Cathy Kelly, Novelist
Summer holidays were spent in the west of Ireland, miles from my Dublin home. When September loomed, it was time to stop thinking about dips in the wild Atlantic near Enniscrone and dens in the woods where I read endlessly. Instead it was time to start thinking about locating pencil cases and, worst of all, donning my school uniform.
My secondary school uniform was a crime against short girls: a royal-blue jumper made out of wire wool and an A-line skirt which would have taxed a supermodel, or so I liked to think. I could have coped with school were it not for that uniform. Out of it, I was a person. Inside it, I was a number, no matter how many wild earrings I wore to make myself different.
Uniform aside, the fun of starting the school year was in knowing I’d meet up with my friends and perhaps hear about exotic holidays abroad. The other thrill came from touching new schoolbooks, imagining I would one day understand trigonometry and that I could learn Irish grammar by osmosis if I just slept with the book under my pillow. Sadly, this doesn’t work.
The books I adored most were in English and art history. I read the novels instantly and with my (then) almost photographic memory, could see the pages describing Vermeer and Mondrian in my mind’s eye. It was a new, clean year, as untouched as the pages of my new copy books. Anything could happen. Many years later, September still feels like the beginning of the year to me, rather than new year. But I still don’t like royal blue.
