Stories from a Photoalbum

What Next?

Silvija 1 Grigulis Jones

STORIES FROM A PHOTO ALBUM

ANN GOUCHER PAT JACOB BRIAN MCKEOWN RITA O’REGAN A Silver Thread publication in association with Tallaght Library

Copyright Silver Thread 2021 Copyright of each story remains with the author Layout by Silver Thread

I dedicate these stories to the memory of my parents Bennie and May, my brother and sister Brian and Marie, without them the stories could not have been written. A big thank you to my husband Pat, children Seán and Niamh and daughter in law Paula for all the love and encouragement. Finally, I dedicate these stories to the memory of my lovely son Daniel, a bright star whose light still shines.

Ann I dedicate these stories and photographs to all the people I have loved and lost over the years and to my family who inspire me every day.

Pat I dedicate these stories to Mary and Deirdre and to all my extended family, both current and passed who all contributed to these stories.

Brian To the many people in my life who have loved me, guided me, cared for and inspired me.

Rita

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Ann Goucher

1.

Family Picnic

7

2.

The Primus Stove Instructions

15

3.

The Wardrobe

16

4.

Ballet Photograph

23

5.

Covid

34

Pat Jacob

6.

The Donkey

51

7.

Our Kitchen Dresser

55

8.

Irish Dancing Friends Then and Now

59

9.

Simple Christmas

65

10.

Covid

69

Brian McKeown

11.

The story of the photograph of Catherine (McDonald) McKeown

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12.

Catherine McDonald’s Story

81

13.

The Newspaper Cutting Story

91

14.

The Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway

94

15.

John McKeown

97

16.

Life in Cooley

99

17.

Building a Hut

106

18.

The Cooley Photograph

111

19.

Pulling the Sinews

115

20.

Writing the Stories

118

21.

Aerial Photo of Cooley

123

Rita O’Regan

22.

My Family, 1952

127

23.

The Dressing Gown

129

24.

Snapped on O’Connell Street

137

25.

Christmas Garlands

141

26.

The Jewellery Box

144

27.

Lockdown Diversions

149

Acknowledgements

Tallaght Library acknowledges the support and funding from Creative Ireland South Dublin.

Introduction

As Mayor of South Dublin County Council, it is my pleasure to introduce this collection of photographs and stories written by four talented local writers. Stories from a Photo Album is the culmination of a memoir writing project led by Dr Cathy Fowley from Silver Thread in collaboration with the County Library, Tallaght, and supported by funding from Creative Ireland South Dublin.

The aim of the project was to encourage participants to choose a family photograph and write a story about that photograph, to create a book – a new album – with the pictures and stories side by side. We are very grateful to the writers for sharing their family stories and photographs with us. Tarraingíonn scéal scéal eile, as the seanfhocal goes – every story draws out another. We hope that this book will inspire you to delve into your treasure trove of photos, relive those memories, and start writing your own family stories.

Peter Kavanagh, Mayor South Dublin County Council July 2021

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I am delighted to see the Stories from a Photo Album project come to fruition with the publication of this wonderful collection of photographs and stories.

Planning for this project began in February 2020. The original plan was that Dr Cathy Fowley from Silver Thread would lead a series of workshops in Tallaght Library where the writers would meet, get to know each other, share their photos and memories, and write their stories.

However, COVID-19 changed everything. All non-essential businesses closed on 13th March and virtually the entire nation stayed at home for several months. The library reopened in June, albeit with limited services, and we were hopeful that we would be able to offer events in the library again by September. As September came and went, it was obvious that life would not be returning to ‘normal’ for a very long time. In consultation with Cathy, the decision was taken to move the project online. Cathy hosted the workshops via Zoom and the writers used Moodle to submit their works in progress.

Initially, I was slightly apprehensive as I was concerned that the participants might find online meetings daunting or too impersonal.

I am delighted that all my fears were unfounded. They embraced the technology and took to the project with gusto and as they got to know each other, new friendships were formed.

I want to thank Cathy and Kevin from Silver Thread and our writers, Ann, Brian, Pat and Rita for their enthusiasm and dedication to the project despite the challenges posed by lockdown. I hope that Stories from a Photo Album is just the beginning for them and that they will continue to write and share their stories.

Breid Ryan, Project Co-ordinator, Tallaght Library

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3

4

Ann Goucher

5

6

Family Picnic

Treasure can come in different forms. You might not normally associate cardboard boxes or plastic bags with treasure, but my precious inheritance of family photographs arrived to my door in cardboard boxes and plastic bags over twenty years ago.

A number of years before that the photographs travelled from our family home – a flat in Dublin city – to my sister Marie’s home in Dundrum, after the death of my mother. I didn’t really have a lot of time to spend looking at the old photographs as life was busy then with my own family and with work.

However, I inherited a lifetime of family photographs after my sister passed away suddenly in 1999. By then, I was the only member of my family left. I felt too sad to pour over the bags and boxes of photographs and family possessions so I put them away in our attic to sort through at some future time.

My sister and brother were a good bit older than me and a lot of the

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family stories went over my head as a child. I was too engrossed in playing with my friends and toys and going to school. Now, when I eventually started to look through the many albums, loose photographs and boxes of slides, I had no one to answer my questions. I didn’t know who some of the people in the older photographs were, but boy, did I feel rich with the treasure trove of photographs. Photographs of my family, my parents newly married, my brother and sister’s childhoods and my own childhood.

The photographs have come back to life and sing to me of outings, holidays, family, friends, and wonderful lives. I’ve been getting to know my family all over again in a new way with the distance of time.

This photo of a family picnic was taken by my brother Brian while we were on holidays during the summer of 1960 or 1961. We were staying in a rented house near the beach in Woodstown, County Waterford. My Dad had hired a car for the holidays as we didn’t have one of our own at that time. Dad was no stranger to driving though, as he had worked as a Post Office driver since the late 1920s. A few years later we got our own car, a little red mini, which took us on lots of outings and picnics to the country and seaside.

In the photo, my mam and dad are smartly dressed for the picnic, maybe because we were on our holidays. It’s certainly different to what we would wear today on a picnic. I never remember my dad wearing casual clothes unless it was to put on a cardigan instead of a jacket. At that time, men wore suits a lot and women would

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wear dresses and “costumes.” People looked very stylish in the old photographs. Clothes were bought to last in those days. There was no fast fashion then!

The primus stove in the picture brings back great memories of my dad making the tea on picnics. He always made the tea regardless of the weather. Even when it was raining, he would be outside the car pumping the primus to start the tea-making ritual. Everything tastes so nice in the open air. I can still remember the smell of the kerosene from the stove mingled with the smell of outdoors.

Usually we went for a walk or hike or a swim first to build up our appetite before the picnic so that we’d enjoy it all the more. These outings gave me a great love and appreciation of nature especially as I lived in the city centre.

In the photo, I am holding my favourite teddy, a little black and white panda called Lord Snooty. He was named after one of the Bash Street Kids in the Beano comic, who always dressed in black and white. My mam used to buy me the Beano and other comics every week from Paddy, the paper seller who used to stand outside Whitefriar Street Church in Aungier Street selling newspapers, magazines and comics. I loved my teddy so much and brought him everywhere with me. As he got older and more worn, I used to think that he looked sad and I loved him all the more. Eventually he got so worn that he started to disintegrate and then he had to live in a sock for safe-keeping, with only his head peeping out. At least my own children got to meet him before he passed on to Teddy Heaven.

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The year before I was born, my mam had breast cancer, but thankfully she fully recovered. I was told that I had come along as a surprise after that. This photo of our picnic makes me remember my childhood with gratitude for the loving family I was born into.

I think of all the good times we had when I was a little girl. The memories that come flooding back when I look at the old photos really are my true inheritance.

We bought our own car, a little red mini, in 1962. I can still remember the registration – GZA551. Dad rented a garage for the car a short stroll from where we lived. The garage was attached to a house in Carlisle Street off the South Circular Road. As a child I thought it was funny that the first three letters of that street name spelt CAR. Our mini lived in the garage nice and snug and well maintained when we weren’t using it. Dad would walk up to collect the car when we were going out and he then would drive to our flats to pick us up. We would keep an eye out for him and when he’d come around the corner in the car, someone would shout, “Here he is!”

Then we would come down the stairs from our flat on the third floor carrying all the paraphernalia for the picnic: a rug, a bat and balls, a bucket and spade, newspapers, comics, swimming togs, towels and our transistor radio, not to mention the food for the picnic itself.

Sometimes we just went for a little drive to the Phoenix Park, the Pine Forest, Dollymount Strand or the Shelly Banks, where my Dad taught me how to swim and to float. Other times we went to the countryside for a walk. I remember picking primroses in the

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Spring and Dad telling me not to pick all the flowers from the same plant but to pick one or two flowers from each plant. I came home from these drives with little treasures for the nature table in school: a bird’s feather, a shell, a pine cone or maybe a nice twig with berries on it.

On Sundays in the summer we went further afield for the day. We might go to Greystones, Kilcoole, Avoca or even as far as Arklow where there was an outdoor swimming pool with a seating area and café. You could sit watching the swimmers and have lemonade and a Club Milk after your own swim. Sometimes there was a funfair in Arklow with swinging boats, chairplanes, a helter skelter and other amusements.

My family sang in the car to pass the time and make the journey go quicker. I remember we sang ‘Daisy, Daisy,’ ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,’ and ‘When Irish Eyes Are Shining,’ to name a few.

Although when my brother Brian was learning to drive we didn’t sing as he had to concentrate on driving safely. When I was younger I sometimes lay down on my sister’s lap in the back of the car coming home and she made up fairy stories to tell me. I would be tired and falling asleep. As I got older, it wasn’t fairy stories I loved listening to but all the latest pop songs on Radio Luxembourg. I’d hear the top twenty hits on Sunday evening as we were driving home, my face glowing after having been out in the air all day.

Sometimes my friend Frances came with us on the picnic. She

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was two days younger than me and she lived in the next block in the flats to us. Like me, she was the youngest child in the family.

Our mothers introduced us when we were three years old and we have been friends ever since. Frances was my first friend and we played together all the time when we were young. Sometimes her mother would give us some money to have a treat on our day out.

We’d buy comics and sweets in Enniskerry on the journey. Is it my imagination or was the sun always shining then?

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13

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The Primus Stove Instructions

Amazingly, today I found the instructions for the primus stove in the photos among my father’s papers. I don’t know how old it is but I see that it is made in Sweden.

The history of the primus started in central Stockholm in 1892 when F.W. Lindqvist and J.V. Svenson created the world’s first soot-free kerosene stove. As it was the first, they decided to call it primus. The efficient primus stove quickly earned a reputation as a reliable and durable stove in everyday use and it performed well under adverse conditions.

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The Wardrobe

I’m looking back at black and white photos to a time when, as a young child, I didn’t pay too much attention to clothes. It’s only now, as an adult, that all the details fascinate me. At that time, good clothes were kept up for Sunday best and special occasions. I used to wear a hat and little gloves to Mass on Sundays. During the week, Mam would wear a pinny or apron over her everyday clothes. I remember kneeling on the floor of the bedroom as a young child and rooting around in my parents’ wardrobe. I used to play with a fox fur stole that my father had given my mother as a wedding present.

She wore it as part of her wedding outfit over a dove grey suit and an ivory silk blouse which she had bought in Madame Nora’s on O’Connell Street. Sometimes, when I was playing with the fox fur, my fingers would catch in its mouth and get pinched. Ouch! I was a little afraid of its beaded eyes. Before she got married, my mam worked as a punch card operator in the E.S.B. and Dad worked in the P and T. She told me that they had saved and saved before the wedding. They bought new furniture for the flat they were going to be living in. They got married at half past six in the morning in St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row on the 22nd of September 16

1937 and had their wedding celebration in my grandparents’ flat in Upper Mount Street. The wedding ceremony took place early in the morning as they were going to Blackpool on their honeymoon and they had to catch the mail boat later that morning.

In the wardrobe there were also some lovely dresses and a pair of silver sandals that my mother had worn to dress dances she went to with my father in the Shelbourne Hotel. My sister and brother would also attend these dances. Looking at the photos of these occasions, they all looked so glamorous. One time my sister had some sparkle spray in her hair and she wore a tiara – something truly magical in the eyes of a young child! I was minded by our next door neighbours, Mr and Mrs Parkes, and would sleep over in their flat. I’d be hoping that my family would bring me home some party hats and blowers with feathers attached from the dress dance and I was never disappointed!

As my sister was seventeen years older than me, I didn’t get hand me downs. I remember going into town on the bus with Mam to buy new summer clothes. One time we went to Bolgers in North Earl Street where we chose three new dresses. We lived near South Great Georges Street and also shopped in Cassidy’s and Colette Modes. The Silk Mills in Dorset Street was somewhere to go to buy a good outfit for First Communion or Confirmation. The day I made my Confirmation was the day that Nelson’s Pillar was blown up on the 8th of March 1966.

