It worked for a while as a journalist but the Chevron type you pull for a while. Where you're a culture here where you brought up I was brought up between rich Sharpton and Loyola in a place called the tolerance just on from the Taliban's a crossroads where there was a small primary school called the crakes and my father was the primary school teacher their way from a big family unfortunately know something that has been a key point my life is the fact that I'm an only child and also there wasn't a very strong bond sadly between my mother me because she developed TB when she was pregnant with me. And when I was 10 days old she was taken away to an isolation ward for nearly a year and that was the standard treatment at that time which means that by the time she'd come back we had no time for natural bonding. And that affected the rest of our relationship for the rest of our lives so we're your very lonely child indeed yes I spent most of my time and the spare bedroom which had been turned into a player in for me and my mother had curious idea is about me playing outside and that I was never allowed to get my clothes dirty as there for even when I did go it say I was very careful not to move and any way that might possibly dirty my socks or my dress or whatever but I know that if I got myself dirty it would be the solider out in the corner and as a result I tend to spend most of my life most my childhood talking to the dolls in the playroom Well you became a creative writer which we will be talking about later in the program do you find that looking back at that period that your imagination was growing because you were spending so much time on your own you were developing that imagination at that point in your life yes I think that's a very valid point for my writing not. I because I had so much experience in creating imaginary friends and having imaginary conversations and so on I think it plays a big part in me the Nabl to write about imaginary places people and situations well where you went to school did you don't have friends at school yes but they school was the primary school that my father taught in so I was allowed to go dine for the actual ares of the schooling but had to come back up at break and had to come back up at lunchtime to the house and had to come up immediately after the school stopped so there was no such thing that as playdates with your school friends absolutely not you know that was that was not for some reason my mother had an issue about who I played with she didn't like me playing with certain people well one of your grandparents had your relationship there very very strong relationship with my grandmother who entered later years lived with us for 6 months of the year well it was your grandmother aware that you didn't have a great relationship with your mother no because we only visited this was throughout my childhood for 2 weeks carnal for 2 weeks in the year very occasionally she would come to visit and by the time she came to live with us she was well interior days and by that time I was almost a student at Queen's and so she wasn't aware of the dynamic I don't think well you became a student at Queen's and became a teacher eventually tell me this because you lead such a solitary life at home the you go even when you went to Queen's. Yes. Let's not beat around the bush he s. No doubt about it but then that's part of your education isn't it let me bring you in here you had a very different upbringing to marry you lead a very outdoor life exploring what was your family tell me about that Yes Well 1st of all until I was 5 years old we lived with our grandparents a mother and father and I. And it's a very warm time of my life the memories I was a very caring most fair my grandfather had a big garden and he was an at all the time growing floors and vegetables and I would help them are I thought it was helping him and they were. And also he was very keen on walking hell walking really and they used to take me to the mountains of more. Even when I was very small we would explore the morn's And I think that was the start of when they got a love for the wild and nature Well I was asking Mary there that her childhood influences the ratings today that she does. The same thing when you look back in those days it was your creativity developing at that point and that is very common in your writings that these turn extent obviously I gotta love for nit sure then but when I was about 12 years old I started discovering music 1st of all Bob Dylan and then Leonard Cohen and the Incredible String Band their music and produced a sort of conscience a social awareness and also the more mystical aspects of nature and I think the 2 things combined influence what I write today yes well you want to do your 3rd level education in Teesside yet of all places what what attracted you to. Quite some play they were the 1st list to accept. Put on like Asian forms to several polytechnics in England because I wanted to get away from Northern Ireland it was when the troubles were just begun on our really had no time for that so Teesside were the 1st poet technic to accept me and went there to do sociology which was the worst subject I could have chosen what did you want to be. I had no idea what the one thing you wanted to be a folk singer or a writer or for them where you involved in music did you play the same music well I played the guitar but I was painfully excruciating Lee shy that time unlike I couldn't read it a thing that I'd read or see even sing to anybody have told. But when I was an Teesside I would come home you know joining the holidays so on and I met up with an old school friend and he had been to shuttling to work in the fish factorise the reason big seasonal herring fishery at the time and he suggested we go there in the summer to work during the summer Well I want to explore some more about your life in Shetland but I think great I was posed for some music and very we do it dyslexics of course the pieces selected is by a French singer which is appropriate as I lived in France for a while Marina Kaye and it's called Live before I die because that's where I am at this moment in my life I want to live before I go I have about another 15 to 20 really good years in me and as the words of the song say I want to stand beside the flames with fire in my the ins. Everest san. Marina k. Live before I die the choice of very far all this afternoon marry you eventually want to settle in Portrush away from the culture a how do that Colbert Well I met my husband at Queen's and really the 1st job that came up was and money for me in Korean for him