Time for a Cuppa!

The Magazine

For all the Family

A trip down memory lane

Jim McConnell was born, the youngest of 8 into a poor family, on a bitter cold winter morning February 1964. A happy childhood followed... being poor meant I had no idea what Restaurant food tasted like until adult years... all my clothes were hand-downs, which was ok, until I had to go to school in my sisters blouse... there was no money for a white 'shirt'. My father was a hardworking factory Manager in a seaside town called Carrickfergus, Courtaulds was the company but 8 kids and a drinking habit meant not much in the way of luxuries ...He died at the age of 53, I was just turned 15... my mother followed five years later. I was 20 now and married to Agnes for 6 months, and she was 4 months pregnant. You could try to imagine the stress at that time was severe but I had, and still am blessed with the love of a beautiful woman with a heart and mind way beyond her years. We got thro it sure but I am undoubtedly shaped by the events of that time. I try to describe the loss of both parents like this.

A child walks... no skips along the promenade pavement of a seaside town. In the bright sunshine, the birds singing and a great big lolly pop in his had... to his right is a busy street full of people, to his left a sea wall with the high tide on the other side. Straight ahead the pavement seems to go on forever.... Oh life is so, so good! Suddenly, without any warning a crack appears in the sea wall.a little water seeps out but the wall is holding and the boy plays in the puddle that rapidly formed in the pavement. On he walks... thinks about the crack and how it appeared so 'out of the blue'... mmm this lolly tastes might fine... Bang! Oh my God! The wall has gone completely, a massive wave smashed it to a million pieces; the boy is neck deep in water, which is rising fast, and he realises... swim? I cannot swim! HELP! But there is no one who can help; so very quickly he learns to swim; just enough to survive but swim he must... The Sea was Life and the Sea wall my parents, my father died and a crack appeared but when they had both gone...