could never make one ….

The older girls knew how to do it but would never tell the younger ones. But we figured it out. That showed them! lol

The foamy fresco wallpaper was great for drawing on in biro.

Oh God yes. I used to fill in the pattern on it with a biro ^_^

Ooh posh!

No we were threatened from a very young age with the sting bata. Proud possession of Bean Ui Gleecher the head teacher. They put an end to the terror across my poor fingers.

Inside outside inside scales!

was it not inside outside donkeys tails?

Inside outside on the rails!

As I remember it, it went ‘England, Ireland Scotland, Wales; inside, outside, monkey’s tails’… and of course there was ‘banana splits’ and ‘Mary Poppins wore her stockins inside out’. Can’t remember how to do long division but somehow the elastics rhymes stuck in my head instead…

Dear god , i either went to the same school as you or else it was more rampant than i thought !!

We had pieces of carpet for under our shoes as we slid around the wooden floors in the mornings after the teacher spread some wax from a jamjar with holes punched in the lid that had been sitting on the heater to warm up , and we slid and polished happily with books in our hands reading as we polished ;)

I was wondering if nobody else remembered the cómhra board – and feeling you were the business if you got the job of stapling on the sandpaper pictures.

We weren’t as posh we didn’t have carpet lol….and we only got to do it at Xmas and before the summer holidays ha ha

Cyrils saver stamps werent they ? Had acorns on the stamps

Sammy stamps! 50p on a Monday!!

And our poor parents. Mine couldn’t afford to give me loads, and I’d be home giving out stink that I wouldn’t win!

Forgot bout the injections! And the smell in the head office ! And u went in with ur green card signed by ur parents!!

forged signatures, obviously : )

The Texaco art competition! God forgot about that. I lived right beside a Texaco, and was pure convinced every year I’d win, just because of proximity. The day I found out Texaco was a national chain, not just in my town was a big day!

Right your penny for the black babies! Never got to know what the black babies did with the pennies.

They saved them up to buy a flight ticket…

brilliant :)

Oldham.

Loved stickler brick! Bought some for my kids at Xmas

*stickle

It was either milk or Benny Bunny. Of course only the posh children got that

Who remembers milk bottles with foil tops and they were half cream and half milk..? …and the birds always had a peck at them ..

The posh kids had soda stream in our school…

I remember ‘bags’ of milk that always spilled down your front, am I alone here?

Probably to wash down the Parma ham and ciabatta ……

In our school conkers were no holds barred and a full contact sport! Ppl baked them, varnished them, painted them in tipp-ex, one guy even tried covering his in tape! If they got wrapped around each other on a strike ye both pulled until either someone let go or the conker came off the string. Then it was 30 lads all trying to stomp on the same conker! It was carnage! Absolutely brilliant!

Clear varnish was always a winner :)

Won’t find a gollywog on them these days though (like above)

ah so was i could not wait to get it for her and she loved it :)

Rockin’, rollin’, ridin’,
Out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown,
Many miles away.

Blauting paper soelt wrong !

especially when your friend tried to wipe it off, and instead made it ten times worse..

when the ink is hitting your friend all across the face, which would normally be the intention..

Putting ink from your fountain pen into a soft piece of blu-tack you had robbed off a poster at the back of the class, carefully squeezing the blu tack ball closed and flicking it up the class.

We used to put blotting paper in our shoes before choir practice in the hope that we’d look pale, or maybe even faint and get sent up to the nurse. Dunno of it worked or we were just good actors/ totally psycho!

I remember that Kevin too.

Ha yea the may table i was so pedantic that i had made one at home!!

The smell of the match being struck to light the candles

Me too – that’s when my ambition was to be a fashion-designing nun. With a rubber stamp. Weren’t we very holy children all the same?

Thank Christ I didn’t have to suffer the nonsense of going to a catholic school.

You mean the statchitt of de blessid vurgin?

And the song “May is the month of Mary, the month we all love so well” Sounds like a father ted song now :-D

Plenty of nonsense in Protestant schools too – coming home singing about Roses in the Rushes. (Moses!)

…. Nobody liked him :)

Do you remember selecting books from the mobile library truck and dreading the ringing of the bell at the end of break time?

