Walking slowly along the path, looking at all the names, all the Irish surnames, was a strange experience. I could have been at home in practically any part of Ireland.

Of course, there were plenty other names too, but Meara, Burke, Cassidy, Beirne, Murphy and so, so many others - amazing.

I was never in the city of Manchester until last week when I attended a funeral there. The burial took place in the Southern Cemetery in the city. Opened in 1879 and extended in 1926, it covers more than 180 acres of land.

I could have been flicking through the old Irish phone directory as I walked by the seemingly endless rows of graves, looking at so many familiar names from all over this island.

You’ll be surmising that I must have been bidding farewell to a close friend or relation when I took three days out to travel over to England. Then how does one define friendship? Is it length of years or just common interests that forge friendships?

A combination of all really, I suppose.

It was on Friday, July 2, 2004, that I first met David O’Mahony. He was 68 that year, a fine cut of a man, well over 6ft tall, broad-shouldered - a colossus of a man.

Along with family members, he was back in Bartlemy that weekend for a reunion of pupils of the local National School that had opened in 1904.

David O’Mahony was enrolled in the school on May 31, 1944. He was eight years of age by then, having started his primary schooling in Carrignavar where his father, also David, was working at the time.

So for a little over 22 years, I know Dave. Not a lifetime, some might say, not a long time at all, but that man taught me one great lesson – ‘Be proud of where you come from’.

His paternal roots were in Bantry and as a farm labourer David O’Mahony Snr went where the work was, eventually coming ‘east’ to Carrignavar in the 1930s. Here he married Teresa O’Keeffe and worked for farmers in the........

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