Who was your most positive influence as a child?

Thomas Henry McGuinness. I called him Unkie, he was my uncle, or so I thought at the time.

I was only allowed to visit him one a week on a Sunday afternoon, only if Hannah Matilda was in a good mood. We would always have Brockhoff’s Morning Coffee biscuits and a cup of tea in one of her beautiful cups. I was always careful with cups and I wouldn’t break them, and I still love a nice cup to have my coffee in, things like that.

He was the husband of Hannah Matilda McGuinness. She was Grandma Brown’s elder sister. She looked like the old Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother. She was a very stately looking lately. I think Unkie liked me, he liked children, but she wouldn’t have any. Thank god for that - I feel awful about what sort of a child she would have had!

If she didn’t want me to come in, she would keep the gate locked. Then no morning coffee biscuits that day. I would stand there all afternoon, listening, hoping that perhaps he might come out and open the door. Grandma Brown used to get very upset that she kept me waiting.

When he told me stories, he told them so well. I believed every word. He used to go to New Zealand, and mentioned the word Maori.

“Now what’s a Maori?” I said.

“They’re half a man and half a bird,” Unkie said. “And they run very fast.”

“Why haven’t you ever brought one home for me? I think I’d like one of those.”

“Well, they’re very fast and you have to hide behind a tree and have a salt shaker with you. And when they run past - if you’re quick enough - you can sprinkle salt on their tail. Then you’ve got a chance of catching one.”

Of course, all these stories were rubbish. I was about six or seven years old. And when you’re very vulnerable at that age, where you believe everything. At the time, if he gave me a dose of poison I would have taken it!

Every time he went to New Zealand, I’d say “you won’t forget to try and catch me a Maori, will you?”

He’d say “No, no, I’ll see if I can do it.”

Eventually he came back with a feather. “I nearly got one! I was hiding behind the tree like I told you, he was running so fast, and all I got was the feather from his tail.” I was so disappointed! But I was happy enough with the feather.

On Monday morning, I went to school with the feather very carefully wrapped. I produced it at playtime, and I told my friends that this was a feather out of a Maori’s tail. They said, rubbish! Someone dobbed me in, and of course a note went home to Grandma Brown. “Who’s filling this child’s head up with rubbish?”

As a child, I hung on every word he said. He was just a storyteller. He’s my earliest recollection of a really nice old person who made time to make up stories to tell me. I loved him to bits! He was my hero.

Grandpa Brown was my other hero, of course. I used go up with him to the shed on a Sunday, and have a medicine glass of beer with him. I was the boy that he wanted, I think.

I remember when I was first taken. I was only a tiny tot then, around three years old, about when you start to take things in. There were two cots in the front room, and there was a boy in one, and I was in another. He disappeared. Maybe they had a trial with both him and me. And I won out! I didn’t often win out.

I had a happy time there. He always gave me words of advice. The only floggings I got were from Grandma Brown. He used to say, “It always takes two to make a quarrel. You notice how I never answer her back? That’s your problem, don’t answer her back.” But I couldn’t help it!

Grandpa Brown loved that we used to spend the Sunday in the field with him. He was always pottering around in the shed, making things, He was a plumber - he taught me how to use a brace and disc, taught me the names of tools. He taught me how to change the washers on taps, which came in handy later.

Funnily enough, Robbie, later on, was almost the same nature as Grandpa Brown. The circle of life!