A walk down Memory Lane

“We lived in Derry until we had to get out. We were part of the Exodus.

I remember when I was a child I went to the Model Primary School on Northland Road, and then to Templemore ...

When I was in the Model i remember playing games like hopscotch and skipping. There was a ball game I used to love playing: ‘Alla Balla, Alla Balla, Who’s got the ball?’ I remember you had to throw a ball over your head and then you had to guess who it was in the line behind you who caught it.

My main memories are of St Pat’s and getting into ankle socks...the weather was always good and we went out to play ball games in the better weather coming into Spring. It was lovely. I enjoyed school. There were no problems then.

I left school at the age of 15 and went into employment at Robert Smyth & Co, a wholesale chemist. They provided chemist shops with all their pharmaceutical and general items.

I sold products in the pharmacy, it was done by telephone orders and all over the North West.

It was great, but you had to be able to spell all the drug names and everything - you had no computers in those days!”