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Marie, Brian and a smiling Ann on a boat to England

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Stylish Marie in 1955

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Welcome home letter

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On the envelope

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Ballet Photograph

This is a picture of my sister Marie, who was 18 years old when the photo was taken. The photo is in an old album belonging to Marie along with some newspaper cuttings and memorabilia connected with ballet. The title beside the photo reads, “Last Show, Dagg Hall, January 1957.” The Dagg Hall was in Westland Row, in the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Marie was a member of the Dublin Academy of Dance in Parnell Square, founded and run by Desmond Domican, who was himself a ballet dancer and actor. As a teenager, Marie went to ballet lessons with her friend Mairead and they both took part in many shows. Sometimes the ballet school joined forces with the Masque Theatre, of which their friend Sheila was a member, to put on musicals. After the last performance of one of these musicals – Oklahoma – the two groups had a big party to celebrate. At weekends in the summer, their group of friends would go out to Killiney for the day and have fun, sometimes even practising their dancing on the beach. There are lovely photographs in the album of these happy times! Marie really enjoyed dancing.

In her leisure time she liked to go to the cinema or to a dance or

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sometimes to a céilí in the Mansion House on a Sunday evening.

At home we listened to music a lot and had a great collection of records including some old 78s. My family had a record club. We each put in sixpence every week and when enough money was saved, we took turns to buy a record. We ended up having a great mix of records, from musicals to Gilbert and Sullivan, the Beatles to the Dubliners and James Last to classical music and ballet. I used to play records at lunchtime when I came home from school and I would walk back to school with all kinds of music playing in my head.

At different times, both my father and my brother Brian played musical instruments in the Post Office Workers Band. In fact, my mother told me that she once attended a concert in the park that the band had been playing at and that was how she met my father! I remember Dad teaching me to play ‘Jingle Bells’ on my xylophone when I was young and I learned how to play the cello at national school. Marie and my mother both had good singing voices and sang at parties and family occasions. Marie’s party piece was ‘Honey Bun’ from South Pacific and ‘Sisters’ when she’d be singing with her friend Mairead. Marie was also in a folk dancing group. I loved dressing up in her costume especially at Halloween.

It consisted of a brightly coloured skirt, a black velvet bodice with a white blouse underneath and black ballet pumps. Years later, I went to see Marie dancing yet again in a show in her local ladies’ club. A group of them did a tap-dancing routine complete with top hats and

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canes and were a big hit on the night.

As a child, I followed in Marie’s footsteps and attended Desmond Domican’s for ballet lessons. I remember going up the stairs of the house in Parnell Square on Saturday afternoons. I can even remember the smell of the polished furniture. For the lessons, the junior girls wore white tunics with blue sashes. I was excited to wear a pink tutu and pink ballet shoes for one of the shows I was in.

Desmond played the piano to accompany us at the lessons. He also played a record called ‘Intermezzo’ from ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’

by Pietro Mascagni. It was a beautiful piece of music that we would cool down to at the end of the lesson. If I ever hear it played nowadays, it brings me right back to those special times.

The room where the ballet classes took place had a big mirror and a barre that we held when doing our practice. Desmond, playing the piano, would put us through our paces. First position, second position, third, fourth and fifth, plié, jeté and arabesque and finally ending with stretching to the music of ‘Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo’ to wind down at the end of our lesson.

A few years ago, I drove to County Meath to visit my cousins. I had some old photos to give them that I had inherited. The photos were of their own family from years ago that I thought they would like to keep. One of my cousins was home on holiday from England. She was the same age as Marie and they had been friends. I felt a bit sad driving there on my own and thinking about my sister who was no

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longer here. She would have enjoyed the family occasion: meeting our cousins to reminisce and talk about old times. Marie was really in my thoughts when, to my surprise, ‘Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo’ was played on the radio. It instantly brought me back to those ballet classes and Marie. It was such a coincidence that it played at that moment. I like to think it was her way of letting me know that she was with me anyway. I may have shed a few tears, but I was also smiling on the inside and my heart felt happy.

Marie used to bring me to see ballets in the Olympia Theatre when I was young. Our seats were in the Gods; we climbed many steps to get to the rows at the top of the theatre. I still love going to the ballet and I have a cherished collection of ballet programmes from shows I have been to. I especially love to see Ballet Ireland and the Irish National Youth Ballet performing. When I look at this photograph of Marie, I think of all the enjoyment that ballet has brought us. I really admire her for all the activities she took part in, for all the places she brought me to and for introducing me to the joy and beauty of dance.

My mother brought me to the Olympia Theatre as well to see The Jack Cruise Show which would be on at Christmas and in the summer holidays and at Easter too as far as I can remember. We climbed up the stairs to the Gods again to see the variety show which comprised of comedy sketches, music, singing and dancing.

It was always very entertaining, and we would be laughing at the slapstick comedy and singing along with the music. The well-

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known tenor Joseph Locke sang in the shows. For his finale he would sing ‘Goodbye’ and everyone would be singing along with him and would give him a great round of applause at the end of the show. We always came out of the theatre in great form after having been well entertained. * * * On the Sunday in September that I was born, Marie was out for the day in Killiney with her friends from dancing. I arrived five weeks early so Marie was oblivious to what was happening at home that day. My dad and one of our neighbours linked arms with my mother as they walked her up to the old Coombe Hospital nearby where I came into the world at 5:45 in the evening weighing 5 lbs.

They named me Ann Geraldine. My mother told me I was named after a doll called Baby Ann that Marie had when she was young.

Some of my cousins used to call me by this pet name when they’d be home visiting from England. I recently found a lovely letter that my mother received while we were still in the Coombe Hospital. It was from our neighbour Mrs Laurence who had helped my mother walk to hospital, congratulating her and wishing us both well. She addressed my mother as Mrs Donohoe, the formal way that people did in those days. Almost 30 years later, the same lady crocheted the Christening shawl for my first child.

While I only went to ballet classes for a year or so when I was a young child, I took it up again when I was about ten for a couple

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of terms. This time the ballet school was in Henry Street and the classes took place on a Saturday afternoon. What I really remember about that time was not the dancing so much as coming home after class with my brother Brian. At that time Brian worked as a post office clerk on the counter in the GPO in O’Connell Street. When my class was finished, I would walk down the street to meet him to go home together. I would be too early so I would check to see which counter he was working on, then queue up behind the people who wanted to buy stamps and surprise him when I got to the top of the queue. We would walk home and when we arrived at our block in the flats, there was an unspoken challenge to race each other up the stairs to see who could get to our door on the third floor the quickest. I would be laughing so much that I could not run quick enough to beat him so Brian always won!

It was a lovely thing and great fun to have an older brother and sister. I looked up to them and thought they were wonderful. I wasn’t spoiled but I felt so loved and cared for. Marie brought me out with her sometimes. Occasionally we visited a friend of hers who always had a little bunch of grapes for me. She told me she had a little tree in her kitchen that they grew on and, being a child, I believed her, although I never saw the tree in question. One time we went out to Howth after Christmas for a walk. I was in heaven as Marie had bought me a comic to read on the bus and it was lovely to be going on an outing with her. Years later, Marie used to bring my own children and nephews on outings too and they also loved it.

When she came home from work, I would ask her to play skipping

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with me in our hall after tea and she would say, “I’ll just wait until my tea goes down.”

Everyone at home gave me a little pocket money each week which was nice. Sometimes on a Saturday I would go around to a small gift shop near us in Patrick Street and buy something. I remember one time buying an ornament for my mother and a big felt marker for myself. I can still remember the sound of the marker on the paper I drew on. Occasionally Brian gave my friend Frances and myself some money to buy a “feast” for ourselves in Mealys, a local shop. Depending on how much money we got, we would buy crisps, lemonade, chocolate or sometimes ice cream. My favourite chocolate bar at that time was called Milk Tray. It was a small bar with four sections, each a different flavour. Strawberry, orange, vanilla and coffee. It was delicious! When you bit into the bar you did not know what flavour you were going to get first. At that time, you could drink the little bottles of lemonade in the shop and it was cheaper, or else you took the lemonade home, and it was dearer, but you got some money back when you returned the bottle to the shop.

Marie was very good at dress making. She made lovely dresses for herself and for me sometimes for my birthday parties. In 1969 she even made her own wedding dress and her two bridesmaids’ dresses. I was thirteen when she got married and was one of her bridesmaids. I remember getting up early on the morning of the wedding which was due to take place at eleven. The son of our neighbour had a hairdressing salon which he opened early for us.

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Marie and the chief bridesmaid, her friend Mairead, both had short hair and so they had little hair pieces added to give height on the crown and they looked fabulous. I had longer hair and had my hair styled in a deep fringe and a flick. I do not know how the flick stayed in place all day, but it did, and it caught and retained some confetti that was thrown at the wedding party. In those days in Dublin, it was a wedding custom to have a Grushee where coins were thrown to the children waiting to see the wedding party leaving the house.

The word can be spelt in different ways: Grushie, Grushy, and Grushee. It comes from Scots Gaelic meaning good health and fortune. My mother did the Grushee for Marie’s wedding when we came down the stairs to get into the wedding cars. It was such goodnatured fun and a great start to the wedding festivities.

Speaking of coins, my Irish dancing career started and finished on the day when the thrupenny bit for my first lesson disappeared down between the cracks in the floorboards in the hall where the Irish dancing lessons were taking place. I was mortified and was too afraid to tell the lady taking the money what had happened, and I went home disappointed. I am sure she would have let me take part in the lesson but in a child’s eye this was a disaster. I can only wonder now what might have been. * * * In Christmas 1968, a couple of months before Marie’s wedding, I won a three-month black kitten at a sale of work in my friend’s

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school. To win the kitten, you had to guess its name. Before I left home to go to the sale of work, I asked my mother what names she thought I should guess at the competition. She suggested Lulu and Pearl. As it turned out, the kitten’s name was Black Pearl and I won him having had the nearest correct answer. I suppose the names Sooty and Blackie would have been popular entries in the competition.

My friend and I brought Pearl home on the bus through town in a basket. He received a great welcome at our house and settled in well. We changed his name to Pussy Wee after a toy cat that I owned. Pussy Wee was a frisky kitten at that time and loved to play. He loved running up the hall and jumping onto one bed and bouncing over to the other one. Sometimes he scratched my hands playfully with his back legs as he was so young. Coming up to the wedding, Dad had freshly decorated our home with new wallpaper and paint, and everything looked great until one morning, when we got up to find that Pussy Wee had scratched a lot of the wallpaper in the hall with his claws and it was in shreds on the floor! There was nothing for it but to re-paper the hall. This time Dad covered the bottom part of the walls with clear plastic until just before the wedding, so it was safe from the claws of Pussy Wee! It was a custom at that time, before a wedding, to invite women neighbours into the house to see the wedding presents which were set out on display. Refreshments of sandwiches, cakes and tea were prepared and a lovely evening of laughter and chat was had by

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all. My mother invited our neighbours in one evening before the wedding. That afternoon, the wedding dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses were laid out on the bed to be admired along with the display of wedding presents that the bride and groom to be had received.

Of course, Pussy Wee decided to do his usual trick and take a run up the hall and jump up onto the bed and land on the bride’s dress.

Thankfully though, no damage was done but the bedroom door was kept shut firmly after this!

One time, my friend Frances and I decided to bring Pussy Wee for a walk in St Stephen’s Green on a lead. He was having none of that though and he had to be carried home as he got there, in a shopping bag. After about two years of living with us in our flat, it was decided it would be kinder to let him live with my sister and husband in their new house in Balally which had a nice long garden for him to play in. I missed him a lot at home, but I knew he was happy in his new home. Black Pearl lived a long happy life and he died, aged 19, a much-loved member of our family. * * * In September 1965, Marie and Brian went on a cruise with a group of their friends. The cruise took them to Tangier, Cadiz, and Santander among other exotic ports of call. Their ship, the Devonia, departed from Dublin Port. A taxi came to take them to the ship. I was devastated that they were both going to be away for two weeks and leaving me behind. In tears, I ran after the taxi as far as the gates of our flats.

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Later, when Dad came home from work, he drove my mother and myself out to the South Bull Wall, or Shelly Banks as we called it, so we could see the Devonia departing Dublin Port. I waved and waved as the ship sailed by, tears all gone and hoping that Marie and Brian could see us. It was exciting seeing the ship sailing out to sea. They had a wonderful holiday with their friends and brought home lovely souvenirs and presents from their travels. One precious memento of their cruise that I still have is a telegram they sent me from the ship for my tenth birthday. Brian went on to enjoy some more cruising holidays after that.

In 1975, ten years after I tearfully followed the taxi carrying Marie and Brian, I went on a Mediterranean cruise with Brian. This time our ship was called the Canberra and it sailed out of Southampton Port. Aunty Maura and Uncle Colin, who lived near Southampton, came to wave us off from the quayside as a brass band played. A second and longer cruise was to West Africa and Brazil. On this cruise, at a ceremony crossing the Equator, we saw King Neptune but that is another story!

