1929 was a memorable year. I was born in Ballon and ruined men leaped out the windows of New York offices as the Great Depression followed. I sometimes think a little ray of sunshine has followed me round in the seventy years since, while others suffered, and I have no explanation of justification of this good fortune. I was too young and protected to know or remember the depression and DeValera's economic war with Britain. I sang my way to school in the mornings and fought my way home in the evenings to gorge on half-a-dozen potatoes saved from the mid-day dinner and roasting gently in the griosach of the open fire. I don't remember picking any of those fights. Martin Travers was my best friend normally but made it his business to thump me on occasion. Maybe it was the boots. I had the boots: many others had the stone-bruises.

The teachers were a worry. First Mrs. Donohoe in the always piddling infants and later graduation to Mr. Mulvihill in the terrified and occasionally piddling seniors. But none more scary than a raging curate, Fr Dunne. My mother would say in his defense that he was a great man with the dying. I wondered how long I would have to live to experience his charity. Mind you, the little ray of sunshine protected me from being beaten around the school cloakroom by his mittened hands. Thank you, Ray!

Twelve years old and my parents thought boarding school was the place. Knockbeg, it was. Maybe they'd make a priest of me? Well, they tried for the six years in this weird environment where the only visible human females were the two nuns who cared for the kitchen and the infirmary. I enjoyed the football and not much else. The sunshine boy was spared the experience of a priestly vocation for which the Church and I should be truly grateful. I had the boots but many of my friends took the bruising. Looking back now, I see that I was losing contact with Ballon from that time.

A year playing football at University and reality set in. I trained at Atlantic College, Leeson Park and went to sea to see the world as a wireless operator (Radio Officer officially, Sparky to the crew). My Morse code was elegant but the adventurous life turned out to be commuting on a coal-boat from the Tyne to the Thames. And so to South America as an expat techno-whizz on the submarine cable network linking New York and Chile with sundry stops in between. The extraordinary fact is that it worked - without any digits other than the human appendages. No transistors or even valves for many years. Everything could be fixed with copper wire and ingenuity. I married a lovely girl from Derry while home on leave and our children are little Peruvian/Irish/Kiwis.

Back to Ireland to settle down - HA! After two years in Dublin working for Bryan S Ryan, (is he still there?), we (I?) got the itchy feet and took us all to New Zealand. You will wonder why and so do I, at times. I had a job and a little house in Terenure - what more could I want? There was a continuance of the strict discipline of my childhood, a narrow point of view which permitted leaders and drivers to isolate us from the great movements of the sixties, even the tentative reachings out to other religions. But, I suspect it was simply itchy feet.

New Zealand has been kind to us. The ray of sunshine has never darkened though sometimes dimmed. Ireland is now a modern, prosperous, vigorously independent society, the like of which we could not have imagined. In many ways, it has passed New Zealand by but I am no longer Irish only, nor will I ever be Kiwi only. I will end my days content between two worlds with gratitude to both. Unless I get itchy feet!

John O'Neill

This is me in about 1930 with Maurice O'Neill (The hat) in the background with the late Professor Tom O'Neill. Taken in the front of the old farmhouse.

The photo has been coloured by my daughter Annie