Me too been singing it since the article…

Walking two miles to school using the hot spud mammy gave me, tossing it from hand to hand . My choice – eat at start – not hungry but cold hands when I got to school – eat when I arrived at school – hungry but hands were warm. Always chose the latter so that hands were warm to take the báta!

I had the same feeling about the bewks. I was in the era of “Pat and Ann.” I think Conor Cruise was in government at the time. My school was very Dub so we didn’t have posters of 1916 or learn the National Anthem. In fact I didn’t learn it until 2008.

We had bottles too. Really ancient! Left on the radiator to,de-ice . I can still taste it to,this day

:)

And trying to come up with a sin.

You all had to have 3 sins. I wouldn’t help in the house, I cursed and then come up with a third one.

Fought with your sister or brother usually did the trick

All ways said I fought with my brothers and sisters, followed by not telling the truth. Alway did the trick as I’m an adopted only child. Oh, that’s 4.

And i couldnt remember my ‘Act of Confession’…….!

Very funny!!!!!

I still do that

I still can’t

I couldn’t think of any sins ever, I just wasn’t the sort of kid to dwell on my transgressions so I never remembered them.

I remember panicking and making them up. In the proceeding week, I fully expected to be struck by lightening for my “naughtiness”, when it didn’t happen, I just went on making them up.

Oh, and I’ve never been struck by lightening :) :)

I remember the teacher being sick and being sent to another class for the day. This other class had a visit from the priest who was doing confessions down the back of the room. We were sitting close by so could over hear all the rehearsed sins. (Not helping mammy, fighting with my sister etc) Then this one kid rolls up and says ” Eh me and my friends were smashing windows down at the community school”………..Still laughing to this day!

I didn’t share my penny sweets

We brought in a dead hedgehog once… Don’t know how the parents let us!

What was the name of the bricks we use to have! Like a monopoly box and the units were cream the twos were dark green the three block was orange I think! And so on! Can anyone remember!!?

Cuiseniere rods?? Not sure of spelling.

And the ruler up your sleeve, before you got the leather strap or cane, for not reciting lines correctly.

Think u cud be right! I can smell them! Would liv to get hold of them again!! Tnks for that!

Unifix!

Yeah, we had to wear slippers because the school building was new and the main bit of the class was carpeted. The best bit in 6th class was being allowed to leave early for lunch and go down to help the junior infants teacher tie all their laces for them, it meant you missed the Angelus too, my parents weren’t very religious so I didn’t know it all and would try to mumble my way through it.

Ah I miss primary school!!! Seems like so long ago now:-( some of those books bring back great memories

I remember desks with inkwell holes! And I was in school in the 90s. I remember the races at the beginning of the school year to get the desks with the inkwell cover still on it. The hours of craic. The innocence!

Ha ha! me too but were rarely full..

Going out to buy a nib was always a good excuse to escape class to the school shop

I remember the ink wells with ink in them and those dreadful nips pens and blotting paper, from the 50s.

There were ink wells in some of our desks, but we never used them because we had pens with ink cartridges. People used to bite the bottom when they’d finished the cartridge and take out the little ball, some had huge collections.
Occasionally someone would put in black ink cartridges by accident, and it took ages to write all the ink out of their pen before it would go back to blue.
When you made a mistake and had to use one of those eraser pens that smelled like bleach, and writing over it was the only time you were allowed to use biro!

Soldier in the grass with a bullet up he’s ass

We had “icky ocky horses gocky, icky ocky out!” :o)

Enny meeny minny mo catch a n#######%% by the toe if he screams let him go enny meeny minny mo!!

Dip dip dig shit, who stood in it…….!

Racist! We were certainly not politically correct. Remember the golliwog on the jam jars?

Icky dicky horses mickey, icky dicky out.

…and ended with “I woke up, it was all a dream”

and had a dog in the middle

Jaysus! That would take out someones eye you delinquent!!

I think that’s great, not too heavy!