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Covid

This time last year hailed the start of a lovely Spring and early summer as we headed into our first lockdown due to the arrival of Covid-19 in Ireland. We had to stay in our own area and could not visit our loved ones or meet up with friends. We stuck to the rules as best we could to “flatten the curve” of Covid-19. We felt sorry for the people who were ill or in hospital with it and for those that the virus took and for their families. We prayed that the situation would improve by everyone doing what was needed to be done. We made the best of things and kept in touch with friends and family by phone or text, usually ending the conversations with the words “Stay safe”. We looked for things to occupy us at home. For my part, I really enjoyed pottering in my garden during the lovely weather. I planted, divided, took cuttings, and moved plants around and enjoyed sitting in the garden with a cup of tea watching the garden come to life. I repainted garden furniture with leftover wood paint as the hardware shops were closed.

I read, knitted, and had meals in the garden. It was some consolation for being restricted by Covid-19 that the weather was so good 34

and being able to enjoy the outdoors. I rediscovered the walks in my area within the 2-kilometre limit. The Dodder Valley Park was there to be explored along with the Bohernabreena Reservoir and Kiltipper Park.

On rainy days, I cleaned out presses, sorting things that needed to be sorted in the house and feeling a nice sense of achievement when it was done. I kept thinking that I should finally get around to sorting my old photographs but kept putting it on the long finger. As summer wore on and Autumn approached, I noticed that South Dublin Libraries were advertising some interesting classes and talks. These events would be taking place online via Zoom, something I had never heard of before last year. As my own laptop was old and slow, I needed to borrow my husband’s laptop, which had Zoom installed, to take part in these classes.

I have been a member of the library since I was a young child and have liked nothing better than to come home from the library with a pile of books to read, encouraging my children to become library members also. I have taken part in language classes and been a member of two book clubs in the County Library in Tallaght, always appreciating the effort that the staff of the library go to facilitating these events taking place. But never more so than in the last year. It has been wonderful to be able learn how to crochet, to paint a picture of a yacht, brush up on my Irish skills, write down the memories in my old family photos in Silver Threads, make a Christmas wreath, listen to some talks on art, join an online book club, research family history on the genealogy course, take part in quizzes, get tips from gardening talks, learn about the

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benefits of drawing Mandalas and finding out the secrets in Dublin Pub names. In the dark days we have gone through in the last year, these classes have been a beacon of light and a great focus to concentrate the mind. Some of the classes have been entertaining and others engrossing. I do not think I can thank South Dublin Libraries enough for all the effort they have gone through to provide these sources of learning and community. In the beginning, I felt a bit shy taking part online and looking at myself on the screen, but I soon forgot my shyness as I was drawn into whatever course I was doing. A nice surprise for me at Christmas was receiving a present of a lovely new laptop from my family. It is neater and much quicker than my old one and is very much appreciated. There is no stopping me now!

Taking part in the Silver Thread’s course has been a great journey for me, a real trip down memory lane. Under Cathy’s prompting and encouragement, Rita, Pat, Brian, and I have shared and written about memories and family events from the past. We have pored over our old photographs, writing down the memories that have come flooding back, one memory rekindling another. It has been a great use of my inheritance of family photos to relive life with my family when I was young. This has given me great joy.

Thank you so much Cathy and Kevin for your encouragement and guidance on this journey. It had been such a pleasure to meet you and my fellow participants in our online group and to hear all the wonderful stories that they have to tell about family life and family history.

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Ann ready for the limelight

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Marie, Brian and Ann in front of the Iveagh Flats

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Dress dance in the Shelbourne Hotel

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The bridesmaids

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Black Pearl the kitten

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Meeting Santa Claus circa 1960 outside McBirney’s Department Store on Aston Quay in Dublin

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Birthday greetings from a ship

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Marie, Mairead, Sheila and Ann in St Stephen’s Green

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Parents’ Wedding Day

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Pat Jacob

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This is a childhood memory with my cousins and siblings enjoying posing for a photo on our donkey.

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The Donkey

This photograph was taken sometime around the summer of 1962.

I was born and grew up in the country, in County Meath. I still call it home at times, although maybe home-home is the affectionate name I use when I talk about that house, that place.

Photos and memories are very important to me. In 2001, my dad, who wasn’t very well at the time, came to live with me. We took all our family photos to Dublin for safe keeping. They had been stored in a sideboard in envelopes and plastic bags, and some were even in covers we got back from the chemist’s when they were developed. The price tags went from five shillings and five pence to eight shillings.

As I look at this photo over and over again, all I see and feel are more and more memories from that time of my life. My dad did not farm full time, which meant that we were in a lucky position to have had a steady income coming in every month. All our cousins lived in towns or in London so our house was the favourite to 51

visit during the summer holidays, even if we had to sleep tops and tails in our beds so there was room for everybody. The freedom we experienced back then, of running through fields, getting our legs stung by nettles and making up new games, really makes the photos come alive. My mind keeps jumping from one thing to another, I keep saying to myself “oh remember!” so this is how I’m going to continue.

I remember some of the games we played and created for ourselves back then. We used empty bean cans with a string joining them and thought we had the best phone system ever. We used to hide behind a hedge with a string tied to a parcel on the road – of course there were very few cars on the road back then – and when the driver would get out we tugged at the string and ran away like mad in case we were caught.

I remember when dad would come home from work and still have to milk maybe two cows he always put a wooden box beside his stool for me to sit on. I was no help but kept him company. On nights if it was too late for me to join him I listened from my bedroom to Dad singing out loud as he milked the cows and I drifted off to sleep so full of contentment. Milk had to go through a separator the following day and I still have no idea how the cream and skimmed milk came out two different spouts. This was quite a complicated-looking machine operated by turning a handle which we all took turns to do.

I remember having three lambs. Dad sold one to a neighbour about two miles away and much to our surprise the following summer

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this lamb appeared walking in our lane with two little lambs. I remember a goat we also had which we were not allowed go too close to so she was tied to a tree on a long leash. I had asthma as a child and was put on a diet of goat milk. One day this poor animal wrapped herself around the tree too many times and got strangled.

I don’t drink milk to this day and don’t have asthma either so maybe we never needed her.

I remember Curls the pure bred Kerry blue dog we had who looked out for us. I don’t remember him ever being replaced as he was adored by us all.

I remember we were never allowed to have chickens as Mam thought they were “dirty auld things” around a house. She didn’t want them restricted in a run either so that was the end of that request.

And of course I remember the donkey in the photo, how special he was to us, feeding him skins and butts of apples from Mam’s baking. When he died in the upper fields Dad did not tell us for four days as he was so upset. I saw my Dad cry then for the first time.

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Our Kitchen Dresser

Our kitchen dresser was the busiest piece of furniture in our house.

It had so many functions and held a variety of things. My dad made it long before I can remember so to me it was always there.

It was painted many colours from blues to purples along with the kitchen chairs and table legs and the door of the built-in press in the corner of the room. The presses underneath the shelves stored our food in the earlier years and the mismatched delph was stored neatly with cups and saucers on the lower shelf and various sizes of plates on the other two. The top shelf was kept for two large willow-pattern serving dishes that came down to hold the turkey and ham at Christmas.

This top shelf also held a variety of objects. I remember a scissors was kept there out of our reach, and a brush, comb and a small mirror. Dad’s pocket watch was also there and never used but worked perfectly keeping time and we were allowed turns to wind it up. Pens, sellotape, odd coins and goodness knows what else. Nothing mattered up there as they were mostly hidden from 55

the eye but we had to keep the rest of it tidy. At the top there were two circles cut out – no function, pure decorative – but on Palm Sunday we got blessed palm at mass and there was a piece put into each circle until they dried out and fell down.

There were two drawers: one held everyday cutlery in neat rows but the other was a dream drawer for a good root around. It held screwdrivers, nails, bolts, a puncture repair kit, glue, rulers, and anything else that was left lying around to be put out of sight.

During the week, if a trip in the afternoon was necessary to the local shop for bread or something for tea, we would buy one bar of chocolate if there was enough change left over. There were four of us at home so that meant two squares each so we took it in turns to leave dad a square on the dresser for after work.

We also stored numerous items in the very top of the dresser: a bicycle pump, for example, and several tin boxes, one of which held needles and thread, and another which had a kangaroo and the name Katie on the front and held spare buttons. There was also playing cards, marbles and other games, and a selection of butter spades which my mam used while making butter.

Now 60 years later the dresser is still standing and is painted white, I’m happy to say, as we still laugh about mam’s choice of colours at times. It has become a precious piece of furniture after the new kitchen was built years ago at the back. The drawers are still full of lots of redundant bits and pieces but sadly nobody is there to use them. The lower presses store old items that will never be thrown out in my time: the Irish Press daily paper, and a hand-

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made wooden case, made by dad, which he used as his lunch box.

All the upper shelves now proudly hold a full set of willow-pattern dishes, plates, cups and saucers that belonged to my late husband Kevin’s family. When their house was cleared out nobody had a need for these so I willingly took them to my childhood home to store and they certainly enhance our forever loved and treasured dresser which stands taller than ever, proudly joining two special parts of my life together forever.

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Then...

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Irish Dancing Friends Then and Now

In the 60s our family life in the country was full of fun with parents who gave us the opportunity to try whatever classes and hobbies were available to us. Irish dancing was my favourite. I probably started learning around eight years old as part of the Tormey School of Irish Dancing. We had our class on Saturday mornings in a huge cold hall which was built by the Agricultural Show Society and is still known as the Show Hall today. It was used for lots of functions and was our local dance hall in our late teens during the showband era.

Friends were a very important part of growing up in a small community so we made lots of new friends from nearby schools. At first we wore a light cotton blue skirt with a red top until we were invited to wear the class costume which was embroidered with Celtic designs.

There was no definite pattern we needed to use so that was exciting – being able to express ourselves with colour. It was also nice when we learnt the hard hornpipe dances in hard shoes with taps on. The exhibitions and competitions we took part in were at local sports days and fleadh rince and fleadh ceoil which were very popular around 59

the country back then. On St Patrick’s Day for the local town parade it was always a problem to decide between marching with the girl guides and dancing on a colourful float. The photograph above was taken with us dancing on the trailer of a lorry. Each Friday and Sunday night during Lent there were variety concerts held in every parish hall and we would be invited to take part in and really enjoyed it.

There was a competitive side to it too, so we would compete at lots of feiseanna. These were held all around the county. We loved it if we were lucky enough to come home with a few medals each time.

My sister and I became well known for our two hand reel so we were often invited to dance it during our teenage years at local functions even though our dancing school had finished up due to the death of our teacher.

Competition certainly was nothing as materialistic or pressurised as it is now. Obviously there was no requirement back then for curly wigs, sequins, make up, fake tan and even glue to keep your socks up which are widely used now. I don’t think that competitive side was there so it was more about learning a new skill, making new friends and having lots of fun. Margaret, Camilla and I are in the second photo, taken two years ago – still the same three of us. When I look at this photo I feel such deep gratitude towards and love of this special friendship that has lasted over 60 years from the first day we met at school, with hopefully many more years to come. We have never lost touch since our school days and have lived through good times, great times, amazing times and sad times together which make a great friendship even better. * * *

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While writing about my Irish dancing photograph taken around early 60’s so many memories came flooding back. My mam was like most women back then and could turn her hands to anything that needed to be done. The word homemaker comes to mind, as so few women worked outside the home then. When my official dancing school costume was bought it needed to be embroidered.

We were supplied with the Celtic patterns which you stitched on securely before getting down to the real work. There were no set rules about how it was done. I remember sitting with my mam and lots of coloured threads to choose from. When the decisions were made I would sit comfortably next to her by the open range with the dress spread over both our knees, watching every chain stitch going along the dotted line. The work continued for days, when time allowed along with all the other chores. Of course she let me do some stitches as she watched carefully, keeping a check that the tension was perfect. When it was finished I felt a million dollars wearing it as I had helped to make it. Embroidery was not a big thing in our house as Mam would have seen knitting and dressmaking more beneficial. I have a treasured photo taken on the mail boat, as it was called then, to Holyhead with Mam, my sister and me wearing similar homemade pink dresses with a white binding around the large collar and hemline. Now I can only think of the emoji of the little monkey covering his face being appropriate as it is something you would definitely not see now. We looked great!

It was on the open range we sat at sewing that Mam cooked her first sponge cake. Of course back then there was no temperature gauge and probably no weighing scales for ingredients either. It’s no wonder I used to tell her that I’d never know how to bake as everything

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was a fistful of this and a fistful of that and I always thought that her fists were bigger than mine. No doubt the cakes were all turned out to perfection. Mam went on to bake all through her life and was a prize-winner at all the local agricultural shows. At our local show in Oldcastle there is a perpetual trophy in her honour for the highest points gained in the baking section. I have to add in here that back about twelve years ago I proudly displayed the trophy on my sideboard for a year. It did take me three years to win it but with love and determination I came from third place to second place and the next year it was mine. I had my maiden name engraved on it and was so proud. I still enter a few cakes each year to keep up the tradition and am secretly proud when I win a few prizes.

It was also at that open range – which is still there today – that we took turns sitting and warming our feet, with Mam rubbing them, coming in from the cold. We also toasted bread at the fire there by holding it on a knife and sometimes it would fall into the ashes.

Back then there were not lots of spare slices either. I was the tea drinker at home with my mam, still am, so after dinner when we came home from school the table was tidied and the cup of tea was made for both of us to take back to the range. That continued when I came to work in Dublin and arrived home every Friday evening, having taken the bus or hitched – another common way of travel back then now best forgotten. With a quiet house and everybody gone to bed we again drank our tea and watched the coal turn to cinders and some nights even ashes having the best catch ups ever.

