Written by Claire Gallagher

THERE is no secret to turning 100, you just live an ordinary, working life. That is according to Timmy Ryan and he should know as he celebrated his centenary on Thursday last.
Sitting in his kitchen reading the numerous cards the postman had just dropped off, the man from Corgrigg, Kilmhil was completely unphased by the attention his birthday drew.
One-hundredth birthdays weren’t unique in this house, his mother lived to 103, which “wasn’t too bad” according to the birthday man.
The President’s letter was among the ever increasing number of cards on Timmy’s kitchen table, and a phone call had just come from the leader of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny, to this man who was born into a time when the colour of your shirt mattered.
A birthday celebration was planned for Kilkee on the Saturday when all his family would gather, but that night, January 28, he would go for a few drinks with “the lads” in “Murty’s”.
In mind and attitude this man was closer to 21 than 101, and he was going to celebrate his long life, a life that over saw national wars and civil wars, the arrival of electricity and the motor car, and the move from rural to urban life for most of his fellow citizens.
For this man, who spent his life living and farming on the lands and bogs of Corgrigg, the greatest change he witnessed was not that undergone by mankind, but that of nature.
“Do you know, I think it is the animals, birds, everything? There, that bog out there,” he said pointing to the window at the back of his lifelong home, “I’d walk out there and it would be full of every kind of geese, grouse, pigeons everything, and even the snipe, and they are all gone now.
“If I went up a winters night in the moonlight, the geese would be in at the shore,” he remembers. You’d get maybe one now.
“That's all gone away now, that is a big drawback isn’t it?”
Timmy enjoys, even now, walking though the roads and fields he has known since a boy, which is second nature to a man who has been fit all his life.
To document this, on the wall over the door is a photo of the 1938 All Ireland cross country mile winners and among them runner Timmy Ryan.
He recalls how the team, the Kilrush Athletics club, went to Dublin by car the day before the race, stayed in a hotel that night, and went to Belfast by train for the competition the following day. That night, after the win they returned to Dublin, and that is where the picture, now framed, was taken for “The Independent and The Press”.
More than 70 years ago training for such a win was very different to today.
“Once a week maybe I’d run four or five miles in the field. The brother, he measured a mile for me and then at least once a week I’d run four or five miles,” recalled Timmy.
Michael Crotty was in charge of the Kilrush club at the time.
“We’d often go to Kilrush for a meeting, Crotty might want to give us a lecturing or just tell you where the next race would be,” explained the birthday man.
“We’d have a meeting often on Sundays you see, a crowd of us, the whole team would run together now and again a couple of times in the month.”
Other than that the “training” was up to the individual.
Most of the local competitions back then were in Dromoland and Drumcliff.
“Then we would run against the army in Dublin. Smith was over our crowd at that time, he picked some men from Clare because the army challenged us you see, and the army came down then and challenged Clare in Dromoland. We won in Dublin and they bet us in Dromoland.”
Timmy finished running in the early 1930s, but continued to play football.
He played his football with Kilmihil, “mostly all centre field”.
He won an Intermediate county medal in 1940, and was on hand in Miltown Malbay two years ago to see his grandsons Timmy (Jnr) and David win the same title.
As for giving them advice on the day, “They will be well trained, they have special trainers now which we hadn’t. They mightn’t take my training so well,” he said with a laugh.
Timmy continues to live in the house he once shared with his parents and 11 siblings.
The bungalow would later become home to Timmy and his wife Suie Neylon from Kilmurry McMahon, and their three children Fergus, Michael and Ebhlin.
During the past weekend that same house welcomed 11 grandchildren - one via Skype from Australia and 12 great-grandchildren. Little Aoibhe would also arrive to see her great-grandfather expecting cards of her own, as she celebrated her fifth birthday with the man of the moment.
Among the most loyal members of the family is Tiny, the small dog with the big bark, who remains watchful over his master and the many visitors during the day.
He also hears Timmy recall the changes to the house and farm over the century.
“My father would buy two bonibhs, we’d fatten one for ourselves and kill it, and we would sell the other one and buy two more then. We always had a couple,” recalled the lifetime farmer.
“We would have geese, they would go up around the bog and they would be along side the house in the night. Nothing disturbed the geese and you never had to put them in. We’d have about 20 geese and we would have one every Sunday from the month of June out until the end of Christmas. They were great roasted,” he recalled.
The arrival of electricity brought great change to the west, but it wasn’t always welcomed Timmy remembers.
“People didn’t want it at all. It was too expensive and everything like that, more would say it was too much light we have. It was a great change,  you wouldn’t realise it until you had it.”
Timmy has always kept a garden, enjoyed walking and working, and kept a good social life.
He enjoyed playing cards and now goes for a weekend pint, and maybe even a brandy, to either of his two locals The Cross Roads or Murty Browne’s.
While remembering the past with fondness, Timmy is still determined to live life to the full.
Just two years ago he took a helicopter ride over the county of his birth and “it was grand sure, you could see down”.
As he planned to celebrate his birthday on Thursday night and on Saturday, Timmy was unsure of the secret of long life but guessed, “Ordinary working around never did too much.”
And has this man with 100 years of living behind him any advice? - “Ah I wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t suit everyone.”