I was born in Kerry in 1903 and grew up as a girl on the mainland. They said I could grow up as a boy, but I said no, I'd stick with being a girl, seeing as how I was born that way.

My mother was a fine woman; she bore my father nineteen children. And we were like steps of stairs; our heads were squarish and frequently walked on.

My father himself was a fine proud man who would sit beside the fire and enthrall us with tall tales after he'd consumed a barrel of porter and half a sack of spuds. Most of them were about Fionn MacCumhail, the legendary leader of the Fianna. Fionn had long flowing fair hair and liked to play hurling and wrestling with a selection of his hand-picked men, all of them balls naked.

We were told of the phenomenal initiation ceremonies; to become a member of the Fianna, you had to don a special crotchless jumpsuit and roll around in a bunch of nettles without crying out; you then had to drink fourteen gallons of water without going to the toilet; finally you had to bend over beside a tree and have sliotars fired at your backside for half an hour in complete silence.

My mother spent most of her time sitting beside the fire, stoking it with a stick. She would always try to have an incendiary weapon to hand in case himself got randy and tried creeping up on her unawares. However, her resolve invariably deserted her when he lit the scented candles and started playing a selection of Neil Sedaka's greatest hits on the concertina; that was when the children would be given a sod of turf each and sent outside. My father would then toss Mister Puss out the window so we could all play "Hit the cat with the bat" to keep us out of his hair.

When I was twelve and the world was at war, my mother taught me how to swim so I could start work sweeping Dingle bay for mines. It was a dangerous job, but it allowed me to provide my siblings with an occasional treat; now and again, we all got to enjoy a special bowl of jellyfish. Oh, no such thing as icecream back then! If you got through your dessert without it stinging you in the gob, well…you were happy.

It was in 1921 that I met Paudjeen, grá mo chroí, at a "pattern day"; this was where people got together to sing, dance and play "Pin the tail on the black'n'tan". So while the poor chap howled from multiple stabbings and attempted to extricate himself from the noose, we got to talking. We soon got to sharing a smoke, a jug of poteen and wound up in a ditch on the way home. Oh, fierce romantic it was!

Our marriage took place the following spring; people came from miles around to wish us well and drink our porter and eat our cake. It was a right good hoolie which culminated in three hundred people dancing "The siege of Ennis" at four o'clock in the morning. Of course, it only took one misplaced kick to spark a brawl that lasted for ninety minutes and hospitalised sixty-two people. All harmless back then of course; the carnage was talked about for years afterwards, and with great affection.

It was when we were married that we moved to the Blasket Islands; we lived on the one called "The Great Sausage" (because it looks like a big knob lying flat on the sea). Paudjeen found it hard to find work at first, but eventually got a job battering seals. Oh but he didn't like it one bit; he would tell us how it used to put the heart crossways in him to creep up behind the poor creature before dumping a flour’n’egg mixture on its head. It would be so taken aback at the rich gooey coating that it put up less of a struggle and could be transported back to the mainland, where it would be deep-fried and sold with chipped potatoes.

God blessed us with children after that; one every year for fifteen years. I should have known better, but kept faith with Paudjeen’s version of the rhythm method (which was to do the pelvic thrust while lilting a jig).

But you must take the rough with the smooth; that's the mystery of God's plan. Poor little Dweezil was only 5 when he took advantage of an unwatched cauldron of extra-hot vindaloo; his constitution couldn't take it and he went off to pick up his harp, his wings and hopefully a cool cloud to sit on.

Terence was the one we pinned our hopes on; we scratched and saved and eventually mustered enough to send him off to the mainland to study quantum mechanics. There was some hullaballoo when he returned after graduating with an honours degree!


The great feast was about to start when he said he was off out for a walk. We thought nothing of it at the time, but of course when he didn't return we started getting worried. Sure wasn't his body found the following morning at the bottom of the tallest cliff on the island. Far be it from me to go into the details, but suffice to say that he was bruised, battered, burst, bloodied, busted and generally banjaxed.

He'd gone pulling a turnip from the cliff top with his back to the edge, and when it came away easier than he thought.....well, over he went. They mustn't have covered “cause and effect” in his course, I suppose. We very much appreciated the young man from Terence’s university who rang after the wake and told us that they had nominated him for a Darwin award. It made our loss that much easier to bear.

So now at the end of a long life, here I am. I've buried a husband, four children, eight sheep and nineteen chickens. All in the same pit, and all of them saying I wouldn't get away with it. Well, I have. Eh....until now, I suppose. Is Johnny Cochran really dead?"