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... and now

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Simple Christmas

Christmas preparations started in our house around mid December. The puddings and cake were first to be done. Each of us took turns to mix the puddings as this was for luck and a good year to follow. I came from an alcohol-free household so we thought that it was great when two bottles of stout were purchased. We remembered the smell from the previous year. They were boiled in muslin for hours but I never forget the taste. I still make puddings each year. The cake was always nicely decorated with real almond and white icing made from egg whites and sugar, no marzipan or instant icing back then.

The same decorations came out from year to year. The paper chains made from different coloured paper tore very easily so there was always need for sticky tape. They went from corner to corner and dipped in the middle under the light. The tree was not as important then as now so I can’t remember if we had one every year.

Toys and presents were bought quietly behind the scenes and hid65

den away. They were all bought locally as there was very little transport to travel to larger towns. I can remember lorries, cars and a particular transporter which I think the girls got. There were also dolls, one which was a rag doll I named Sputnick, so that must have been 1957 or 1958, when I was three years old. Our needs and wants were very little back then so we were happy with anything.

The food shop included the turkey, ham and lemonade. It was probably the only time in the year we had lemonade. The few bottles were put in the attic using the trap door so there was no chance we would drink it before the 25th. The turkey was left hanging on the back door knob outside to keep cold for the night. The ham was cooked on Christmas eve before we went to late mass. Candles were lit in all our windows until we left for mass to keep the spirits away. The local brass and reed band paraded up town after mass so we all marched behind them to the centre of the town flagged by four men carrying balls of fire. I’ve no idea the significance of it.

We couldn’t wait to get home to bed and snuggle under the blankets for our surprises the next day. We always had a family day that was so simple compared to now. We lit an extra fire in one of the bedrooms and moved the beds together and used it like a living room for the day. We had a mid-day dinner with all the trimmings and eventually got to open the lemonade. Mid-afternoon our parents always had a present for us. It was always a comic annual which we treasured.

Life was so simple for us back then. We all went to bed happy and tired and ready to face the next day.

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Covid

In early March 2020 I was picking up my granddaughter from playschool 30 minutes after the announcement of our first lockdown following the outbreak of Covid-19. The confusion and uncertainty for everyone there was overwhelming. I will never forget it. We had no idea what lay ahead for us all. As the next few days went by we tried to get our heads around what was happening. We all became totally obsessed with radio, TV, news from anywhere we could get it day and night, most of which we could not even process at that time.

We then settled into a new phase of acceptance that this was how it would be for a few weeks. Jobs left on the long finger for months got done, drawers, presses, wardrobes got cleared out and the paint came out. Gardens were attended to earlier than ever that year. We all felt we were making good use of our spare time. As the weeks went on we realised that we had more time on our hands than we wanted so pastimes and new hobbies were thought about. New recipes, jigsaws, more books, crafts and making masks became 69

the order of the day. I was learning how to play the ukulele at the time but I found I was not in the mood for singing with it but I will take it up again as I was really enjoying it.

So many things that we considered normal were suddenly taken away from us. As we lived through the summer months and things eased a little we had time to reflect on the situation we were in and totally appreciated the work of the doctors, nurses and all frontline people who carried on their work and should never again be taken for granted. We also got used to hearing words like masks, sanitisers, handwashing, germs, hugs, zoom, social distancing, social bubbles and pandemic taking – words that took on a whole new meaning. Two metres apart, for most of us who never left yards, feet and inches, felt like miles away while out walking when eye contact was even missing. I listened to so many podcasts when I needed a diversion from more Covid news and the worldwide doom and gloom and uncertainty. The different emotions I have experienced throughout the year have been overwhelming at times and could change from hour to hour. Conversations changed so much with family and friends. No matter how hard we tried not to discuss Covid the chat always reverted back to it.

It was a great time to try new courses online, especially through the libraries, which were a great distraction as the winter months set in and we learned how to negotiate our way through Zoom. I did quite a few: genealogy, advanced knitting, meditation, quilting and virtual tours of the Botanical Gardens. I had a book I’d wanted to complete for about two years with extracts of my life for my grandchildren which was left on the long finger. When I saw

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the photo memoir course online with Silver Thread in October I signed up. Firstly it made me take out all my old photos and photos belonging to my parents which I had in boxes. I have totally enjoyed every minute of that, especially sharing them with family and friends. When it came to choosing some for the writing course it was difficult as each one had lots of memories, tears, smiles and laughs but reminded me of the journey I took to get to where I am today. At first I thought we would write a few lines with each photo but it turned out a little more work was needed but I’m so glad I survived the odd “OMG I can’t do this” moment. While looking at a photo the expression “look at the bigger picture” took on a total new meaning for me and I hope to continue looking at the bigger picture in life. Each week I looked forward to our zoom meeting with Cathy and to listening to the other participants’ stories which were so interesting. I think that this year has been so different in every way that there is no such thing as “normal” anymore.

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Pat’s sharply dressed family in the sun

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Pat’s fancy footwork

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Farm photo: out standing in their field

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Irish dancing embroidery – sent by Rita

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Brian McKeown

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This photograph of my great-grandmother Catherine Mc Donald was taken around 1913 when she was about 77 years old. I want to write down her story.

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The story of the photograph of Catherine (McDonald) McKeown

The photographs in Cooley lived in the sideboard in the dining room underneath where the radio used to be. There were also some photographs framed and on the walls or on the mantelpiece in the kitchen or the dining room. Photographs were added and removed over the years so it is difficult to remember back to the late 50s or early 60s and recall which photos were where.

In any event the main repository was under the radio. Some were in albums and some were loose. There was an ancient album with cut-out windows that never had very many photographs in it even though it was falling apart from either usage or age.

One of the albums, ‘Memory Lane’ was older and had older photographs in it. A second album was more modern, something my younger brother started to pull together in the mid-60s. I remember the older photographs, and who was in them, well. During my father’s last year, when he was over 97 years of age, I went through a lot of the photographs with him to confirm who the peo79

ple in the photographs were and where they were taken. He was able to provide the information for nearly all the photographs even though a lot of them went back many years.

The photograph that I am going to write about is of Catherine Mc Donald, my great-grandmother. It was taken, as far as I know, in the back garden of her home in Greenore. The back of the photograph is a postcard. Unfortunately the postcard was trimmed to the photograph so some of the written information on the back of the photograph is lost. The sender’s name is missing but the partial address seems to be ‘Burton on Trent, Derbyshire’. The numbers 18 10 13 are on the back of the photograph which may well be the date: 18th of October 1913. Catherine would have been around 77 in 1913 and this age ties in with her appearance in the photograph.

I think this was one of the loose photographs that lived in the drawer under the radio and I recall being aware of who was in the photo from a long time ago.

This a transcript of the postcard on the back of the photograph: Burton on Trent Derbyshire 18 10 13 Dear Mrs Mc Keown I have at last mana(ged to) get you your photo finished. (I) hope you will like it. The (weather) here at present is very goo(d. Making) up for last week. Pleas(e ...)

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Catherine McDonald’s Story

It must have been hell for Catherine that evening, finding herself alone in that way. Once the train left the only sound would have been the wind and the rain and the sea. It was after six o’clock on November the 15th so it was dark. While she was only half a mile from Greenore and perhaps a mile from Carlingford there would have been very little light pollution adding to the scene in 1882. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, perhaps I should go back and follow Catherine’s journey from the beginning, to the shores of Carlingford Lough on that tragic night.

Catherine Mc Donald, my great grandmother, was born in the late 1830s in County Louth, less than a decade before the Great Famine.

No records of her birth or her baptism have been found and we also know nothing about whether or not she attended school. In 1901, when Catherine filled in the census form, she said she was 65 years old, that she was born in County Louth and that she could read but not write. She signed the form by placing her mark, as she was unable to sign her name. It is likely, therefore, that Catherine got little 81

if any formal education. We have to remember that there was no national system of primary education at that time so Catherine’s lack of education would have been something she shared with many of her contemporaries.

When Catherine was a young girl, Ireland was being ravaged by the great famine (1845 to 1849). She was living in Rockmarshall in the north of County Louth when she got married in 1867 so presumably she also grew up in that part of the county. While the famine affected the west and south of the country to a greater extent than the east, Catherine grew up during a turbulent and tragic period. The population of County Louth dropped by nearly a third during the first 20 years of her life. She must have seen the death and departure of many friends and family in that period.

According to her wedding record, Catherine’s father Edward was a farmer, so Catherine grew up on a farm and would, no doubt, have had to contribute by helping with the many tasks around the house and around the farm. Her life would not have been easy and she would have grown up with hard work and with making do with what was available.

The earliest available records of Catherine’s life are the church and state records of her marriage. Catherine married John Mc Keown, a farmer from Castletowncooley, on Saturday the 9th of February 1867, in the Catholic Chapel of Ravensdale, County Louth. While her marriage record does not give an age, simply stating that both parties are “of age,” Catherine was approximately thirty and John, who was born in June of 1833, was thirty three. Her address is given

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as Rockmarshal and her father is recorded as being Edward Mc Donald, a farmer. The witnesses to the marriage were Patrick Ferguson and Catherine Hanlon, but we do not know if they were relatives or friends of the bride and the groom.

Over the next twelve years Catherine gave birth to five children that we know about: Rose, Michael, Patrick, Mary (known as Minnie) and Thomas. Thomas was my grandfather and was born in 1879.

Unfortunately, Michael died of pneumonia aged just two and a half years on Wednesday the 7th of February 1872 and less than two weeks later, on Tuesday the 20th, his brother Patrick was born. On Saturday the 24th of February 1872 Catherine’s sister-in-law, Mary Mc Keown, registered both the death of her nephew Michael and the birth of her nephew, Patrick. She had been present at the death of Michael and the birth of Patrick. It is hard to imagine what a time of mixed emotions this must have been for the family and for Catherine.

By 1872 Catherine’s husband, John, was working for the Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway company and the family were living in the vicinity of Greenore. By 1879 they were living in a house in Mulatee, which I believe was owned by the railway company, John’s employers. The house is still occupied and my father used to point it out as we passed on our way to and from Carlingford.

John had a steady job with a reasonable wage coming in every week.

The photograph of Catherine from 1913 shows, at her feet, a fine head of cabbage growing in her tiny garden in Greenore. The house at Mulatee would have had a much bigger space available and I have no doubt that Catherine would have used that to help supplement her

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husband’s income by growing vegetables. With four young children I’m sure money was still tight but I would think that Catherine had perhaps a less meagre existence than she had known in her earlier days.

On Wednesday the 15th November 1882 Catherine and her husband John travelled to Dundalk. John was not in work that day. As an employee of the railway company both John and his wife would have travelled for free on the train. They came home on the 4:55 train from Dundalk to Greenore. They remained in the station for a few minutes before heading home along the line, as usual. Their house was about a mile from the station.

The time was around 6 o’clock. Peter Oakes, the signalman at Greenore, told John and Catherine to wait as the 6:10 Newry train had not yet departed. John replied, “It will be alright,” and headed towards the Dundalk line. Peter thought that they were awaiting the departure of the train. However they had continued on their short journey home, down along the railway line.

The weather was very bad with heavy rain and a wind which blew into their faces. John was carrying a bag on his back with about three stone of goods in it. When they were about halfway home the train overtook them, striking John and killing him instantly. The train driver, John Callan, was unaware that anything had happened and continued on his journey. Catherine was left alone in the wind and the rain with her dead husband. She was about half a mile from the house where their four children were waiting. The youngest, my grandfather Thomas, would be three years old two weeks later.

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Catherine called out for help. Perhaps she had to make her way along the track as there were no houses close to the spot where John lay dead. A man called Edward Boyle heard Catherine’s calls and made his way to the railway and found where John was lying. He then went to Greenore station and raised the alarm. The following day, the coroner John M. Callan MD held an inquiry into the accident.

Catherine gave evidence as a witness. The jury found that “the said John Mc Keown was accidentally killed on the Greenore and Newry Railway by the train leaving Greenore at 6:10 p.m. at the townland of Mulatee.” On Friday the 17th John’s funeral was held in the Catholic Church in Carlingford, though his final resting place is unknown – perhaps in the nearby Kilwirra Cemetery or perhaps in Newtown Cemetery, where other members of his family were buried.

In their findings the inquest jury stated their wish was “to bring under the notice of the directors of the company the miserable condition of his widow and children, left so destitute by his awfully sudden death.” Catherine had lost her husband as well as the only income to the family, and was also facing the possibility of losing her home as it belonged to the railway company. We do not know what happened to Catherine in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy. It is not until the census return of 1901 that we hear of Catherine and her family again.

On census day, Sunday the 31st of March 1901, Catherine was marked down as “Head of Family” in a house in Anglesey Terrace in Greenore. Living with her were her sons Patrick and Thomas and her daughter Mary. There is no mention of Catherine and John’s eldest daughter Rose and no record of her has been found. In fact, the last

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mention of four children in this family is in the newspaper report of John’s accident. No death record has been found so we cannot be certain, but it seems likely that Catherine suffered a further loss and that Rose died sometime between 1882 and 1901.

