I was born in the Rotunda Hospital 14/9/41 and went home to Innisfallen Parade. My father was in prison at this time and he first saw me when I was six weeks old and was brought in to visit him. I was baptised in Berkeley Road.

Innisfallen Parade was our playground when I was young. Boys and girls together played the traditional street games, Relievio, Red Rover, Kick the Can, chasing, Moving Statues, Beds, the hole, leadeners, hoops, jackstones. The children from each end of the Parade played at their own end and had little contact with those from the other end.. There was no animosity or hostility. Each group simply gravitated to a pole. Possibly parents enforced this separation by insisting that children stayed within sight of their home.

There was a concrete air raid shelter on the parade almost opposite Synnot Row, a relic of the 2nd World War but this was demolished shortly afterwards.

The Royal Canal is near the house and we often watched the barges passing through the locks. This trade did not last for very long into my lifetime. A distinctive sound was the thud - thud of the single-cylinder Bolinder diesel engine in the barges.

There was only one car in the street. It belonged to Dick Moore who had a shop on the corner of Synott Row? There were about 5 shops in the Parade at that time. Lynches in a front room of a house in the next block up from Moore's and three more that we rarely visited because they were at the upper end of the Parade and that was not our normal direction of travel.

On the corner of N.C.Rd. and Synott Row? was a vegetable shop run by Seamus Meaney and his sister in which we bought potatoes and vegetables which would be emptied into our shopping bag after it had been lined with newspaper. Meaney's also gave Hibernian stamps to their customers. Eventually they closed the shop and traded in Blackrock for many more years.

On the Dorset Street corner of the Parade the Swastika Laundry was on the corner of our side of the road and Skeehan's Off Licence on the other. This was the birthplace of peadar Kearney, author of the National Anthem. Next door to Skeehan's was a vegetable shop in which we did not go and next to that was Roches, run by the two Misses Roche. Here we bought bread, milk, sugar, tea, loose butter, biscuits etc. Everything was sold loose and weighed out into paper bags. Usually the bags were white but sugar bags were strong black paper of a cloth-like texture. One of the interesting times was when we waited for milk to arrive each day. Women and children queued with cans and jugs, the crack was mighty. Milk arrived in 12 gallon cans and was ladled from these with a metal ladle into the customers cans, jugs or bottles. When not in use the ladle hung by its curved handle from the rim of the can with the lid loosely covering it.

I remember at one time someone (Dick Moore?) coming in a horse and cart (2 wheels) selling milk from big cans which were polished and shiny and if I remember rightly the milk was dispensed through brass taps at the bottom of the cans.

Across the road from Roches was a pork butchers, Youkstetters with elaborately tiled walls, and next door to that a butchers, Sheahans. A few doors up was a chemist, Denis Murphy. A few doors further was the Blanchardstown Mills which sold flour, meals etc. weighed out from big sacks and bins. Gilbey's Off licence was near the Big Tree. Another butchers was on our side of Dorset Street owned by Eddie Heron, a famous diver in those times. From these shops we bought all of the necessities of life.

Our house had a parlour in front in which I remember sleeping for a time with my father in the bed-settee but I don't know if that was for a week or a year. Behind that was the kitchen which was the living room. A long rack which could be raised and lowered on pulleys hung from the ceiling in front of the chimney breast. This was covered in clothes, raised into position and the clothes dried near the ceiling in the hottest part of the room. Beside the kitchen was my parents' bedroom and opening off the other side of the kitchen was the little room in which I think Máire slept but I was seldom in it and do not have much memory of it.

A wood and glass extension behind the bedroom was the scullery where cooking and washing was done. Also in this extension was the bathroom. In the tiny yard was our nature-patch, a rose-tree growing in a butter-box. It now survives outside the front window of 504 Collins Avenue. At the end was a small workshop and the lavatory (toilets had not yet been invented) in another small space beside the coal-hole. This term probably derived from the holes in the footpath outside older houses through which the coal was emptied into the store under the footpath, separated from the house by the area. In our case the coal was carried through the house by the coalman in 1 cwt. bags on his shoulder.

In those days there were many companies in town who imported and sold coal, usually by the quarter ton. It was also sold by the bell-men who brought it around on a horse and cart and sold it door to door in amounts from a stone up. They were called bell-men because a bell was fixed to the horse's collar to advertise their presence.