so we ended up living in Portrush which by that time my father mother had moved. So it was really kind of moving back as well to where my father and mother were fortunately the marriage didn't last together than divorce Well we had a very amicable divorce we realized after the girls had left home that would simply go on apart in different directions we divorced when I was 51 and as I say very amicably to this day he'll still regularly walk my dog which I'm very grateful. That was not the end of her most of your life and this is what I want to read yeah you discovered so what else indeed tell me that story and my fifty's I decided to join a dating site because when you're in your fifty's and sixty's and I where do you meet people you didn't meet people at university or were go for church events or weddings or whatever which is where you would have met in your in your twenty's yes so I joined a dating site and kept scrolling past this very nice my very nice profile but in Yorkshire so I didn't bother kind of doing anything about it and then one Sunday afternoon and I decided I was just writing talisman that I you know it's a lovely photograph in a really nice profile Good luck. It 1000 days later he landed it at Eglinton airport with his next flight back already but we knew inside it 10 days before we'd even met that we were for each other well let's explore that you're on a dating site you see a photograph or you see a profile you know your culture all sorts of warning signals about dating sites people into it I think there and they won't enjoy it but what was it that attracted you to that particular person listening by the way Keith what attracted you to Keith his smile the honesty and openness in his reply and warmth in his profile. And as I say I just wrote the 1st time to say you know good luck on the site I'm wishing you all the best in future because that's a lovely lovely profile in the very nice smile and he said I've just read yours let's continue to be friends and we'll monitor each other's successes or whatever and on the sites that led to emails and that led to phone calls and after and a phone calls that led to booking a flight. But all of it in 18 days so from reading the 1st reply to his profile he landed in very airport this week 11 years ago did you go and meet him and did I did and I never pass the airport at Eglinton I've never passed it since without remembering that meeting or tell me about the meeting because off the plane ticket was and I do the airport very well because I'm from Derry it's just a wee small room. With the baggage area through a door did you notice him right away yes because he had told me that he was going to be wearing a green rugby jumper and also I knew he from his photograph anyway he nearly got a talent off because he was one of the last off the plane and I had we had it under way as it's under way it's and ways it could have gone either way on the 1st meeting with him nearly getting town off but in fact we gave each other huge hug and we went off for me last night and the rest is history so what you saw him then wasn't loaded 1st sight indeed yeah seriously is what the French call the coup de foudre or the lightning bolt and it it was for both of us and we acknowledged that right from the very beginning so you knew then within that 1st just after the 1st meeting that you were going to spend the rest of your life or his life with each other yes and if anybody had told me that that would happen to me I tend to be more dying to earth and that and I tend to be a bit more cynical than that especially at romance in your fifty's if anybody told me that would happen I probably wouldn't believe them it was a complete surprise to both of us things didn't quite go to plan that we did it. No we had bought a small retirement cottage in France that we were going to eventually retire to be and go into the sunset kind of Darby and Joan wife Rose because I'd always loved France I'd always felt that my heart and soul were based in France more than anywhere else and after he visited it with me and he agreed but the actual week that we were moving our furniture into this small cottage was a worker's cottage and he felt that there was some kind of blockage in his throat and he said I'm a must go and see about that when I go back to Northern Ireland and he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given 9 months. So we immediately sold up everything and 3 months later moved to France where the outstanding French medical system gave him another year and a half so we had 45 years together. And he died January 6 years ago when you look back at that period Lori Mary are you glad that you went through with the time you spent with Keith. There's absolutely no doubt about that and right from the beginning because we had so instantly recognized that we wear or should be together every day that we spent together even long before his diagnosis we were grateful for that day and we were grateful for having Matt So even when it was diagnosed we had been grateful for all the time and spent together up until that it was not we never took it for granted like a pathway and for us and France yes very peacefully and glad to say his ashes were buried at the foot of the tree and our courtyard garden to yell for to go to see him you know. Jimmy may tell you but Shetland Yes indeed if you made it in there that a friend of yours was working in the face industry and said This is a question. But you decided it was well Yes Well initially it was just a summer job while I was you know still studying so I went up for the summer and arranged to meet him and I was going to fly up and flew from Aberdeen to some barrier port and shut my introduction to shuttle and who was thick dark Clyde and the plane circled the airport for a while one stage the clouds part slightly and a saw these critters heading the rocks then the clouds closed in again and the pilot said we have to go back to Aberdeen so we went back to Aberdeen and they put a saw on the ferry the overnight ferry to Shetland which takes 14 hours the next morning arrived and Lerwick and Shetland got off the boat with my bags no idea where I was supposed to be meeting Frank. So went into the for shop I came to and asked the guy in my Northern Ireland accent if I could leave these bikes there and he said Sure of course not you would have done that at home without it you would not. But I just went walking up the road and actually bumped into Frank he was already working at the fish factor and he was driving a tractor so that was it I hadn't the range to get a job at the fish factory but I just