Catherine’s son Patrick married Margaret Mc Shane in November 1896. Their daughter Kathleen, Catherine’s first grandchild, was born the following year. However by the time of the 1901 census Margaret is dead and Patrick is returned as a widower. The circumstances of her death are unknown; no death record has been located. Catherine and her family had to deal with another early death.

On the census form Patrick was listed as 29 years old, a widower, and a railway engine stoker, so it is very likely that he worked for the Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway company. The houses in Anglesey Terrace were owned by the railway company and had been built to house their employees. The fact that Catherine was listed as “Head of Family” might mean that it was her house. Perhaps she was allocated the house following the accident or perhaps it was allocated to Patrick when he became an employee of the company. It would be nice to think that the company had looked after Catherine and her family in their hour of dire need.

In 1909 Catherine’s son Thomas married Catherine McGinn and by 1918 Catherine had five more grandchildren including my father Tom. Unfortunately, misfortune again visited Catherine when her granddaughter Margaret, known as Madge, died in 1918 in a tragic accident in her home in Castletowncooley. She was just two years of age. My father was Thomas’s second son and was born in 1912. He

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remembered Catherine, his grandmother. He and his brother Sean stayed with her on occasion during school holidays. His memory of Catherine’s family was of the three children listed in the 1901 census: his uncle Patrick, his aunt Minnie (Mary) and his father Thomas.

He had no memory or knowledge of the other two children, Michael and Rose.

By the time my father, who was born in 1912, knew his grandmother, Catherine would have been in her mid to late 70s, but he recalled her having a field rented about a mile from her home in Greenore. She used this field to grow vegetables and walked back and forward each day to tend to them. In the photograph a head of cabbage is clearly visible along with other plants. This would have been in the tiny back garden in Anglesey Terrace.

My father remembered Catherine as a warm and very kind person.

When he and his brother Sean stayed on holiday with her, she tucked them into bed with this prayer: Here I lay myself down to sleep I give my soul to God to keep If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take There are four corners on my bed There are four angels over spread St Mathew, St Mark, St Luke, St John God bless the bed that I lay on.

Catherine died on Sunday the 1st of February 1925 with her daughter

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Mary beside her. She was about 85 years of age at that time and had lived a tough life with many hardships. However she had retained a kindness and warmth that my father remembered well, until his final days in 2010. Catherine was born less than twenty years after the death of Napoleon, around the time Queen Victoria acceded to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Texas was declaring its independence from Mexico, but she is still alive in my memory today nearly two hundred years later. This is no doubt due to the newspaper reports and my father’s memory of her but perhaps more so because the single photograph that we have of her makes her more human, more alive, more real.

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Dundalk Democrat report on the Coroner’s hearing into the death of John Mc Keown

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The Newspaper Cutting Story

In 2009, 127 years after the accident on the railway, my father Tom, a grandson of John and Catherine, was searching for a cutting he had taken from the newspaper. He said it was from around 1995 and that it was no longer where he had left it. He accused me of throwing it out in an over zealous tidying up effort. Those who know me would find this an unlikely possibility. He also blamed the home help and my sister-in-law.

My daughter remembers an earlier occasion when the same piece of paper disappeared and a similar hunt was going on. It must have been found on that occasion but had disappeared again by 2009. It was clear, despite the fact that the cutting was misplaced at least twice, that it held an importance for my father and that at the age of 97 he was quite upset that he was unable to locate it.

Later in 2009 my father went into hospital and then into a nursing home. I collected and removed all the family memorabilia for safe keeping as the house was then unoccupied. During this collection I 91

found the piece of paper that had been allegedly thrown out. It was from the Dundalk Democrat dated Saturday the 20th of November 1982.

In November 1982 my father picked up his copy of the Democrat and was reading it as usual when he came upon an article with the heading “This week in the Democrat a century ago.” Under this heading was a story with the headline “Fatal Accident at Greenore.” The story recounted the fateful events of the night of the 15th of November 1882. This was when my father discovered how his grandfather had died: a hundred years after the event. My father was 70 years old at the time and no one had ever told him the story. He had fond memories of his grandmother, Catherine, and I have no doubt that reading the story of what she went through on that night would have added to his respect and admiration for her.

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The 1882 report

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The Dundalk Newry & Greenore Railway

The Dundalk Newry and Greenore Railway (DN&GR) was conceived in the 1860s to provide a link to the natural deep water port at Greenore from the two other towns named in its title. The port was built in 1867 and soon afterwards construction commenced on the railway line. The Dundalk to Greenore section was opened in 1873 and a few years later, in 1876, the Greenore to Newry section was completed. 75 years later, on the 31st of December 1951, this railway line closed, ceasing all operations.

The line started at Queen Street station in Dundalk and then crossed the Castletown river, just north of Dundalk, on a metal viaduct. There was a further viaduct at Ballmascanlon as the line travelled along the northern shore of Dundalk Bay. The first station was at Bellurgan and after crossing a five span masonry arch viaduct at Riverstown the second station at The Bush was reached. The last section was built on an embankment across a portion of Carlingford Lough to reach the final station at Greenore port. The Newry line which was opened in 1876 had stations at Carlingford and Omeath before terminating at Bridge Street station in Newry.

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The railway company built the town of Greenore to house its staff and provided considerable employment in the area. The rates were the same as the parent company paid in England and the jobs were permanent and continuous, not seasonal, as farm labouring would be, so must have been much sought after in the area.

The Greenore Railway museum recalls the history of this line, includes a model of various elements of the system and is located at 22 Euston Street Greenore.

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John McKeown

John Mc Keown was the third child and second son of Michael Mc Keown and Rose Rourke of Castletowncooley. He was baptised on Thursday the 6th of June 1833 in the parish of Carlingford South, presumably in the Church of St James at Grange, which is the parish church and dates from around 1760. John’s family had lived in the area for over a century before the time of his birth. A family headstone in Newtown Cemetery, Mountbagnall, was erected by a Michael Mc Keown in memory of his mother Mary Hanlon (1714-1785) and his father John (17111794). This couple may well have been John’s great-great-grandparents, though it has not been possible to trace the line back to them.

John’s father Michael is listed in Griffith’s Valuation (1854) as the occupier of a house and lands in Castletowncooley which are still owned by the Mc Keown family today. Rose took over the lease on the lands when her husband Michael died and was succeeded in turn by her eldest son Patrick when she died in 1874.

When John married in 1867 his occupation was recorded as farmer. It 97

is not clear what land he was farming in 1867, perhaps he was working on the home farm with his mother and brothers. Along with Patrick, his younger brother Michael also lived on this land until his death in 1905.

Both of his two brothers died bachelors, never having married. The farm consisted of around 35 acres of mediocre land and a share in some rough mountain land. It is difficult to look back and see how even a subsistence existence could have been scraped from these poor acres.

Between 1867 and 1882 John had several addresses: Cooley (Feb 1867), Castletowncooley (Sep 1867), Muchgrange (1869 to 1872) and Mulatee (1874 to 1882). Muchgrange and Mulatee are neighbouring townlands about 5 miles from Castletowncooley and close to Greenore. The house in Mulatee, which is still in use today, is close to the line of the Dundalk to Greenore section of the Dundalk, Newry and Greenore Railway.

The railway started operations in 1873 but was involved in construction and land purchase for several years before that. We know that John started working for the DN&GR around 1872. From late 1867 John’s occupation was recorded as labourer so perhaps he was working on the construction of the port and/or the railway from around that time. As the railway was owned by an English company, the London and North Western Railway, it paid the going English rates of pay so it would have provided a good and steady wage for John, Catherine and their children.

John was 49 years of age and had been working for the DN&GR for about ten years when he died.

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Life in Cooley

On the 1st of September 1964, as I approached my 13th birthday I put on my first pair of long trousers and headed off to boarding school in Monaghan. While I returned home for holidays, including the long three month Summer breaks, that was when, in reality, I left my childhood home in Castletowncooley, in north County Louth. We always refer to it as Cooley for short. I didn’t feel this departure at the time and I had a choice about going to boarding school or travelling on a daily basis to school in Dundalk but I suppose that is just a part of growing up. We still own the house and pre-Covid I would have visited on a weekly basis, so Cooley remains an important part of my life.

The house I was raised in is quite old. The part of the house referred to as the “new house” was built around 1910 by my grandfather.

My father was born and raised and lived in the house for all but the last of his 98 years. His grandfather and great-grandfather would also have lived in the house and perhaps several other generations before that. The nearby Newtown Cemetery in Mountbagnal has a family plot and a headstone.

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While my father always said that this was a family headstone I have not been able to make the connection back to the people remembered on the stone. A more recent headstone, erected by my father in the 1970s or 80s remembers these three people along with his father, his aunt and a cousin who are all buried in this plot.

The photo above shows my brother Sean, our mother Sheila, Turlough in the pram, myself and my brother Dermot. My father, Tom, is probably taking the photo and my youngest brother Daniel would not be born for another couple of years. Turlough was born in December 1953 so the photograph was probably taken in 1954, just outside the back kitchen door, beside the yard gate with the cow shed in the background. My wife says I was born on the side of a mountain and that is not far from the truth. If my mother stood up and looked to her left from where she is in the photograph she could look right down along the east coast as far as Skerries. I had a rural upbringing and while we had some land and always had cattle and hens and at one stage turkeys we did not rely on the land for our main family income. The yard gate in the photo has chicken wire on it to prevent the hens from coming down into the garden or onto the driveway, which we always called the Street for some unknown reason. In fact I can make out an old branch tied to the end of the gate which allowed the chicken wire barrier to be extended another two feet above the gate. The hens were quite capable of flapping their way to the top of the gate and then down onto the street and into the garden so this extra precaution was necessary.

The cow shed was where the cows were brought in for milking,

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with a part sectioned off for young calves. The cow shed had no windows, just two narrow slits, one of which can be seen in the photo. At the front there was a manger and chains that were put around the cows’ necks during milking. We had one very old cow who was the matriarch of the herd (the total number of cattle would usually be around ten or twelve, so not really a herd!). She used to walk into the cow shed, go over to her place, the furthest on the right, put her head down so that you could put on the chain and then she would start to eat her hay or whatever food was in the manger.

Whenever we moved the cattle from the top fields back to the house she would lead the way. The rest of the cattle would follow behind. Sometimes the younger calves would be rushing about and this was not a problem provided they stayed behind her. However if they got in front of her, even though they were in a different part of the field, away from the path she was on, she would give them a look and they would fall back out of her line of sight. They might carry on with their antics respectfully behind her.

We had no running water in the house at Cooley until 1966, by which time I was 15 years old and in my second year in boarding school. Water therefore had to be carried from various sources.

Where it came from depended on what type of water it was – drinking or non-drinking – and on the time of year and weather.

Drinking water came from the public pump about a quarter mile up the road from the house. In fact it was not a pump but a fountain fed by gravity from a spring in the bog which was on our land. You just turned the knob and the water flowed until you let the knob

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go. When we were smaller two of us would go with a bucket and a stick. When filled, the stick had to be placed through the handle of the bucket and the water carried back to the house that way, always trying not to spill any of it. This was a very good source of water and very consistent. On very rare occasions it would run dry and then we had to go to a well in Woods’s field about a thousand metres away but that might only happen a couple of times a year. The pump is now long gone, we were probably the last to use it, but the spring in the bog still provides water to the house in Cooley.

The non-drinking water came either from water barrels that collected rain water from the shed roofs or from the well at the road.

There were three barrels so throughout most of the year they provided the necessary non-drinking water but in dry weather a slightly longer trip to the well was necessary. The well wasn’t actually a well in the usual sense. It was a deepened section on a stream that ran past the house along the side of the road. There may have been a concrete bottom and sides to it and there was a board to stand on to make filling the buckets easier. The flow would diminish during the Summer but I don’t ever recall that stream not providing water.

The barrels were open topped so the bucket had to be dipped into the barrel, filled and then lifted out – easy if you are an adult and the barrel is full but more difficult if you are small and the water level in the barrel is low. Filling the bucket then involved leaning into the barrel. Two of the barrels had two steel hoops around them, presumably to facilitate rolling them when they were being used for their original purpose. The lower hoop was one third the

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way up the barrel and I used to stand up on this and the lean over the rim to get water when the barrel was nearly empty – certainly not a safe manoeuvre and something we would be horrified to see a child doing today. We have a water butt in Cooley in the same location as one of the old barrels. It is sealed on top by a lid with a catch, it sits on a base and has a tap at the bottom to allow the water to be drawn off safely. The same purpose achieved with no risk, so some things have improved over time.

The land we owned was not very good and much of it was almost mountain, not including the part share we had in an actual mountain. What we called the “top fields” were the rock field, the fort field and the mountain field, whose names give a good impression of the nature of the land. Whins (furze or gorse to other people) grew extensively on these fields and would over time encroach on the fields. To combat this we children would be sent up the fields to “burn the whins”. We were given a box of matches and some old newspapers which we rolled up and used as torches.

