I had double pneumonia at two years of age and pneumonia again about nine or ten. I remember well my good mum putting brown paper coated in castor oil over my little boney chest. I really hated that cold sticky oil being pressed into place. When, a short time later, I began reading the Hotspur and the Wizard I couldn't wait until the following issues were published. The athletes enthralled me. Their speed and endurance captured my imagination. Where did they get all those muscles on their bodies. The big question was "Where were MY muscles?" No matter what I did I could find none. Then I read an advertisement in a newspaper offering advice about gaining muscles. The next problem was I had no money to pay for the advice offered. I knew my dad had been a boxer when he was young and even in his fifties he was still very fit. I talked to him and with his help I soon had my own little gym 'out the back' in the open air! I was determined to get muscles.
Almost every morning I was out early and before I got my breakfast I went for a run and the spent time on my rings, on my horizontal bar and at my punchball which was just an old leather covered football partly pumped up and held in a horizontal position by two bicycle tubes stretched between the tree holding my rings and a post. I then partly filled an old metal bath from our well and had a good wash down and then went in to breakfast and off to school. After three or four years of running, playing football and much time spent on rings, punchball, horizontal bar etc I had muscles, not big, but visible.
As time went on I joined up with two others to run the roads in the dark evenings. In addition I did about six or seven miles fast walking (power-walking it is now called) in the dark evenings with boots on. In 1957, at the age of 17 I spent ten days in the former Opthalmic Hospital on Great Victoria Street near Shaftesbury Square in Belfast where I had a bad squint in my left eye straightened. This was a big event for me and I was able to put a lot of childhood trauma to rest. My primary schooldays had been something of a nightmare as I had to endure the punishing ridicule of the bullyboys regarding my bespectacled face which frequently included a patch covering my good right eye. My confidence soared. That same year I decided that I wanted to become a priest and gave up my apprenticeship in what was then Short Brothers & Harland aircraft factory in Belfast. Despite my squint, I had landed an apprenticeship in the aircraft factory with the help of a wonderful team of teachers in the Technical School in Ballynahinch led by, then principal, the late Mr. S.W. Simms. I was also fortunate to have had the help and training, from a very early age, of my late father, who was a mechanical genius. At the age of 12 I had the use of the smaller of my father's two steel-turning lathes on which I learned to set up the cutting tools and practice a variety of little jobs. During the Second World War, my father used to manufacture parts for cars which were in short supply for people even in Belfast.
When I had completed my initial three months of training at the aircraft factory's training school at Castlereagh, I was top apprentice of our group and appointed to the Marking-off department in the main factory. During my time at the training school, our training instructer, Mr. Archer, asked me to make, by hand, a part of a tool for the factory's adjoining guided missile department. The tall chap who came second to me in the training school was Hugh McKee and Hugh was appointed to the fitting department above the Marking-off department in the main factory. At some stage Hugh also decided to leave the aircraft factory and became a minister in his Church.

I was apprenticed to a truly remarkable Belfast gentleman called Sammy Cromie. Sammy was gentle, quiet and minded his own business. We got on great. Sam McClure was the department's Charge-hand and like a number of the marking-off staff was a born again Christian. Christy Curran from Andersonstown was the clerk and Christy and I were the only catholics in the department. I really enjoyed the impromptu religious discussions that would arise from time to time and have fond memories of Willie Anderson who would have had me converted if only I had said the word! Bill McBride was another real gentleman. In fact, those men were a delight to work with because the treated me with the greatest respect. I was a very sensitive person and found it very difficult to cope with the, at times, excruciating noise in the factory although I really enjoyed my work and the opportunities to be around and sometimes in the aeroplanes. I was quite a lot inside a Sunderland flying boat we were working on. I had got very interested in model aircraft from a young age having been invited by a next-door neighbour, Edwin Bain, to watch him construct model aircraft during the winter evenings after he came home from work. I then became quite competent at constructing the models myself. I also got my interest in cricket from Edwin who was a very pleasant and talented young man.

So after I got my eye straightened I decided to become a priest and just before I left on the afternoon of the last day at the aircraft factory these wonderful men presented me with the best fountain pen that money could buy at that time - a Conway Stewart. I still pray for those lovely souls.

I spent two wonderful years at the Jesuit-run college in Osterely called Campion House, passing my exams with no trouble and came home on holiday before entering the Passionist Novitiate in Broadway just south of Birmingham. A short time into my holiday I received a letter from the late Father Tigar SJ advising me to become a good Catholic layman as he felt the life of a priest would be too much for my less than robust health. I was devastated! I could not go back to my apprenticeship in the aircraft factory and I felt really lost. Some weeks later I was out walking when I suffered the most fearful experience. I thought I was actually dying. I ran home in a terrible state. In the following days I found that I was afraid to go outside in case the fearful scary feelings returned.

(To be continued)