Frank took me up there and I went in and was given a job straight away it was a really grit experience there were students and other young people from all over the country from Ireland north and south Scotland and England and Wales we were all sort of thrown in together in this fiction factory and. It was a fantastic up and fair we had a lot of good fun what did you have to do in the factory Well I had several Jobes Initially I was on the 10 touring line well the herring is split. And put through a diary before it goes to the smoker to go into the smoker it has to be hung up on who cooks and these folks are then put on the racks which are taken into the smoker so the result whole line of us lifting the split pairing off a belt on hunting want to hooks in ours a day every day just because a very alert is all that everyday now we know it at a tender late and so part of the fading industry and shattered deeded similar work as well yeah well I went into the construction industry then I dropped out of full time education so I didn't have any qualifications but at that time in Shetland the oil industry was just beginning and there was all kinds of buildings being put up all over shut down there was really big money to be made in the construction industry where you said you only went there for a solar Yeah why did you stay to stay because it's such a fantastic place the environment and shot and is. Absolutely pristine. The coastline and the inland murders are absolutely staggeringly beautiful and the wildlife is fantastic there's all kinds of we'll still say particularly the whales and killer whales there's great seals common seals authors and most fantastic a ray of sea birds so all this I find absolutely inspiring and it was a place that I decided I wanted to stay and live and I mentioned at the very start of the program knitting in Shetland that was you yeah I was made. For that how did well I had come to Shetland with the woman who became my 1st wife we lived in Shetland for about 7 years. And we became a bit unsettled and we thought we might move back to the west of our land somewhere in the west of argument but before we went we took a holiday on a very small ship and I don't just 3 miles by 2 miles and we decided we wanted to live there instead of moving back to our own this island obviously the recently 30 people or not and if you were going to make a living there you had to make a living for yourself so we learned how to use knitting machines and we set up a small one where business that along with our lifestyle on the island which was practicing a sort of self-sufficiency we grew all our own vegetables we kept goats for milk and we kept a pig and allow each year to go into the day praise and we had it years there supported by the netting and it was it fantastic Here's the story to me they when you were describing your early days as a young discovering this music and all this the liberal thinking self-sufficiency and all that that you're Ereka filling a lifetime dream by 11 inches and Oh absolutely yes and although we moved back to Ireland nearly 20 years ago and I my 2nd wife and myself Claire and myself. Regularly go back to shop and about every 2 years. No I will stay with music do you remember this song. Of the. Last Vegas in the hills of Donegal and it was a huge hit for Dolly Gold Bond storm sheaves many years ago and even today with this play that dances weddings are functions is sure to attract an audience on the dance floor to buck leaped to its very infectious beat the band was started and dog low almost 30 years ago by Pod Gallaher pop wrote all this always was the lead singer in the bottom of the turd all over the world for a number of years and then they just stopped Well I met up with pop the other day to see if I had any plans for a comeback to celebrate the 30th anniversary coming up next year and I couldn't resist asking him up with one of the most unusual names for a bond that I think I've ever heard our tone character he waltzes into the bar my mother was behind the bar serve and he was a wee bit worst for the way or for a couple it is social Isn't it about a group about his face and he was actin up wanting to sing him in the guiltier way up stairs shave have something to eat and come back to him with a taser. McKee's reply was sure goats don't shoot. So you guys turd extensively with it and then you stop why did just oh well you got tired basically that's what happened we you know when you're young going to all these places for the 1st time it was great couple of us were just Marty like you I had my 1st child on the way and I know it just as I was hard as a musician a lot Gnome. Or more entries are sometimes in the bag but I give go to if you go to present for a meal or you get a bag or he wash and then you're home but really got tired and wanted to go home and be always been good to go and live a normal life so tell me it was just period after you have the big time when you've been touring and you can buy. To be with your family was it hard to give up the life of course of those yo yos most of like it's cabin fever Southern a comes around and you're tweeting your thumbs Lynch cold turkey where you might claim a lot playing women are saying in a sort of kept open it would be I would do so we saw 2 things stand and was annoyed go to an old fashion kept my finger on the by did you keep reading So yeah well there's something I do some men go fishing and film and go girlfriend to me I gives much pleasure and rape and we song like and it's a hobby as well as a love and where do you get your inspiration for this office suit if that can happen anywhere at any time a beef turn of phrase somebody says something you read something in a magazine or see something on the telly it was never too good right now but love stories and carry with grown A's and stuff like that might. Like. My way someone. Might want to. See if I can sometimes path of songs you've written many many years ago are just as relevant today to the things that are that old today as they were all those years ago. Very much oh yeah one of our songs at the time is called Let the world keep on turning it but claim it Changed the World Cup and the rain forests and stuff like that and it's very much in the in the news these days Woods global warming and young grafter talking about it and stuff like that so that song is still as poignant right now as it was back almost 30 years ago. When you're coming over to your 30th anniversary of cold storm she have you know a few plans for the other person a big birthday party you know we're actually going to make sure known to food ov