While there is fresh green growth on top of the whin bushes, underneath the bushes the old growth is grey and withered and once dry is very easy to light and will burn fiercely and quickly. We raced around setting fire to every bush we could find. If someone went into a horseshoe shape of bushes to light the centre we lit either side of the entrance behind them so that when they turned around to exit they had to dash out between the blazing bushes.

We would come back down to the house smelling of smoke and probably scorched in places too.

I think it is now illegal to start fires like that. Perhaps it even was

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then – and I think that sending children off, unsupervised, to “burn the whins” might also be frowned upon these days. Once burned, the whin bushes died back and fresh growth began at the base for the process to begin again. After a time the remnants of the bushes were collected and used for firewood – a dirty job as they would still be black from the burning.

Speaking of dirty jobs, I already mentioned that we always had hens. They lived in the hen house, now known as the boiler house.

Well, that’s where they roosted at night and where the nest boxes were, where they were supposed to lay their eggs. Normally they were well behaved in this regard but on odd occasions my mother would notice a dip in the egg production and we would be sent to seek out the unofficial nest being used by one of the hens to lay her eggs in. They were given free rein, excluding the street and the garden, and would roam at will around the yard and out into the edges of the nearby fields. On one occasion I remember my father spotting a fox making for one of the hens. The hen was about halfway between my father and the fox. My father started to shout at the fox and ran towards the hen. However the fox must have been hungry and reckoned he could move faster than my father, so he kept coming forward, grabbed the hen and then ran off.

I was going to speak of a dirty job! The hens’ roost consisted of poles spanning above a bed of straw. The poles were tiered like seats in a cinema. The hens sat on these at night, like sitting on the branches of a tree. The straw collected all their waste and this accumulated over time. I seem to remember that it was only cleaned out once a year. It might have been twice a year but it was defi-

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nitely an infrequent event. It was an horrific job. The smell was unbearable and would leave you gasping. We were used to smells from mucking out the cow sheds but cleaning out the hens was something else entirely.

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Building a Hut

Cooley was the childhood home of my father’s brother and two sisters, and his mother, our grandmother, still lived in the house, so our two aunts and our uncle visited regularly. During the summer their children, our first cousins, would come to stay for a period and we would then get the opportunity to stay with them. Our uncle Sean lived in Dublin and his son John was virtually the same age as myself with just a few months between us. We must have been about thirteen or so the summer we built the hut, in 1964 or 1965. Morning time was chore time: weeding the garden, cutting hedges, painting or whatever but after lunch we were on our time.

Myself and John explored an overgrown area a distance from the house. It was across a small stream and was wild with sally trees and briars. We found a clear area in the middle and decided to build a hut. We started by digging down, perhaps two feet or so, and using the excavated clay to build up walls around our hole.

The tops of the walls were about four feet or more above the floor.

We then got branches and ferns and put a roof on the hut. Access 106

to the hut was at one end by means of steps cut into the clay. We made a fireplace opposite the entrance by digging a hole a couple of feet into the side of our excavation and then we dug down outside the wall to form the chimney for the fireplace.

Each afternoon we would head off with a pick and shovel and I recall being questioned about what we were up to – taking work tools off on our own time was unusual. I’m sure we never gave a straight answer to the question and we were never pressed to explain ourselves. There was quite an amount of work in building the hut. It must have been about six or eight foot by four or five, so we had to dig out more than three tonnes of earth to form the hut and to make the walls.

We did light a fire in the fireplace and the smoke, if I remember correctly, went more or less where it was meant to go and left our hut smoke-free. The hut was not used very much – the main fun was in building it. John was probably just down for two weeks and I probably travelled back with him to Dublin for two weeks.

Then it was back to school and the hut was forgotten about. I remember investigating it at some later stage but while the structure was still there the roof had collapsed in. Some years later when the Troubles in the North had started, someone came across the remains of the hut and it was examined to see if it was a hiding place for the IRA. Well, that was the story my parents told me. We all kept quiet in any event and heard nothing more. I was speaking to my youngest brother Daniel about “The Hut” recently and he recalled myself and John bringing himself, our brother Turlough and John’s younger brother Peter to see the hut, a sort of official

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opening. He remembered going down a steep bank across a small stream and then into a heavily overgrown area to the hut and “for goodness sake ye had a fire lighting in it”. It sounded like our efforts had made quite an impression. I am sure that nature has, at this stage, obliterated any trace of our hut.

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The Cooley Photograph

Like millions of people around the world myself and my family owe the existence of the photographic record of our lives from the mid 1940s to the 1960s to the Kodak Box Brownie. The first model of this camera was released in 1900 and many models continued in production until the late 1960s. Our version was the Kodak Six20 Brownie C, a model that was made in England between 1945 and 1953. I wonder if it was bought when my eldest brother was born in 1945. The photograph here shows the actual camera used to record our life and times in Cooley.

The camera produced eight 31/4 by 21/4 inch photographs from each roll of film. In theory it should be possible to identify the eight photographs taken on each roll of film. However we don’t always finish the roll at one sitting, so there may be a shot or two remaining that may not be used up for weeks or even longer. As a result there could be several shots already on the roll when the camera was picked up to take a particular photograph, so each group of eight may not relate to a single event or a single day.

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The photographs from Cooley are now in different boxes and different albums but quite a number remain in the old album from under the radio in Cooley though it now has a toothy grin with many gaps where photos have either fallen out or been removed.

The central image (a colourised version of the original black and white) in the collage is still in the album and shows my family as it was around the end of 1954, excluding my father who was probably taking the photograph. It was taken at the yard gate, just outside the back kitchen door and shows our mother Sheila, Sean, Turlough in the pram, then myself and Dermot, with the yard and front field in the background.

Examining the photo and the appearance and clothing of the people in it, it is possible to identify other photographs taken around the same time. Two other photographs were taken at the same location, one has just Sean and Turlough, again in the pram, and the third shot has myself and Dermot, a turkey and a hen in it. There appears to be quite a bit of snow on the yard and on the front field as well, so were taken at a different time or perhaps a different day.

A turkey and snow implies December. We don’t get much snow in November and if it was January would the turkey still be around?

Perhaps this was Turlough’s 1st birthday party. His birthday is in December shortly before Christmas.

Three other photographs from this roll were taken at the other end of the house. Turlough is in the pram in two of them and my father appears in one of them. The final photograph is of Sean. His clothes are the same or similar to what he is wearing in the other shots. Of the eight shots on this roll of film six have been identi-

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fied as belonging to this roll and this has allowed me to correctly identify the baby in the photographs as Turlough. I had mistakenly thought that two of the shots had been taken several years earlier and were of Sean when he was a baby.

Two other details helped to group the six images as belonging to the same roll. On the back of most of the six images the number 4 is marked in pencil and there is a very small defect on the equipment used to print the images. This allowed a tiny bit extra of the negative to be printed in what should have been the border of the print. We can never look close enough or note everything that is there to be seen. Too often we look without seeing and miss an interesting piece of information.

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Pulling the Sinews

Our Christmas dinner was very much along traditional lines: turkey, ham, Brussels sprouts, stuffing. The turkey was prepared on Christmas Eve ready for cooking on Christmas Day. Part of the preparation involved the pulling of the sinews – well, at least an attempt to pull the sinews. This involved cutting the skin just below the fleshy part of the leg to expose the sinews. The handle of a wooden spoon was then forced in behind the sinew. I can still picture the next part: a tug-of-war with my mother holding the turkey and pulling in one direction and me with the wooden spoon grasped with both hands pulling in the opposite direction.

This was not a gentle operation as even with full commitment on both sides, which was always given, a successful extraction of the sinew was not guaranteed. I can’t recall how many sinews there were in each leg but it seemed to be a lot, so after a success the operation was repeated. I do not remember the turkey ever being dropped or the wooden spoon breaking but both were always a possibility.

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At some stage my mother decided that as it was so easy to remove the meat from the sinews when the meat was cooked that whoever got the drumstick could deal with the sinews and the tug-of-war was dropped as part of the Christmas Eve tradition.

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I took this photo in 2019 and used it in a calendar I send to family each year. In April 2020 when my nephew turned the page at the end of March he remarked on the similarity between the half sphere of the flower and the shape and form of the images of Covid-19 that were dominating our screens then.

I subsequently manipulated the half sphere into a full sphere. I prefer looking at this image to looking at the image of the virus!

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Writing the Stories

In 2020 Covid restrictions forced us all to seek activities online to occupy our time. This in some cases restricted what was possible, in other cases it increased the options. Whatever the case was it changed the way many things were done. Online contacts and communication became more important and we were forced to look at options we might not have considered before.

When I heard that South Dublin County Council were organising an online project, ‘Memoir Writing from Photographs,’ I was intrigued and interested. The project was to be delivered by Cathy Fowley of Silver Thread. I had started working on my family history in 2009; births, marriages and deaths mostly, though I had written up some of the stories of my mother’s life. I was hoping that this project would show me how to approach a topic and how to present a story properly, as well as giving me a reason to write more.

While I had used photographs to illustrate my mother’s story, us118

ing a photograph as the starting point was a new approach to me.

The first task we were given was to write about the photograph itself, the actual piece of photographic paper. I found that a very interesting approach and something I would never have thought of doing myself.

The first draft of my story, about my great-grandmother Catherine Mc Donald was very much just facts and figures, too much genealogy and not enough family history, not enough about Catherine, not enough of her story. The suggestions and advice offered were subtle but made the story more about the real person that Catherine was and made more of my connection to her, which was through my father. He had told me about his grandmother Catherine and about his boyhood memories of her. He was thirteen when she died in 1925.

The project also had the significant advantage of allowing me to hear the stories written by the other people involved in the project.

Seeing the topics they chose to write about and hearing the way they approached their stories made me think more about what I was writing.

In 2020, amidst Covid restrictions, the nature of the project must have been considerably different from the normal in-person, inclassroom, experience. The method of delivery was very different being remote via Zoom rather than face to face. However despite the remoteness it was possible to get to know the other people and feel part of the group. I believe this may have been helped by the small number of people in the group and perhaps more so by the

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nature of the project where each person read and shared the stories they had written about their lives or about the lives of their family.

The project has proven to be all that I hoped for and more. I have found the exercise educational, entertaining and inspirational. I have heard wonderful stories told wonderfully about the ordinary lives of ordinary people. I have seen wonderful snapshots from everyday albums that demonstrate very clearly how precious these snapshots are and how each of them instead of being worth a thousand words has become the spring from which thousands of wonderful words have flowed.

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Aerial Photo of Cooley An aerial photo of Cooley taken between 1957 and 1966, probably in the early 1960s. The last door on the right, partly obscured by the cow shed is the hen house door. The next door to the left of that is the back kitchen door. The back door in Cooley was on the front of the house! The group photo was taken on the street in front of that door. Some of the other photographs were taken on the white garden seat that can be seen to the left of the house. The taller section of the house, on the left, with the three chimneys is the new house built around 1907 as part workshop and part living quarters.

The white dots near the shed, the building furthest to the right of the photograph are some of the hens. The water barrels can just be made out at the front corners, left and right of the shed and at the front left of the cow shed. The well at the road is just in from the parked car. The pump is up the road from the top of the photograph. The car is a Morris Minor, maroon coloured which belonged to our postman. I recognise the two bald spots on its roof!

Across the back field, the field behind the house, the track the cattle used to follow is visible leading towards the trees to the right of the house.

Just above the car is a gate into the fields. This is where my father was when he tried unsuccessfully to save the hen from the fox.

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Rita O’Regan

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My Family, 1952

This photo was in a box of photos and papers that I inherited about ten years ago. Back then, I looked through everything and then put a few things away in an envelope to follow up on later. That “later” happened a during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 around the time the Silver Thread workshop was put up on the SDCC Facebook page. Now is a perfect time to put names to faces and to put my memories in writing.

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The Dressing Gown

When my cousin Billy died in 2007 I inherited a few framed pictures along with various bags and boxes containing hundreds of old and not so old family photographs. While I had great intentions to sort them out and catalogue them, family life, and life in general, took over. I put a few aside in an envelope to look at a bit closer and the rest went up into the attic.

How the years fly by. When reorganising a cupboard a few weeks ago I found the envelope pushed away at the back of a drawer and discovered some small black and white photos taken way back in the 1950s. These photos, although clear after all these years, were only two by two inches, probably taken with a Brownie camera – I still have mine! Trying to enlarge these little photos could prove to be a bit tricky. However, this discovery all coincided with an online notification from Tallaght Library that a memoir writing workshop via Zoom was due to start. How could I not sign up for it?

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This is my family. The photograph must have been taken around 1952 when I was six – that’s me in the front row with my hair in plaits. How I loved my plaits with brightly coloured ribbons keeping them neat and tidy. I think that was my rosebud dress with smocking on the bodice, all made by my mother from glazed cotton which always looked fresh and crisp. My brother Brian is sitting beside me, and my sister Mary, partly hidden, is sitting behind Brian. Our cousin David is sitting on the grass beside us.

I don’t know who took the photograph. Possibly cousin Billy, David’s brother.

