Today I wore a suit for the first time in a very long time. I straightened my tousled mane of hair. I made up carefully. Anyone would think I was off on my way to an interview.

But no: Phil, and Maddie, and I were off to pay a visit to the school to which we hope, and pray, Maddie will go next year.

As a matter of sheer coincidence, it is the very same school that I went to for my secondary education.

One edits one’s memories, don’t you find? There were very good memories, and then there were the other ones.

Today, as I readied myself, I knew those other ones were in the back of my mind, lurking, waiting for an opportunity to show their faces. It would only take a familiar room, a smell of yesteryear, to bring it all flooding back.

I was always an individual soul, but luckily schools like that tend to have their share of original thinkers.

When I arrived, a year later than everyone else, I teamed up with an unlikely pair: the preppy daughter of a dashing army officer, and a larger-than-life livewire, Indian and incendiary.

We made a chaotic, if entertaining team. I was the sort of person who was always getting into scrapes, many of them very funny unless you were me. The other two laughed,  and picked up the pieces.

No change there, then.

My English teacher was a wonderful, incisive and very English lady who summed me up better than anyone else: “Katie’s performance is erratic”.

Enthusiasm driven, I pinballed from great work to careless prose. My homework was rarely in on time: I distinctly remember being bawled out by my flute teacher for lack of practice and various other misdeeds too numerous to recount here.

I had one moment worthy of the big top, when I was in a hurry to get outside for playtime.

I wolfed my packed lunch and stood up, with a peeled orange in my hand, ready to make for the door. But eating and walking were forbidden. All young ladies should sit down to eat.

Just as I set out on my quest, the geography teacher appeared at the door. With lightening reflexes, if little intelligence, I shoved the entire orange into my mouth and began, frantically, to chew.

The teacher, a lovely lady but no pushover, allowed her rounded eyes to narrow. “Katie…..” she said, “Have you really finished your lunch?”

All eyes in the form turned to me, my mouth bulging, and for all I know,  my eyes following suit.

I could only think of one solution. Swallow.

And Reader, that is just what I did.

“Yes, Mrs Mason!” I answered, and to this day I still have no idea how I did swallow that orange whole.

I waited for that deep ache that comes when you push muscles too far. The orange was now on its journey to my stomach. This must, surely, hurt rather a lot.

But no pain came, and I got a standing ovation from my classmates and a place in school folklore. My poor geography teacher had only the letter of the law to stand on, and that served me very well. I was out in the playground in a trice.

So: 27 years later, into the car I climbed, and we collected Maddie, and headed for the Convent of my childhood.

As I turned into the school’s drive it felt wrong to be driving, because that’s what grown ups did. The approach road looked the same, but much, much shorter. My memory had made it interminable, and buried it in the heart of woodland which was much thicker than its counterpart in reality.

But everything else was almost exactly the same. It was as if I had not walked out 27 years ago, but yesterday.

We walked up the steps into the school hall. There, we found hot tea and pastries, squash for Maddie, and pupils ready to take us round the school with both perfect grammar and decorum.

Our guide was quite wonderful: genuine, attentive, informative, polished. At about 14 years old.

Maddie asked to see the swimming pool. We were taken there with all speed, and it was the same old pool: but the teacher made eye contact immediately, stopped the lesson, and came over to talk to us. Her charges waited quietly in the water.

Which kind of swimming did Maddie like best? she wanted to know.

Now we love our swimming, but we’ve never been what you might call sport specialists. Maddie tried an inspired shot in the dark. Synchronised swimming?

And lo, an instant display to music was performed. I blinked. Synchronised swimming on demand.

So this is what school fees secure for you, I noted with interest.

Through the music department, drama, dance, the library: onwards and upwards. Lollies in one class, chocolate in another. And Maddie’s eye grew large as saucers, and her smile widened with every step she took in the tracks of her young guide.

Presently, we came to the domestic science room. And I reeled back through the years as I remembered the fearsome sumo-nun who used to run the department. We’d turn up with a basket of lowly ingredients and we’d go home with good, basic home Irish cooking.

Nothing fancy, you understand.

You didn’t mess with her, though. I’ll never forget the obligatory school trip to Lourdes. One day she took pity on me and my friends, and trailed us round the shops to give us a little bit of variety on this relentlessly devotional tour.

It never occurred to her that she might extend the shopkeepers the courtesy of speaking French. She simply waved her purchases inches from their noses, and bawled, in a thick Irish brogue: “Candles, dear, Candles…..”

One tour, two lollies and a head teacher’s speech later, and we were scrambling back into the car to go and collect Felix from his friend’s house.

It had been much easier to remember the good times than I had thought possible.

Now to save up the pennies.