When Harry Met…

Harry: Can you tell me about when you were a child?  

Noreen: I lived in Pearse Street, and my mom had a shop, and it was called Betty Brosnan’s. We played on the street. We played hopscotch, and we played marbles. We’d cut holes in a shoe box, and roll the marble and try to get it through one of the holes, to win more marbles back. We used to also skip, and we’d roll a hoop all the way up the middle of Pearse Street. Outside where Michael O’Neill’s butcher is now. You’d hardly ever see a car in the street. But you’d see lots of horses and carts. And one day there was a man on a ladder painting one of the houses on Pearse Street, and a man from the country came in with his donkey and cart. He never looked up, and he tied his donkey onto the end of the ladder, but just in time somebody saw him and left a shout at him.  

I went to school where the convent school is now. I started when I was four years old, and the nuns taught me. And I remember the very first day I went to school, they had a tray, with sand, and you’d run you finger up and down the sand, to make figure one or four.  

Harry: What was your favourite toy when you were young?  

I loved dolls, and I loved dressing them, and I loved putting them into my pram and taking them for a walk. And I loved brushing their hair. And there was little books with a cardboard doll and clothes inside, and you had to cut out the clothes, and fit them onto the doll. And of course, she had a different frock on her every time you wanted it.  

Harry: What was your favourite sweet when you were young?  

I love chocolate, but chocolate was expensive. So you’d seldom get a bar of chocolate. Maybe at Christmas time. You might get an orange or an apple, and a bottle of Deasy’s lemonade. There was a big firm here in Clonakilty called Deasy’s, and they made their own lemonade. So we always supported Deasy’s. Other than that, maybe, a barley sugar sweet or there were lovely sweets called Liquorice Allsorts. They were different. Some of them were pink with the liquorice in the middle, and more of them were white with a little sandwich made out of liquorice.  

Harry: When did you start teaching?  

When I did my Leaving Cert, my friend went off to England to be a nurse and I said, you know, maybe I’ll be a nurse too. But the nuns got me to do the exam, to do teaching. And  I got it, and everybody was excited about it. So I went down to Limerick, to training college, and that’s where I was trained to be a teacher. And I’m lucky because I loved it.  

Harry: So you liked teaching?  

I loved teaching, I must say there was very seldom a morning that I went over to the school that I didn’t mind turning the key in the door and going in. I was very lucky because we had a separate infant boys school, with only junior infants, senior infants and first class. The people who were teaching with me were all mothers as well. So we were always helping one another. And then when the principal retired, I was made the principal. And I also had first communion class, and I loved getting the boys ready for their first communion.  

Harry: Why did you get involved with the Clonakilty Tidy Towns?  

My friend Greta O’Donovan was elected to the council, and she noticed how dirty the town was. When people put out their rubbish, it was in a plastic bag. And sometimes early in the morning, the crows would come along and they’d make holes in the plastic bag, picking at what food was inside. And then the dogs would come along and they’d tear open the bags. And I must say, the place was very grubby and very dirty 

Greta called a meeting and asked would a few of us come to a meeting in the town hall. To do something about the dirt in the town. From that, each person went to their own area in town and came back to the meeting and said what we should do. And one day we had a big, huge brush up in Clonakilty and everybody came out and they brushed up the dirt and they put it into plastic bags that the council gave us. And then the council came along and they collected all the rubbish and they dumped it for us. That’s how it started. That was in 1989.  

Harry: What was that the biggest change you have seen in Clonakilty?  

That would be the greatest change. A lot of the shops in Clonakilty, had dull and plain frontages to them. We got a new county architect, and he was from Clonakilty. His parents used to make bread in Clonakilty. They were called Houlihan’s and he was Billy Houlihan. And Billy Houlihan spoke to all his friends, and they decided that they’d paint up their frontages and that they take down the old tiles and they would get nice windows made out of timber and paint them nicely and put them in. And we were very lucky. In Clonakilty there was a man by the name of Dan Callanan, who was great at making things out of timber. He was a cabinet maker and he found it very easy to make all these things that we wanted. So if you start now at the end of the town and come into the Clonakilty, there’s an estate of houses down there and it is so colourful. They call it Smartie Land because of all the colours. And when you come up along the town, you’ll see that there are lovely timber windows, displaying what’s inside. And it’s always remarked in the tidy towns competition, how lovely they are. The only thing that is very annoying is when people drop the cigarette butts all the time.  

Harry: What was your favourite holiday destination?  

My favourite holiday when I was young, was I had a brother in Dublin, and I used to put all the children into the car and Michael and myself, we’d drive to Dublin and Michael would go on a golf course and we’d go around Dublin looking at the zoo and the museums and taking a walk around in the lovely parks. And I used to go up to Mayo to a place called Swinford, because that’s where my dad came from. My dad was one of the first seven guards who came to Clonakilty in 1923. They came down from Dublin, and there had been a war in Clonakilty, and the barracks was all blown up. So where Crowley’s chemist shop is now on the main street, that was the barracks. When they arrived first, and they were coming down the hill into Clonakilty, there was a big trench dug across the road. They had to take off the sides of the lorry and put it over the big trench and drive over it. That’s how they came down into the town.  

Harry: I heard you write a letter each year that goes all around the world. Can you tell me about that?  

It all started off where I had four aunties, three in Mayo and one in Cobh. And every year I wrote to them. And you see, I was only writing the same letter every time. I started writing a longer letter, and I gave it to cousins and friends, and everybody seemed to want to hear all about it. I’d write about my own family, if we went on a holiday, and about the places that we went to. And, so now it’s an A4 sheet and I write about 25 pages. And now I’m sending to people who have no relationship to me, but they wanted to see the letter and they wanted to hear the news of Clonakilty.  

Harry: And finally, my last question. What advice would you give to your ten year old self?  

I suppose I’d give the same advice as I would give to anybody else, and that is, to listen at school, and every night to do the lessons. Because I know there are lots of people and they don’t bother with their lessons and they just throw down their sack. But I do know that if you reinforce at night time what you learn at school, and if you do it all your life, it is a great help, particularly when you go into second level, and there are harder lessons at second level, but they are very interesting. That would be my advice.