Zacchaeus was indeed a greedy little man, and a snake ( hiding up the tree and all that ), and he wasn’t the most popular mate in the Bible, but don’t be slagging Jesus man

How about

” growing up – growing up to be a caterpillar grows to be a butterfly ….” If thats not stuck in ur head as you go to work today humming a song from your school days with a big stupid smile on your face then i give up lol

a caterpillar grows up to be a butterfly and a seed grows up to be a flower. fish grow fins, to tickle and wriggle and swim; birds grow beaks to peck and pick – i’m growing up to be me.

at 35, you’d think I’d have evolved a way to clear such junk out of my head. but no… it’s firmly imprinted.

..

Well done i couldnt remember it all lol

We had “Rusty, Sean and Máire” then a load of other ones after that. I still remember one about a pair of young kids whose father had died going up to Aras to try to meet the president and ask him for help.

New words on this page: Cat, Run

I remember reading Sal and Jim long before Ann and Barry. My little guy starts this coming September and knows how to use Netflix on the iPad. It’s true, youth is wasted on the young!

Pog’s too!!

And of course pogs!!! Out in the yard , or if it was raining the trolley came in with the aul telly and video player !!

Remember Pogs? Well they’re back…. In Alf form

What you did there…..I see it.

Was it siamsa?

And the squares of lino for rolling out the Marla so it wouldn’t stick to the table

Cheese on Mondays, corned beef Tues and Thurs, buns on Weds and jam sambos on Fridays, all washed down with warm ( sour most of the time) milk

Was just tonight talking about corned beef sandwiches! They, along with a bottle of raspberryade made up my first lunch on my first day of Juniors. You’d be taken into care now for a lunch like that!

Corned beef went very well with an easi single in the 80s – that was up there with Parma ham on ciabatta in the noughties.

Corned horse anyone?

Fookin yuppies.

We sang 1,2,3 o’leary, 4,5,6 o’leary, 7,8,9 o’leary, 10 o’leary, start again :)

Ah thanks Louise. Can’t read that without singing it though… so tempted to get two tennis balls

one I remember is
Please keep of the grass JR
To let Sue Ellen pass JR
Sue Ellen has a gun JR
She’ll shoot you up the bum JR :-)

One bizarre song I remember was chanted in the yard as we all ran around a nominated kid in a circle.

“I’ve got a girlfriend she’s from the ocean I give her anything to keep her alive. She’s got a pair of legs just like some frozen chips (O’Connell Street in an older version I’m told), that’s where my mother used to go. Toesy toesy knee knee knee, elbow elbow clap clap clap. Round the world she must go, where she stops you’ll never know, s.t.o.p. stop” and the kid stops at someone who must take her place. The strangest things stick in your mind sometimes :-)

Plainy I-ooh, over I-ooh, flashy and archy as well

My sisters used to skip to a song….
vote vote vote for develera…
in comes (person) at the door I O….
they tried to teach me to run into a fast spinning rope…
it bet the legs off me…
I got them back by cutting the hair off their dolls :)….
I have 6 sisters….
They got me back in the end :)….
I still can’t skip :(

over in Holland the land of the Dutch
there lives a fair lassy I love her so much
her name is Susannah and where is she now
Up in the highlands milking her cow
Singing oh dear what can the matter be
three fat ladies got stuck in the lavatory
they’ve been there from Monday til Saturday
nobody knew they were there, but me.

A very bold girl sang this in 4th class:

Myyy granny played for Ireland
She nearly scored a goooal
But she did the splits
And broke her tits
And the ball went up her hooole!

That girl got suspended a lot. :o

We had
Queeni-i-o
who has the ball
Is she big or is she small
Is she fat or is she thin
Or is she like a rolling pin!

Have this song in my head now….

Texaco, texaco, over the hills to Mexico where they do the….
Splits, splits, splits
And they do the high
Kicks, kicks, kicks
Where they turn
Around, round, round
And they touch the
Ground, ground, ground
Where they read a
Book, book, book
And they do not
Look, look, look

You’ll have to say 3 Hail Marys and an Our Father for that Deirdre

And a glory be! Can’t forget that one.

you mean you cant spell cathecism Call Adam Tell Eve Christy Higgins Is Selling Milk do you not remember that..

That’s a legend of a lunch right there!

Do you remember Cubits? It was a bottled cucumber sandwich spread only used in case of emergencies or if mum forgot to go shopping – totally gack!

Arrested by Arithmetic?