Often when we see Granny, the conversation comes around to the spiralling cost of sending the youngsters to school. Time after time, the box of books is wheeled out.

Hold on now for just two ticks, she'll say, I have a box of books below in the room that might be of some use to you. Granny, you see, has never really held all that much with New Curricula or Revised Syllabi. Schoolbooks are schoolbooks are schoolbooks, just as surely as day follows Hall and Knight.

The siblings inwardly groan and tetchily roll their eyes heavenwards but, if she notices, she resolutely refuses to let on. In deference to her good intentions, I teeter on the diplomatic tightrope of deference or dismissal.

This year she surpasses herself.

Reaching down into the right-hand side of the box, she picks out a slim volume and dusted it off. Its title is Courtesy for Boys and Girls, published by the Christian Brothers in, we discover, 1962. "This might be of use to some of you now," she says airily, without any hint of judgment that I can discern. Siblings titter and eldest takes the merry little volume in his shovel-sized hands, feigning great interest.

"Hey, listen to this everyone," he begins, intoning in his best theatrical voice. Page 3, number 8: "Greet the members of your family with a cheerful `Good morning, Tom'; `Good-bye, Mam'; `Safe journey, Margaret'; `Have a good holiday, Jim'; `Happy birthday, Eileen'; `Good night, Dad', etc."

Eldest at this stage of his career has a much greater penchant for another publication's page 3 than he has for this one, and he continues to take the Arthur Bliss out of more of the exhortations within. Granny, ever the doyen of decency, is not amused at all.

I remember the book from my own schooldays. Mistily, I flit back over the years to those hard benches where I sat listening attentively as my beautiful powdered and rouged teacher read those extracts every Friday at Catechism time. I lapped it up, squeezing myself with a purpose of amendment that I would be more courteous than ever she thought possible.

One section, though, used to rankle with me. In denouncing egotism (the condition was surely never abroad in rural Ireland then), it asked the question: "Are your I's too close together?" Being the victim of congenital strabismus, I took this to be very cruel - especially as the others would inevitably turn around and look me as straight in the eyes as they possibly could under the circumstances.

Still, I feel, we were better for knowing that little book. Courtesy may be as rare in today's curriculum as a Christian Brother but, like a classic, it will never really go out of fashion.