I recently got a large box full of the last of my things left hanging in the garage of my old house.
I told my ex to dump them, because I presumed I had all of the things that were important to me already. He said: “Nah you’ll want to see this!”
It was full of letters, notebooks and my official “St Michaels Holy Faith Convent” Finglas diaries. Most of the stuff is from when I was between fourteen and seventeen years old. In a time when there was no mobile phones or Facebook we used to constantly write notes to each other. We’d swap them during class, or in the corridor before a class started.
The keeper of secrets – Mairead Farrell’s old school journal…
Reading though them was so odd, because now I know how the lives of the girls who wrote the letters to me have gone. Imelda, the squeaky voiced girl who was a Billy Barry dancer now lives thousands of miles away in Asia with her Spanish husband. The uber-calm, always sensible Lisa is still the same, although she has a very stressful banking job. Jenny- who was head girl and outwardly very together, (but behind the scenes wasn’t really the good girl everyone thought she was!), now has a very senior “Chandler Bing” job in some government funded European partnership? (She’s always on a flight to somewhere and no matter how many times she tells me what she does I just don’t get it.)
My boyfriend couldn’t stop laughing at all the “Mairead loves Tyser” scribbles, (he’s now a Dublin Fire man- think I kissed him twice). Skip three pages on and it’s “Mairead loves Dave” – he moved to Houston, Texas with his family after I kissed him! A month later: “Mairead loves Thomas”. I’ve been wracking my brains to remember who Thomas is but can’t. Obviously I didn’t “love” him that much. Pages of “Mairead loves Ryan” (Giggs) and “Mairead loves Jayo” (Sherlock) made it in there too.
‘To all the guys I’ve loved before…’ Notes Mairead rediscovered in her journal
With all those boys and all that love and all those notes I didn’t really concentrate on my schoolwork, as my Christmas report reflects.
I failed maths, science and …… RELIGION! (30%)
Bad reports: With so much loving going on, Mairead’s studies suffered!
Other things I’ve held on to are letters from an old friend Paul who was at Leeds United. He wrote telling me about his friend “Nicky who is in love with his girlfriend Georgina”. In a later letter he told me his pal “Nicky is in a band and they are supporting Boyzone”! Yes, he was talking about Nicky Byrne and Her.ie’s Georgina.
I’ve closed up the box and put it into my new garage – any time I’m in need of a good laugh I’ll take it out and have a read.
M x