From left to right are my father Kit Madigan, Granny Gillett, who died in 1952, the year this photo was taken, Pearl Gillett, Gerry Gillett, Alice Blaney (nee Gillett), Austin Gillett, May Gillett, Henry Blaney, married to Alice, and my mother Jenny Madigan (nee Gillett).

There were ten siblings in the Gillett family, all born two years apart from 1902 to 1922. My grandfather, William Gillett, a ship’s engineer, died in 1924, leaving my grandmother to raise nine children on her own. They lived in a house by the Liffey, just off the South Quays where the Guinness ships docked. The house is still there today together with about ten other houses, all well maintained, but now surrounded by high-rise office buildings.

Siblings not in the photograph are John, William, Richard and Peter.

John died of Spanish flu in 1917 when he was 15. William died in

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1943 aged 37. In 1944 Richard, aged 29, and Peter, aged 27, both died within four months of each other. My grandmother lost three sons to tuberculosis within two years.

How my grandmother and the family coped with such loss and tragedy is difficult to imagine, and recounting those statistics stops me in my tracks and leaves me lost for words.

This photograph would have been taken when Alice (centre) was home from the USA with her American husband Henry Blaney (second from right).

I think the picture must have been taken at my aunt May’s house.

Pearl is wearing a dressing gown – I can only remember Pearl being either in her dressing gown or in bed. This was the time when tuberculosis was rife in Ireland, and there were special hospitals and sanatoria just for TB patients. Pearl spent a lot of time in St Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park. I remember seeing photographs of her when she was there, and when the beds were rolled out onto a veranda so that patients could benefit from clean fresh air. She was allowed home occasionally and was probably staying with May at the time this photo was taken. However, she had to have her own room, her own cutlery and crockery, and everyone in the house had to be very careful to avoid cross-contamination.

Pearl was a quiet, gentle person who had a lovely smile for everyone. She was my godmother but she died when she was 37.

My mother Jane (or Jenny as everyone called her) looks fit and well in this photo, but she also contracted TB and needed to have

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part of her lung removed. She was only a young woman of 41 in this photo but she too died a few years later in 1958 when she was 47.

This was the time of mass X-ray. People were terrified of contracting TB. There were mobile X-ray units, or vans, parked in different parts of the city where people could queue up, walk in and have a chest X-ray taken. While my mother was in hospital I lived part of the time in Clontarf with my dad, sister and brother, and sometimes with my aunt May in Dundrum. I recall having a cough which gave me a pain in my back, but I can also remember trying to stifle my cough so that people wouldn’t hear me. I know I was afraid they would think I was sick and that would have been another problem for them to worry about. Of course the family heard me coughing, and I remember Aunt May worrying and bringing me to an X-ray unit parked on O’Connell Street.

My memory of that X-ray unit is of a silver, ambulance-type van.

I felt so embarrassed having to take off my top clothes, and then lean forward onto the big cold steel plate, take in a deep breath and stay still until I was told to breathe again. Something showed up on that X-ray and so it was followed up with more detailed X-rays in a building just down the road from Christchurch Cathedral near City Hall, outside Dublin Castle. It’s funny how you remember the little things. It was a grey building and there were granite steps up to the front door. There, they spotted a shadow on my lung and found that I had also contracted primary TB and went into hospital for three day’s observation.

That was in March of that year, around Easter time. I eventually

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ended up in the same hospital as my mother and Aunt Pearl, Ballyowen Sanatorium in Lucan, where I stayed for nine months, finally being allowed home for Christmas. I was assured that I would be stronger and healthier for having spent time in the sanatorium, and thank goodness, I’ve lived a long, healthy and happy life ever since.

Ballyowen Sanatorium was way out in the country surrounded by green fields. There was a bus stop at the entrance gates, and then a long walk down a straight road to the units which were all single storey prefab buildings. Wards were either for one, two or four beds. I know that while I was there I was the youngest in the facility, and I don’t remember mixing with any other children. I can’t remember getting any formal schooling, but there was a lady who taught “occupational therapy” where I learned embroidery and other crafts, and there were books and magazines and comics to read. I still have a couple of jewellery boxes I made from a pattern used by patients in the sanatorium. It was constructed using recycled greeting cards, old X-ray film that was cleaned with some strange solution, scraps of material, cotton wool and embroidery thread.

While in the Sanatorium my daily medication was called PASS. I never knew what was in it. It was a brown liquid and tasted awful!

It was put in a little glass like a shot glass and I had to drink it back while a nurse stood beside my bed to make sure I finished the lot!

The windows in my ward were opened fully almost every day, and in the summertime I sometimes climbed out the window to collect cowslips (a taller version of primroses) in the field outside. Every

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time I see cowslips now I’m reminded of my time there: lush green grass, bright vibrant yellow cowslips dotted in clumps all over the field and bracing fresh air that sometimes took my breath away.

I had my blood checked regularly, which I didn’t like one bit! Needles back then weren’t as refined as they are now, and sometimes it would be difficult for the nurse to find a vein in my little arms.

I’m sure my roars were heard in wards and corridors all over the sanatorium!

In Ireland from the mid 1800s, tuberculosis was referred to as “consumption” or the “silent killer,” and was easily spread through coughs and sneezes from infected people. The similarity with Covid-19 in 2020 is chilling.

Dr Noel Browne was a medical doctor and politician who was Minister for Health from 1948 to 1951. His personal story is quite tragic. His mother, father, brother and sister all died from TB. From the time he became Minister for Health, he diverted money received from the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes into building sanatoria around the country, ensuring that everyone who contracted TB would receive free treatment, and also that needy families would receive a subsistence allowance so that breadwinners could recuperate in hospital.

Through his tireless efforts, he managed to stop the disease in its tracks within three years, and almost eliminated it over the following twenty years, which all became possible through the use of the so called “miracle drugs” of the time, the antibiotic

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Streptomycin and the BCG vaccine.

Dr Noel Browne died aged 81 in May 1997. Among his many other achievements, his lasting legacy was eliminating TB from Ireland.

To the best of my knowledge, I was the last person in my family to contract TB.

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Snapped on O’Connell Street

People from all over Ireland had their photographs taken on O’Connell Bridge. If you ask anyone about the man who took photographs there, people are bound to remember some special time in their lives when they were “snapped” by him. He always seemed to be there when you were crossing, and he certainly had an instinct as to who would make the best customer. If he did take your picture, whether you kept walking or posed for the shot, he would hand you a card which had details of where and when you could pick up your developed photograph.

He had a camera with a concertina-type casing on it, and in later years would also have a Polaroid slung across his chest for instant prints. When the Polaroid camera came on the market it was very expensive, and like all new technology, would have been beyond what most people could afford. He wore a home-made sign strung around his neck which read “Instant Colour Photographs,” and in 1972 that was what everyone wanted. Instant! And colour! At that time, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had walked on the moon, 137

mini-skirts, hotpants, flared trousers and platform shoes were high fashion, and instant freeze-dried vegetables were supposed to be the answer to every housewife’s dream to cut down on lengthy food preparation for the family. I shudder when I think how tasteless those vegetables were. The texture was rubbery, and the colour was never far from grey! Everyone to their own taste I would say, but thank goodness, I don’t see those packets on the supermarket shelves any more.

I never knew the name of the photographer on the bridge. He always seemed to be there, and if you tried to dodge past him he would pretend to take your photograph and then, if you slowed down or stopped, he would take your picture again. He had his business down to a fine art.

In 2013 on RTE’s Late Late Show an appeal went out for people to send in their treasured photographs taken on the bridge. The response resulted in over 1,800 snaps being submitted, and what followed on from that was a book and a film covering the life of Arthur Fields: The Man on the Bridge.

Arthur came to Ireland in the 1930s to escape anti-semitism in the Ukraine, and over his 50 years on the bridge it is estimated that he took more than 180,000 photographs.

Arthur photographed families, clergy, people up from the country for the day, young couples out on a date, groups of young people out on the town for the night, celebrities and movie stars. He captured people from all walks of life and created a social history of

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Dublin and Ireland from the 1930s up until the time he retired in 1985 aged 84.

This photograph has the inscription D54603 on the back and is of me with my brother Brian and sister Mary. We were probably brought to O’Connell Bridge to have our photograph taken there, as our parents didn’t own a camera back then. Mary is wearing her Confirmation outfit and I seem to have a matching coat. Our mammy had the coats made for us. They were a stone-coloured wool with brown velvet or felt contrast. Mary’s hat was made to match her coat, and for a young girl she looks gorgeous and extremely fashionable. My brother Brian looks polished and dressed up for the day in his winter school coat complete with tie and school cap – a bit on the Kildare side! Like all schoolboys of that age, he probably hated wearing it!

Mary remembers walking all over town with Mammy to find shoes to fit her narrow feet, before they finally found a suitable pair in a shop on Grafton Street. After all that time and trouble, Mammy made sure that the new shoes were seen in the photograph. In the photo I am dressed in my light-coloured coat – probably not the best choice of colour for a child – and have a ribbon in my hair. I wasn’t lucky enough to get new shoes for the occasion, as I still seem to be wearing my summer closed-in brown sandals with ankle socks and some sort of tights. I have a look of worry or apprehension on my face and am holding on to my big brother’s hand for reassurance.

The year is most probably 1949 because there is a tram in the background approaching the bridge from Westmoreland Street,

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and the last trams finally went out of commission in Dublin city on the 9th of July 1949. The tram to Howth, however, was in use for another ten years until 1959.

Thank goodness that snap was taken as it has restored so many wonderful memories, not just for me but for Mary and Brian. I’ve had the photograph for years in an album stored away in the attic but I can’t remember how it came to be in my possession.

The word “snap” can have a variety of meanings. It can be used as a noun, adjective or verb.

In this story I’ve used “snap” to mean “an informal photograph taken quickly.” How thankful I feel now that I was “snapped” all those years ago!

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Christmas Garlands

Mammy taught me how to use the sewing machine when I was about eight. We were getting ready for Christmas, and of course we needed to decorate our house before the arrival of Santa Claus, not forgetting, of course, the arrival once more of the baby Jesus.

She would buy rolls of crepe paper in red, green and white – the choice of colours was very limited. There might be some yellow left over from Easter time and if there was any black paper, it would be used for the crib for the Holy Family and the baby Jesus.

We would make a stable from an old box with the crepe paper wrapped and stuck onto it. It was a messy business: the glue stuck to your fingers, and then the ink from the black paper stuck to the glue on your fingers, and then you might want to brush away your hair from your eyes…

And then, the glue would take ages to dry!

Mammy used a big scissors and cut three inch strips across the 141

long rolls. Along with my big sister and brother, I matched up the different coloured strips and put one on top of the other. Mammy would have cleared a space on the kitchen table to make room for her Singer sewing machine, and she would set up a long stitch on the machine with whatever thread she had. The thread colour didn’t matter – in fact, the brighter, the better! She showed me how to use the machine and let me practice stitching in a straight line all the way down the centre of the long strips. It’s funny how the ends of those strips never lined up and one piece would be always longer than the other. Mammy showed us how to put a knot in the loose thread-ends and we would all help to gently stretch the edges of the crepe paper without tearing it. Then she would carefully pull the threads to loosely gather up the long strip, twist the whole thing around, et voila: a multi coloured garland!

We’d make enough garlands to drape around the walls of the rooms, using tacks to stick into the plaster or layers of wallpaper, and if the ceiling was too high, there was the picture rail we could reach if we stood up on a chair. At the corners we’d stick in a couple of balloons and hoped they’d stay there until Christmas was over. Sometimes they worked themselves loose, and floated down off the wall, and we’d have great fun punching them at each other before they finally burst with a big bang!

We always tried to hang the garlands from the corners of the room into the centre at the light fitting, but Mammy wouldn’t allow us – I think she was afraid we’d stick a tack into a wire and blow a fuse, or worse still, electrocute ourselves!

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Some of our friends and neighbours had very fancy decorations bought in Hector Gray’s: decorations they kept from one year to the next, garlands that concertinaed together and when opened out were silver on one side and bright red, green, blue, yellow and sometimes pink on the other. And they had big silver stars made from shiny paper, that were like heavenly bodies twinkling in the sky on a clear frosty night.

Hector Gray’s, now there’s a name to remember! Hector’s shop was on Liffey Street, and if you needed any toys, decorations, lamp shades, bulbs, kettles, cups and saucers, pots and pans, you name it, his was the shop to go to. Hector was always in his shop, and at Christmastime he had all sorts of novelties, tinsel, and decorations in bright shiny colours, silver and gold and as sparkly and as gaudy as you wanted. These all came to our little island from far off exoticsounding places like China, India and Taiwan. If Hector Gray didn’t have what you wanted, the stall holders in Moore Street and Henry Street were next on the list. This is where you’d find your “Cheeky Charlies” and hear, “Get the last e’ yer jumpin’ monkeys.”

When Christmas was over and it was the new year and we were back in school and had the day off for the epiphany on the 6th of January, the decorations were taken down and put away for another year. If the balloons still had some air in them, we’d have a play around with them until they were all burst. We’d roll up the garlands, but invariably some would have got damaged, so we always needed to make more the following year, always hoping that maybe, just maybe, we could make a special trip into town to visit Hector Gray’s.

