Family ties, working in Derry and away, greyhounds and a new lease of life

I was born and reared in Pine Street, it was off Bond’s Street, and I lived for 60 years in that house. There was 14 of us in my family, including my mother and father. I was the oldest of 12 children and the last to be left in the house. I never married. There was eight girls and four boys and they all married except for myself and one sister, Patsy. She died when she was 67. They all gradually moved out so I bought the house. I sold it then and bought a flat on the Dungiven Road where I’ve been living for nearly 30 years.

I’m someone who can enjoy my own company. There’s other people who would talk about being lonely but I come down to Older People North West for my dinner and I have a scooter so I can go down into town on that. That gets me around.

I could live on my own alright, no problem. Some of my sisters would come round to the house sometimes. They did up the living room for me and then a month or two after that, they did my bedroom. It’s not too bad that way, they look after me. I don’t disturb much about the house anyway.

I worked in England for a while when I was younger until my mother took bad. When that happened, I came back.

My mother died when she was 65 from cancer. I was around 31 and the younger three were still in school. My sister, Roisin, lived in Ardmore so she took two of them and I took one of the boys, Tony. We got on like a house on fire until he moved to England for work.

It was the hardest time of my life when my mother died. After she was buried, I was getting ready to go back to England again so I went over to the town to get a few things. I met my brother-in-law when I was in town, he was a foreman in Arntz Belting. He asked me to go in for a job there. I took the job, which was on inspection or quality control and I stayed for 23 years. That was the end of England for me.

I used to train greyhounds. I was in that from I was born, we always had greyhounds around because my father worked them. During the war, when I was around eight or nine, my da and another boy went to England and left two greyhounds behind them in the yard. Me and my brother Paddy looked after the greyhounds and we would bring the dogs out the Limavady Road to train them after school. There was no houses out there then, not like there is now, it was all big green fields. They must have been the hardest dogs in Ireland because we galloped them up the field and down the field and the dogs loved it; oh they loved that.

I was training greyhounds when I was 17 or 18, I did quite well at that. I could handle a dog. It’s not an easy job to train a greyhound, if you’re going to do it properly. I went into work then and came out of the greyhounds for a long time. I retired when I was about 60 and I took them up again. I did very, very well.

I have a greyhound now at home, I tried to run her but she wasn’t very good... Her pet name is Jenny and her racing name is Sugarland Jenny. All my dogs are called Sugarland, no one else can use that name now. I have Jenny as a pet now but she’s very nervous. I’m trying to bring her round because you could be walking along with her and if there’s a loud bang or something she could bolt. She pulled me down a day and I was very lucky I didn’t hurt myself.

I’ll be 88 now soon. I drank until I was 60 years of age and I drank very heavy. I always said I would never see 60 because I was drinking that much. So, I decided to go off it. I went off it for three days but couldn’t sleep very well at night so, on the fourth day, I went back out and got drunk.

The morning after, something came over me and I said to myself, ‘no, I’m going to get help’. So, I went to the doctor and he asked me to go on a course. I did that for six weeks and I never looked at the drink since. I don’t miss it at all.

I started going to Older People North West around the time I went off the drink. I went off the drink 28 years ago. Best move I ever made in my life.

My biggest regret in life is that I never got married and had a family. I come from a big family, 12 of us, and I would love to have three or four youngsters. But that’s just the way it goes. I don’t brood over it, it’s just one of them things.

*If you or someone you know is over 60 and has a story to tell, email [email protected].