NO images rush to the mind of those who, like myself, missed Irish college. We have only, our preconceptions ... having to sit indoors during supposedly free months; being force fed an Ghaeilge; facing the harsh threat of parental wrath if sent home for speaking the Sasanach tongue; curfews; chaperoned ceilithe; authentic Irish cuisine. Now, a collection of letters home from children "sent to the Gaeltacht" brings us the realities of life at na colaisti.

Letters From Irish College, edited by novelist Rose Doyle, is a collection of letters from youngsters who found themselves in a schoolroom far from the comforts of home - and still managed to have fun. The book is loaded with self consciousness, snippets of exacting daily diaries and innocently funny anecdotes of romantic shenanigans.

Perhaps it is pure ignorance for an outsider not to have been aware of it, but enjoyment is the primary anchor chaining these experiences together. What comes through most is the sheer joy attached to the writing of the letters. Thirteen year old Cathy McGouran puts it well in a letter to her friend Julie: "You will probably be wondering why I am writing you so many letters. Well the reason is . . I like writing them and you like getting them."

These kids, for the most part, have been having something far better than a mere "bull". As Susan Murray informs her mother: "I am having a good time. We are learning loads of Irish and smoking lots of hash and drinking (not)." Or the irrepressible sounding 12 year old Barry Doyle, who tells Mum and Dad: "The most amazing thing about this place is the amount of tea you're expected to drink.. I'm having a great time but I don't wish you were here so don't visit."

In a curious kind of way, this is where the two images seem to collide. You expect to hear stories of misery, but at the same time aren't at all surprised to hear of real or imagined modern experiences which are a world away from what children at the colleges experienced in the 1960s. The anthology spans the years 1936 to 1995.

Making both apologetic and unreservedly heavy demands for the absent comforts of home is a predictable trait of many of the letters, with some students suffering the unbearable strains of feeling in some way less well off than their peers. Witness, for example, Lorna Siggins's repeated longings for letters from home, because "some people get post every day".

Co nor McManamly relates how he needs a smaller size of Odor Eaters in order to battle the rigours of Colaiste Chamuis in Co Galway, because his runners make the room terribly smelly. "I can wear the same pair of socks for at least three days without them getting a bit smelly, Odor Eaters are brilliant," he writes. "The milk is a bit weird, we've come to the conclusion that it comes straight out of a cow," is another of his observations.

Then there's 10 year old Colm Keane, who sent home a batch of postcards from Colaiste na Mumhan in Cork in 1963, with a list of both implied and over stated demands for supplies: "Enjoying my stay. Woman of the house is very cross. Still have pound. See you in a month." And: "I am getting hungrier every minute of the day.. We got a very small piece of steak the other day, it was terrible. Send on food, that is an SOS."

A recurring element of the letters is the rolling together of initial unhappiness and homesickness with the mayhem of rollicking in the Gaeltacht with children who were foreigners hours before. Anthony Deegan forces himself to put it into words when he writes: "Life could be better could be worse here, that's the only way I can put it, we have quite a bit of fun but the rest of the time is just misery."

Many of the girls are preoccupied with romantic pursuits. Sheila O'Donnell wrote in 1964 that "Deirdre and myself both have boyfriends don't tell anyone especially the girls. Deirdre got hers first he gave her a ring. Then I got mine he gave me a ring it is lovely."

Rose Doyle says the idea for the book came from Anne O'Donnell of Marino publishers and Joe O'Donohoe from parent company Mercier in Cork. "I wrote to an awful lot of people, and there were such problems with mothers having to search for the letters. So I had to take what letters I could get," Ms Doyle says. Her initial plan involved targeting a select list of people she wanted to use; but the letters proved hard to come by, so she had to make do with taking whatever was made available to her.

"Everyone I contacted was very enthusiastic about the idea, they went into stories they remembered about the Gaeltacht," she says.

The letters are, unsurprisingly, treasured possessions, with some of Rose's letter hoarding respondents willing to hand over only photocopies. With all of the vagaries of circumstance, it is amazing that so many of them actually survive.

It is mainly because of a combination of mothers' assiduous care and chance that they did. Some are by well known people, most are not. Former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald's letter to his mother from Ring when he was 10 opens the collection, but neither Proinsias de Rossa nor Ruairi Quinn was able to turn up any letters they had written; and Dick Spring isn't here either.

But the collection is no less amusing because of a lack of recognisable names. These young scribblers were at the beginning of their lives, at the beginning of a great adventure and it shows.