大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Alice Morrison at Our Lady鈥檚 Nursing Home, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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[daily life]
When you think back, people were scared. But still with all, knowing me and my friends, we took it all in our stride. As I was saying, we went away off on our bikes and that, and we came back home. I got friendly with a couple of people who lived in the Old Park beside us, and they used to go. My good chum that I took up with, and my other chum got married, and she worked at Gallaghers too. And she lived over in the Falls Road, and I was saying, I was over an awful lot. I went over there, and I 鈥� You maybe only took the bus a certain distance, and you had to get out and walk. We used to go over, over to the dances, and we used to go to the Clonard Picture House, and that. But one night I was at the dance, just down there at the end of Cavendish Street, Saint Paul鈥檚. Of course, all our crowd went there, and it started and the sirens went off, and everybody had to get out. And the fellows we were dancing with, they came over with our crowd and they looked all round and they started to say 鈥淲here do you live?鈥� Well, most of them lived around St Paul鈥檚. And they said 鈥淎lice, where do you live?鈥� and I said to them 鈥淚 live in the Old Park鈥�.
鈥淲hat? Oh, well you鈥檙e on your own. We鈥檙e not going over there.鈥�
Afterwards I said to them 鈥淵ou鈥檙e quare friends. I could have been blew up鈥�. And I walked right up, right through the Shankill in the blackout, well there was nothing happened, it was only a false alarm. But we often laughed about it afterwards. And I used to say 鈥� They were my friends then. And that was, it was always me that went over to be there, to go to things. And they never come over our way. But I thought nothing of it.

Oh, it was [weekly], or maybe twice a week.

For entertainment, in our parish, the teachers were always singing, then went into the choir. But pantomime! 12 years I was in that pantomime. Around Christmas, that was Mae King, she was the producer. Have you ever heard any news about her? She was wonderful. And we were great, we always said we really were professional when we got on the stage, and we always were
They used to take us up and out by Lisburn, Donegal, and put on the show. Big, big, 2 buses because all our scenery and all the orchestra and all in. But I still used to go by the weekend, but when the pantomime was on it was maybe the Sunday that I seen me times arriving in, still in my shorts and zip jacket. And straight over for rehersals and that.
Mae King, she got to know what I was doing and she wasn鈥檛 too pleased about it. She was always worrying that maybe something would happen.

We were, really. We were very busy.

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