Other carts came around to collect skins, left-overs of food which were fed to pigs in some of the many piggeries in the city. The nearest one I remember was in the lane between Dorset Street and Sherrard Street on the way to Gardiner Street Church.

Bread was delivered to the local shops by horse-drawn bread vans from the bakeries, hearses were drawn by a pair of magnificent plumed horses followed by the mourners in coaches. With all this horse-traffic there was a good supply of dung on the roads but this did not lie for long as somebody would always come with a bucket and shovel and take the dung away for fertiliser in a garden (these were scarce in our environment) or allotment. The dung was supposed to be good for roses.

We went to Mass in Gardiner Street Church. We went in through the door from Sherrard Street and I believe that entry through that door required a smaller subscription than through the main door from Gardiner Street.

I started school in Miss Mullaney's school which was upstairs over Burke's Chemist shop which is now "Some Like it Hot" on the corner of St. Alophonsus Avenue and Drumcondra Road. Entry was through a passage from the Avenue. There were probably about 10 or 15 of us in a class and I do not remember much about it except that I can still remember crying when Mammy left me there for the first time and I stood looking out the window watching her go home. I am told that one day Miss Mullaney became exasperated with me because every time she tried to tell the class something I would say "Ah sure we know that". I understand that on one occasion she was puzzled when no students arrived in the morning. On investigation she found that I had arrived and found the floor of the passage to her rooms wet after being washed. Apparently I posted myself at the door and told later arrivals that the school was closed because it was flooded.

In Miss Mullaney's we learned to read and write. We learned writing by copying the script in headline copies. Of course we also learned our tables off by heart.

From Miss Mullaney's I moved to O Connell School. As far as I can remember a certain amount of pull had to be used to get in there and an entrance exam was the first hurdle. In my first year in O Connell's I was in second class with 68 other pupils. There was no disorder in the class even though Brother Mullaney who was in charge was a gentleman. He later became a priest and I met him in Ringsend Parish in 1998.

The following year I was in the hands of Brother Rockett, another gentleman who I remember for his English classes. A boy would be brought to the front of the room and he would read a chapter from a book, in this way we were taught not to be afraid to speak in public and we also enjoyed stories such as Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.. He left the Brothers but continued to teach as a layman at Bushy Park in Terenure and I spoke to him in 1996/7.

In fourth class I was taught by Brother Dobson, a meek young man who was quite prepared to believe that I had done no homework because my mother was sick while my mother accepted my assertion that he had given us no homework. She woke up before Brother Dobson and my happy days were over.

In 5th class we were taught by Ned Maher, a Kilkenny hurling fan and Brother Donnelly. In this year a classmate and friend, Ronan Canning was drowned in the Royal Canal on his way home from school

6th class was taught by Brother Deeney from Derry who also taught us in the next year when we stayed back to try for a Corporation Scholarship which would pay our fees in Secondary. Luckily I got a scholarship and moved into 2nd year in the secondary school. In 2nd & 3rd year we were taught by Brother McNally and Mr Stack. McNally was a hard man who gave no quarter and Stack was a meek creature who failed to get the upper hand over the class. Brother McNally made us pay and we made Gussie Stack pay. We repeated the Inter Cert. in 4th year to qualify for a Leaving Cert. Scholarship, taught by Brother Finn and Mr Murphy. Again I got a Scholarship. In 5th and 6th year we were taught by Brother Murphy, Michael Conlon and Mr Doyle {Drac(ula)} who had a slightly deformed face.

In all of my years in school I was in the "A" class and all subjects except religion and English were taught through the medium of Irish.

I was lucky with holidays. In 1949 my Aunt Sarah brought me to Connemara where Máire was with Coiste na bPáistí. We stayed about a week. In 1950 Aunt Vera brought me to Ballymoney in Wexford where we stayed with her friends the McDonalds. For the next 5 years I went to Connemara with Coiste na bPáistí for a month each year.

The first year I went there I remember walking up the bóithrín with Fear an Tí, Seán Bold O Donncadha and not understanding more than every third word he spoke but it was not long before we became very fluent in Irish.

Each year we stayed in the same house and each year we cried when time to go home came around. There were three daughters in the family, Bríd, Caithlín and Máire. The brothers were Maidhc, Seán, Pádraig. Bean an Tigh was Bairbre. Two dogs were Róisín and Gráinne.

