So in March 1947 we set off for Dalhousie coalmine near Edinburgh. Tom came home after just four days but I didn’t really return to the ‘Pass for the next forty-one years!

I stuck at the coalmining for a while. After that I got a job as ‘Head Cow Man’ for a man in Coventry. Then I worked for a few years in Birmingham Co-Op Dairy. On the day that King George VI died – 6 February 1952 – I set sail for Australia.

From then until 1988 I travelled and worked in construction all over the world. I spent a few years in Australia and a lot of time in the USA and Canada. I worked in twenty-six of the states of the USA, particularly up north in Alaska.

I married in 1957 and after that my wife and children travelled with me. I worked for three years in Israel and for two years in Venezuela in South America.

All that time, I had one ambition – to come back to the ‘Pass! There’s no place like home!

What is it they say about home?

‘The place where you grumble the most and are treated the best’.

It wasn’t because Ireland is the most beautiful country in the world – there are other places just as beautiful.

I came home because of the love and respect of those old ladies fifty or sixty years ago.

It took a long time to fulfil my ambition.

But in 1984 I bought McComb’s field where I used to feed the hens.

I built a house there and in 1988, I returned with my family to my ‘roots’ in the ‘Pass!