For weeks on end we painted pictures of St Patrick using bright paint called, as far as I can remember, Finart Liquicolour. This came in huge plastic squeezy bottles and smelt good enough to eat. In fact I think some of us on occasion, found it irresistible.
The only colour we needed for St Patrick was green. The same green we used for fields, hills and that line of grass that ran horizontally past the front door of your almost square house with the smoking chimney.
Green St Patrick was easy to paint because he had a beard and a kite on his head. In one hand he had a shepherd's crook and in the other he had a shamrock which we thought was a cinch to paint because three green blobs would do it. Everything in the picture was green and the best paintings made him look like a green Santa Claus. The lesser efforts represented our patron saint as The Incredible Hulk with a walking stick.
That's where my image of St Patrick comes from - painting pictures at school and envisaging him as one of The Dubliners in full episcopal regalia. One of my neighbours protested strongly that Patrick was a Protestant, but when I asked him had he ever seen a Protestant dressed up like a Catholic bishop he had to concede.
It turned out in later years that Patrick wasn't even Irish: Welsh or English perhaps - but, whatever way you looked at it, the dear saint of our isle was British. And, tempting as it may be however, we should never blame St Patrick for all of our subsequent religiously inspired difficulties. He was, let's not forget, dragged here somewhat against his will. Even so, that was the start of it - or the end of it as the case may be. It's always risky to light big fires.
St Patrick, as the song goes, was a gentleman and he came from decent people. He built a church in Dublin town and on it put a steeple. Even so, I'm sure that many people thought that it was a steeple with no point to it and took him for a crank - like one of those Christians who keep wanting to tell you about God.
He was, by all accounts, a hard case. He wouldn't take no for an answer and he converted all around him. He was a politician, an accomplished hill-walker, a dreamer, a writer, a church-builder and a showman.
The shamrock routine was a fair enough demonstration piece but it must have been standing on the snakes while wearing open-toed sandals that finally did it for most people. It's interesting to note that in the voodoo religion Damballa the Snake-God is worshipped on St Patrick's Day. I would imagine that these voodoo rites might involve something of a St Patrick's Day Parade - perhaps with fewer majorettes and more headless chickens.
Much as I hate to bring Fermanagh into every article I write, it does shed important light on the origins of the man. There is a town in Fermanagh called Tempo - an Tiompu Deiseal in Irish. The right turn in question was taken by St Patrick who made it as far as Tempo and no further.
When we were children we used to say that St Patrick took one look at the place and said "Ah, to hell with this for a game of darts." But there's more to it than that. The patron saint was apparently on his way to Enniskillen for a drink when he stopped off at a mill by the side of a winding river. He suddenly realised he had forgotten a manuscript and he turned around and ordered his servant to go back and get it. In the meantime, with time on his hands, he laid the foundations for a church at Pubble.
What is more fascinating, however, is the reason for his planned trip to Enniskillen. I referred earlier to the song Saint Patrick Was A Gentleman. Here are four of its startling lines:
No wonder that the saint himself
should understand distilling
for his mother kept a shebeen house
in the town of Enniskillen
I rest my case.
John Kelly is a writer and broadcaster who presents The Eclectic Ballroom on Today FM