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The Jewellery Box

Now, after all these years when it was tidied away in a drawer, the little red and black jewellery box was beginning to fall apart.

It held some of Alice’s treasures, memories and little things she couldn’t bear to throw away.

Alice had made the jewellery box. As a child, she was confined to a Sanatorium for nine months surrounded by other patients who had also contracted the scourge of the time, tuberculosis. Fortunately for her, she was diagnosed early and after treatment with the newly discovered antibiotics, she made a full recovery.

There was no TV to watch in the 1950s, and in the Sanatorium radio was limited to Hospitals Requests on Radio Eireann when all the patients would listen out hopefully to hear their names announced over the airwaves. You felt so excited if your name was mentioned by the presenter on the radio, knowing that someone had sent in a request especially for you. When all the names and greetings were read out, the presenter followed on with a chosen 144

piece of music. Alice’s favourite was ‘Smile’ sung by Nat King Cole.

As she carefully tried to sew the pieces of the jewellery box together again, Alice lined the needle up with the tiny stitches she had once sewn as a ten-year-old. Occupational Therapy it was called back then.

“I wonder if the term is still used today,” Alice thought. “Sounds old-fashioned to me, now it’s probably called ‘Mindfulness Therapy’ or suchlike!”

As the name would imply, occupational therapy was to occupy patients as they rested and hopefully recover from TB, and was also a way of distracting them from the monotony of lying in bed all day. In the Sanatorium, there was just one occupational therapist who would visit the wards regularly. She always came armed with interesting projects to make or do, but patients who had different skills would also teach each other crafts like knitting, crochet and embroidery.

Alice turned the box over, and the underneath looked almost as good as the day she made it. The colours were bright, and she could see that the picture underneath the X-ray film had been a combination of a couple of old card cut-outs to balance the shape of the flower basket design. The crochet around the edges was neat and very well sewn together. She marvelled at what she was capable of doing when she was so young. Many of the patients in the Sanatorium made jewellery cases or boxes. There were different

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designs, sizes and shapes, but the one Alice liked best, and the one she wanted to make, was a heart-shaped one with padding on the inside covered in a red material, finished off with a tassel so that she could lift up the lid. It was a tricky enough design to make, even for an adult, but she was a determined little miss with busy little hands! That was the one she wanted to make!

These boxes were made from materials the patients had to hand in the sanatorium: old card, black paper, old greeting cards, pieces of fancy paper, used and cleaned X-ray film, cotton wool, scraps of material and embroidery thread. No wonder Alice continued with the recycling habit throughout her life! Also needed was a crochet hook and a hole-punch to make holes around the edges to crochet and secure the layers together.

Alice’s little jewellery box was well used over the years, and bore the scars of pins and brooches on the lid, and specks and spots from other bits and pieces of jewellery. Nothing too flashy or expensive, just the jewellery of the time.

She found other odds and sods in the jewellery case: keys to a trunk and some other safe boxes that were long since gone (probably thrown out because their keys were missing!), a watch she used to wear around her neck when she was a trendy young thing in the 60s, a ticka-ticka-Timex watch one of her own girls used to wear (just waiting to be fitted with a new watch strap before it went out of fashion), a relic from some saint, or was it a pope, she’ll have to look that one up!

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There was a 50 pence piece from 1988 celebrating the Dublin millennium, and a coin with a very young Elizabeth II on the front and what looked like Chinese writing on the back!

“Probably came from somewhere like Hong Kong,” she thought.

Another thing to check out!

Oh yes, and she found a miraculous medal hanging on a safety pin!

Fluff had built up inside around the edges of the jewellery box, and she used a cotton bud to gently tease out the debris and tip it into the waste bin.

“When I’m gone,” she thought. “That’s probably where this will end up.” She didn’t feel sad about thinking that way, it was just reality, and she had enjoyed not only making the box, but loved putting it on display when it was new.

She used a damp cloth to clean the surface of her jewellery box, and as memories flooded her mind she happily and gently hummed along to that song going round and round in her head, and for a short while she lost the worries of the day. Ah! Nat King Cole!

Your memory lives on in your music.

Light up your face with gladness, Hide every trace of sadness Although a tear may be ever so near

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That’s the time you must keep on trying Smile, what’s the use of crying You’ll find that life is still worthwhile If you just Smile

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Lockdown Diversions

The Beast from the East The “Beast from the East” struck on 24th February 2018. We watched the snow falling, thinking as in other years it would melt away within a couple of days. How wrong we were.

On doing some research on this episode of unseasonal weather I’ve discovered that the Beast from the East was the name given to Anticyclone Hartmut, and little did we know at the time that “Hartmut” would be with us until 4th March and that we would be in lockdown until the thaw set in. We were almost up to our knees in snow, ice and more snow, and we thought we would never escape from our homes. For days on end, we had snow blizzards, and as soon as we cleared the snow away from our doorsteps, it would be piled up again the next morning. I would look out into the back garden and see the round bird table resembling an American Angel Cake after the snow had been falling, and the garden table looking like a bigger version with about 8” of the fluffy white 149

stuff sitting flawlessly on top.

Thinking back, that lockdown only lasted 8 days and we thought we had lost our freedom and would never get back to normal activities again.

The main roads opened up first when the council lorries sprayed them with salt and sand and used snow ploughs to clear the snow and slush to the sides of the roads. However, many housing estates had only one road in and out, with a maze of roads within the estate. The Residents Association mobilised willing and some less than willing volunteers to help clear the packed snow and ice, and soon we had tracks dug through the snow, and at last a few of the desperate workers were finally able to drive (carefully) along the tracks and escape from the estate. Most cars were still getting stuck, so eventually the residents clubbed together to pay for a digger to scrape the snow and ice into mounds to let traffic through.

Family life had to carry on even during a blizzard, so meals were cooked daily, and as stocks ran low, it was amazing how adventurous we became with the ingredients we had to hand.

During this Covid lockdown we’re discovering just how resilient we actually are. This pandemic will not last, and in time we will get back to a new normal life.

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First Holy Communion I made my First Holy Communion in St. Vincent de Paul Church on Griffith Avenue Marino, and had my photograph taken outside. I was wearing my knee-length white communion dress with a short veil and a headband of flowers and petals. I felt very holy. I remember looking up at the high ceiling in the church and believing that the decorative panels were doors into heaven, and could picture myself flying up there on angels’ wings.

I had dead straight hair, but yearned to have curls, so the night before my communion mammy set my damp hair in strips of old sheets wound tightly around in sections all over my head till I looked like a mop. The next day I was thrilled with myself, checking in the mirror admiring my lovely ringlets bouncing over and back as I swished my head around from side to side. Now, Irish weather can be a bit unpredictable, changing seasons throughout the day, and wouldn’t always favour fancy hairstyles. By the end of the day my crowning glory was looking decidedly raggy, as straight bits fought their way out through the curls. Mammy wouldn’t have the time or patience to set my hair in ringlets every night, so the rag bag was put away in a drawer, ready and waiting for my next big day out.

Soda Bread I’ve re-discovered the joy of making soda bread again – taking it out of the oven and breaking it in half to check the texture, and holding my arms out to keep the family of vultures at bay, they

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having little patience to wait until the bread cooled down. They would circle with the breadknife and clean tea towel, and holding onto the hot bread, would saw back and forth, claiming their own slice of bread and leaving a beach of breadcrumbs on the breadboard and countertop. They couldn’t wait to see the butter melt in liquid pools before they savaged down the mis-shapen slices, closing their eyes in ecstasy as they savoured every golden moment of bliss.

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The Writers

Ann Goucher My name is Ann Goucher. I was born and raised in Dublin city centre. My family and I lived in the Iveagh Flats in Kevin Street.

I attended school in Loreto College, Stephen’s Green. After finishing school, I worked in the Civil Service for 11 years until shortly after my first child was born.

When my husband Pat and I got married in 1983, we made our home in Old Bawn, Tallaght where our three children Daniel, Seán and Niamh were born. After a number of years as a homemaker, I returned to the workforce in 2000, joining South Dublin County Council as a clerical officer, where I worked for almost 14 years.

Since taking early retirement, I have enjoyed having the time for my hobbies which include reading, gardening and walking in the outdoors enjoying nature. I have also enjoyed taking part in a lot of different classes run by South Dublin Libraries.

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Pat Jacob My name is Pat Jacob and I grew up in Oldcastle, Co Meath and life for us as a family of 6 was very simple and fulfilling growing up in the country in 1950s and 1960s. This is definitely where I got the love of the outdoor life, music and lots more.

I moved to work in Dublin after I finished school and my first job was in the Civil Service, Valuation Office and then the Department of Foreign Affairs. I met my late husband, Kevin some years later and left work to be a stay at home parent when my children were born and felt privileged to have been afforded that opportunity. I returned to employment in the 1990s and retired from banking some years ago.

Family and friends mean everything to me and I have enjoyed every minute of the precious time I have now to spend with them and continue my interest in hill walking, which has included many amazing holidays abroad with a fabulous group of people and music which has led me to learning to play the ukulele. My other interests include psychology, holidays and travelling to new places, genealogy, reading, knitting and many more.

I also appreciate the opportunity I have had from Tallaght Library to have been part of this project, which I have really enjoyed and look forward to many more.

Spread kindness, laugh often and never take life for granted.

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Brian McKeown I was raised on the Cooley peninsula in north Co. Louth, in the house my father was born and raised in and my great grandfather was also born and raised there. I came to Dublin in 1969 to study and have now lived here for over fifty years. When I started working in 1974 I bought a camera and photography has been my hobby ever since. I attended the inaugural meeting of Clondalkin Camera Club in January 1988 and, thirty three years on, I am still an active member of that club today.

I had started investigating my family history following my mother’s death in 2009 and that intensified after my retirement in 2011.

I attended a marvellous three year Genealogy and Family History course in UCD, Sean Murphy lecturer, and received a Diploma in 2017. Unfortunately the course has been discontinued and we were the last class to complete it.

As well as the details of births, marriages and deaths I am also interested in the stories about the times, the places and especially the people. In discussing the family stories with my four brothers I realised that we all recall different stories or recall the same story differently. Writing the stories down and recording the different versions is important so that the family history can be passed on to the next generation.

Because of my interest in photography I have also taken on the role of ‘The Keeper of the Family Photographs’. The South Dublin County Council project facilitated by Silver Thread ‘Memoir Writing from Photographs’ fitted right in with what I had been doing.

The task of recording all the stories and exploring all the photographs may never be completed but each story recorded and each photograph explored is another step on the way.

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Rita O’Regan My name is Rita O’Regan and I live in Dublin. I’m a septuagenarian with a busy brain and an enquiring mind. My hobbies include music, sewing, gardening, walking, crafting, travelling and generally filling my life with things that interest me.

I’ve lived in Ireland, England and Africa, and I’ve travelled extensively, particularly since my husband retired early, and together we’ve tasted life from The Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Peru, through to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Australia, New Zealand and east across the International Date Line to Samoa in the South Pacific.

I have two adult daughters and two wonderful grandchildren who are a delight and who keep me young at heart.

Music, and singing in particular, has always played a big part in my life, and when I grew too wrinkly for the bright lights I carried on my love of singing when I joined the Culwick Choral Society in 1998 around the time they were recruiting new members to celebrate their Centenary Year – that was 23 years ago! I’m also a member of the Tallaght based choir, Arabella Voices, and really miss all the rehearsing and performing with choir members. During this Covid lockdown, online rehearsing can help, but I sadly miss the face to face social interactions, and that wonderful fusion of sounds when all our rehearsing finally comes together.

Since 1995 I’ve been a member of Marlay ICA and have met a wonderful group of women, including many neighbours that I may never have got to know if it weren’t for our bi-monthly meetings when we would regularly have guest speakers and where I enrolled for classes in new skills such as basket weaving, various methods of sculpture and crafts, yoga and a myriad of other activities.

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With a busy brain and having had such a full life, my head is buzzing with stories that I want to write down – not just for me – but for my family. If other people enjoy what I have to say, that’s a bonus.

Silver Thread Memoir Writing has given me the perfect opportunity to reflect on times and people in sepia-tinted photos carefully filed away in albums but now sadly consigned to the attic.

No doubt you feel exhausted reading this – but my family laugh at me when they attempt to make me rest – they sigh in unison and repeat my motto “If I Rest I Rust”!

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When Silvija Grigulis Jones was in her eighties, she started writing stories about her early life; she wrote them in English, the language of her children and grandchildren, even though she sometimes felt they suited different words, in a different language. Her memoir takes us on a long trip through time and places. Her young granddaughter Amber summarized it well: “Granny was born in Riga, Latvia. She had two brothers and lived with her mam and dad by the sea side. Then World War II came. Her family had to leave. They went by boat, horse, train, lorry, walking and hitchhiking across Europe.”

Through a series of stories about small events, seen through the eyes of a child, with the background of preand post-war Europe, a larger story is told, of culture, family, displacement, and hope. Silvija takes us with her and her family, she shows us the life of a headstrong little girl in Latvia, the resilience of a child refugee, with the humour and positive outlook that would carry her through life. Throughout the book are echoes of her father’s words: “Dzīvo dzīvē dzīvu dzīvi” “While alive, live a lively life.”

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