The stone-built house had a living room in which cooking was done over an open fire. The kettles and cauldron were hung from an adjustable hook which hung from a cross-piece in the chimney. Bread was cooked in a bastable which stood in the fire and was covered with red embers. We sometimes roasted left-over potatoes in the ashes at night. The fire never went out.

We rarely ate shop bread, mostly plain bread baked by Bean an Tigh, sometimes currant bread and on Sundays we had treacle bread. Butter was made in the kitchen in a dash churn, milk came from the cows, sometimes a chicken was killed by cutting its neck and we also ate fish which Bold caught in the currach in which he partnered Máirtín Patch.

The table was at the window, beside the south-facing door. There was a door in the north wall but no windows. One of the two doors was always open, which depended on the direction of the wind.

At night the kitchen was lit by an oil-lamp and the glow of the fire. In the bedrooms we used candles.

Behind the fire was the master bedroom and at the other end of the house was a room where we, the four visitors, slept while the girl's slept in the loft over our room. The boys slept in an outhouse while we were there. I suppose we took their room.

Stock consisted of 2 or 3 cows and their calves, one or two pigs and a flurry of hens and ducks and geese. There were of course one or two donkeys for load-carrying.

The work when we were there consisted of picking carraigín moss during spring tides which was spread on the grass to dry and turned regularly until it was completely dry. This was then sold. We went to the bog and spread and footed turf which Bold cut, we were also there for hay-making when Bold mowed the meadows with a scythe and showed us how to do it. A sickle was used in awkward corners.

At that time there were glasshouses beside most homes. In these tomatoes were grown which were brought in creels on the donkeys' backs to the "factory" which bought them and distributed them to the market. Growing tomatoes involved drawing a lot of water in buckets from a well nearby and passing it from hand to hand into the greenhouse. This was heavy work.

We also had time to play in the fields, swim in the sea, hunt eels in a nearby stream and roam on the bogs.

In 1957 I went for a two week tour by bicycle with a neighbour, Bernard Mainey and a schoolmate, Frank Hand. We went to Foulksrath Castle in Kilkenny, Arthurstown in Wexford, Mountain Lodge in Tipperary, Cork (where we went to see "Rock Around the Clock", a film disapproved of at the time), on to Killarney, Black Valley, Glin, Mountshannon. We were away for a fortnight.

In that year also I had my first taste of work, in the Hercules bicycle factory on Santry Avenue where I worked in the frame-building section.

After my Leaving I went to work in the ACC but after a week I left it and went to the Insurance Corporation of Ireland where I only got half the money. This I did on my mother's advice as she had great respect for insurance exams and qualifications and the prospect of a pension. I worked in the ICI until early 1962 when I went to France to race full time as an amateur. On my return at the end of that year I rejoined the company where I stayed until 1964 when I moved to Green Shield Trading Stamp Company where I worked until 1979. As the trading stamp business reached the end of its life I moved to Deca Limited a company in the toy and nursery trade where I managed the wholesale bicycle division. After 2 years there I set up a business wholesaling bicycles in partnership with Kieron McQuaid. We worked together until 1988 when he left and I continued in this business until now, 2003.

I was always interested in cycling and in 1958, while still at school joined the Clann Brugha cycling club and began to race. From the beginning I was reasonably successful and in 1960 I won my first national championship. I continued racing until 1989 when I broke a leg in a racing fall and never restarted. In the intervening years I won a good number of national championships, set Irish records (including being the first in Ireland to cover 50 miles in under 2 hours) and won Rás Tailteann 4 times. I was also involved in the administrative end of the sport from the mid 60s and in 1972 became President of the National Cycling Association. In the following 7 years I played a part in bringing together the three feuding cycling organisations in the country who in 1980 formed the Irish Cycling Tripartite Committee which gave way to the Federation of Irish Cyclists later renamed Irish Cycling Federation and later still Cycling Ireland.

From 1960 I went walking in the hills with Shay Murphy, a cycling companion and kept this interest up in the winter months each year until the mid 80s when I devoted more of the better months to it. When I stopped cycle racing I also took up rock-climbing a travelled to Iceland, Austria, Argentina, India, Scotland, Wales, France, Switzerland and Italy pursuing my interest in mountaineering.

In 1962 I met Marie Keegan and on 3rd September 1965 we were married in the Church of Christ the King in Cabra. We went to live in a flat at 3 Lower St. Colunba's Road where we stayed for 3 years until we moved in 1968 to Hillcrest Park where we bought our house for £3875