Little did I realise it when we opened our school bookshop in Gort, that soon I would be
wandering down memory lane with many of our customers about schoolbook covering!!!
When we first opened, to be cutting edge, (or so we thought!) we bought a book covering
machine, to cover the schoolbooks for our customers. We charged them 99c per book and
thought we were great.

It was amazing to parents, who’d spent long frustrated hours with rolls of contact or plastic,
watch how this machine worked, welding perfectly formed covers for every size and shape
of a book. It was a creation of genius!

The reminiscing began...God I remember my mother and the brown paper...Brown Paper!
What about the left over wallpaper? I could remember both. Like yesterday! The book was
laid out on the paper, everyone careful to leave a bit extra for the spine. That way the book
cover would open and close without trouble. Cutting the paper carefully, precisely with the
kitchen scissors. The corners folded in and then a finger to hold everything down while the
sellotape was applied. The sellotape only went across the corners of the paper, if you got the
tape onto the book itself the cover might not open easily.

If your books were covered with brown paper there were wonderful creative options... the
fronts of greeting cards that had been saved previously, could be cut out and glued on
to create exotic works of art. Sleighs, snowmen, robins, birthday cards, easter chicks...
What could be applied to the front of the brown paper was endless, fascinating and a
joy to behold; we eyed each other’s efforts up endlessly as the school year rolled by!
Like old friendly ghosts the memories flooded back, across the shop – counter... until
one day, not too far down the line, as a customer and I once again wistfully reminisced, I
remembered there was always the one with the VELVET!

If your books were covered with wallpaper you needed no birthday card cut-outs to identify
your books. You could recognise your own hallway, bedroom, kitchen in an instant.
And so could everyone else! But, if you were posh – oh yes posh, with perhaps a very,
very, ‘good’ sitting room, chances were that you had ‘velvet’ wallpaper on your schoolbooks!

And as for the rest of us, if we were lucky, we could touch  !!