Ita McClelland

I don’t think I had ever met a child whose mother was dead until after 1964 when a family of seven children and their father came to live in the farm across the road from us. Tommy Loughran was a hard working man whose young wife had died about a year earlier. As well as a day job with a local quarry he did some farming.  The youngest three children of the family, two girls and a boy, were the same ages as my two brothers and myself. The other three boys and a girl were older.

The first time I met this new family was when one of their cattle fell into a drain between their field and ours. This caused quite a commotion as there were farmers and tractors, ropes and diggers and I do believe the Fire Brigade was there as well. My sister and I went to see what was happening but I got bored and wanted her to come away but she wouldn’t so I walked up the field towards home on my own when I met the girls of the Loughrans who started to chat to me.  They asked me where my sister was and I suppose because I was cross with her I said in an exacerbated tone “she’s over there looking up a cow’s a***”, which  sent the three girls into fits of laughter. That was the start of a great friendship between the two families which has lasted throughout the years, through good times and bad.

Most of our summer holidays and after school too was spent at Loughrans farm.  There were cattle, goats, hens and geese on the farm and to get to the house you had to get past the geese first without being nipped.  There was always something going on, haymaking, gathering spuds, goats kidding, cows being milked and butter making.

I used to love the haymaking and taking in the bales. We younger ones thought we were a great help when in actual fact we were probably a hindrance. I remember one day when my friend Marion and I were up on tope of bales of hay in the hay loft when the bales were being drawn in and stacked. I fell down an opening between the bales and I remember the suffocating feeling as I sank a long way down.  Thankfully Marion shouted for her old brother Martin who got me out. I still maintain he saved my life that day.