WordSmith Column by Gerard Smith

Life is like a corridor…

WordSmith Column by Gerard Smith

Published: Sat 11 Oct 2025, 4:02 PM

I’m walking home, a route that takes me past my secondary school; approaching, I see it’s the ‘Breifne College Opening Evening.’ On impulse I decide to pop in. The school has expanded since I was at it, a fine new building stands before the flat-roofed establishment I attended. Often, as I pass by on my way into Cavan Town, the tannoy-system jolts me from my thoughts with announcements calling for students to go to “…the 1974 building.”

I arrived at the 1974 building in 1977, a shy Irish boy with an English accent. A cloud of nervous energy followed me on my first school morning; when I opened the door and saw a stark corridor stretching ahead, that cloud engulfed me. I was 12 years' old and the corridor seemed about five years' long; I wasn’t sure I’d reach the end of it. I paused a moment, took a breath, and walked towards my first class.

And now I’m back at my beginning, staring down that corridor. It feels surreal, for it looks the same, smells the same; and I’m 12 again. I peer into my first classroom and feel the self-conscious strain of students staring at the new lad. I hear the teacher greet me, “You’re very welcome to the tech, Gerard.” Peals of laughter surround me when one boy points out, ‘He’s all style sir, like yourself.”

My flared trousers, wide collared shirt, and knitted tank top matched the teachers: mortified! That class was called ‘Combined-Studies’ but such was my sensory overload I had no idea what studies were combined.

Now, I’m aware of people: parents, students, and teachers milling around me; yet I’m alone in 1978. I take off for my next class. History, “It’s just one fu***ng thing after another,” said a character in Alan Bennet’s ‘The History Boys'. But for me, history was herstory and more, for I was secretly smitten with the teacher, her easy manner and raven-haired beauty storied me to a beautiful ‘B’ in my Inter-Cert.

I continue up the corridor for two years, turning into the king of corridors: the mall. I’m fifteen now and settled into school, somewhat. Standing outside my English classroom, I listen to the teacher read one of my essays to my peers. I pulsed with a pride I supressed; and now I mourn not telling her how proud she made me feel that day.

Onwards I walk for another year, into sixteen and towards the jewel in my classroom crown. But before I reach it, I look to my right and see myself in that fight with my nemesis outside the metalwork room. I turn away from the violence and amble towards my art-class.

The room is repurposed as a canteen now, but she can’t hide her former life from me. I walk into a seminal Friday afternoon and watch my art-teacher twist her incredible mane of hair into a rope, tuck it into her belt, and throw me a metaphorical football, “You know Gerard, you could get into The National College of Art and Design.” I caught the ball and ran with it, determined to score that goal. And thanks to her guidance and encouragement, I scored it.

I wasn’t academic, nor good at sports; and as a young person it’s important to find something we’re good at, to have a skill that can be nurtured and help us make the transition from teen to adult with a feeling of self-worth – I found that in the art-room with my art-teacher.

Now, looking at the other end of the mall, I see people pouring into the canteen; the place I’d hideaway from PE. The teacher didn’t mind, he knew my sport was art and he left me alone to doodle and dream.

I step back into the mall and midway up stop to listen to: the laughter, the tears and tantrums, echoes from a past that wasn’t always rosy. But on arrival at the canteen I find myself back in the present. People have gathered, and I arrive in time to hear the current head-girl and head-boy address the crowd; they speak with an unrehearsed impressive voice; and in many ways they encapsulate my own experience on the corridors of my former school, Breifne College.

Corridors, eh? They’re much like life, we never know where they’ll take us – but whatever our age or stage in life, we must continue to walk them with a dreamful stride.