‘I only want tea and a paper’: Kit, 96, looks forward to Mother’s Day

Kit Roche’s memory may have faded a little over more than nine decades, but her sense of humour has not.

She is hale and hearty, ready to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday.

“I have nine lives like the cat!” she says after bouncing back from a recent fall that saw her breaking a second hip.

“My time’s not up yet!”

There was a time when many Irish people took the boat to England to seek their fortune in London, where the streets were paved with gold.

My mother was one of them.

She has lots of stories to tell.

“There was nothing in Rockchapel back then,” she says. “Only the road out of it.”

Kit took the road to Garryvoe from Maree, Oranmore, Co. Galway, five years ago to live with me.

“You might as well be in Australia,” she commented on the 200km drive down south.

“I always think what a long journey it is to Cork.”

She is only warming up.

“It’s a pity you didn’t marry someone from Galway,” she said.

“That lad you took to your debs was lovely!”

Her fingers, once slender and smooth, are gnarled from years of scrubbing the floors of hospitals and schools when she first worked in the UK. Her knees are still weak from kneeling on hard, cold floors for months on end.

There is still a twinkle in her eye though when she thinks of England.

“We all loved going dancing in the Galtymore in Cricklewood. You’d meet loads of Cork and Kerry people there.”

She met someone else there.

“It was where the Irish congregated and where they met each other,” Kit remembers.

“That’s where I met your father. when my flat-mate. Ann, introduced me to him.”

I was always curious why she kept going back to Larry Roche when he two-timed her?

“Because he was so good looking!” she says.

That’s as good a reason as any I suppose...

The pair got married in Quex Road church in Kilburn, and they had two daughters, Jean and I (Christina).

“The best man grabbed the flowers from the altar for a photograph the day we got married,” says Kit.

“We couldn’t afford flowers for the wedding.”

Working night and day, the newlyweds were soon able to afford to put down a deposit on a lease for a transport café in Station Road, NW10.

“The bus drivers and conductors were really nice,” recalls Kit. “They came in during their break every day for tea and an iced bun.”

When Larry changed the name of the café to Galway Bay, every Irish construction worker north of the Thames came in after work for bacon and cabbage or Irish stew.

“They worked very hard all day on building sites, and they were hungry men,” says Kit.

“I made sure to give them plenty of meat and veg.”

When Kit gave the end of the bacon joint or a few spuds with white sauce to the few homeless Irish stragglers, they said they would pray for her.

“They must have done,” she says. “I’m still alive at 96!”

When Kit and Larry had the means to realise their dream to open up their very own premises in Oranmore in Galway, it was a proud day for them.

“Your father was so proud to see his name up over the door,” says Kit.

She was ahead of her time.

“I said to Larry we’d do pub grub and he said we’d have live music in the lounge bar,” she says.

“The locals were delighted with us.”

I tell Kit that I was delighted playing pool with the local lads and keeping score for the darts team that practised every Saturday morning in the pub.

“And remember during race week, when there was a bar extension, we’d give the milkman his breakfast while we were still cleaning up from the night before?”

I do indeed. I still meet the Corkonians who frequented Roche’s bar during the Galway Races year after year. They often speak of the ‘good old days’.

Kit is still enjoying the ‘good old days’.

My friends became her friends.

Her grandchildren amuse her.

“They’d keep you going!” she says.

Kit’s home care team keep her going. And she keeps them going.

“Did you win at bingo last night,” she enquires of Mary, who comes in the morning.

“Did you get your hair done?” she asks of Helen, who comes in the evening.

“Did you know my daughter writes for The Echo?” she tells anyone who will listen.

Kit still writes letters to people in the UK, the US, and the EU.

“She got the writing from me, you know.” Kit boasts, beaming.

I tell people Kit can read the paper without glasses. And that she drinks three pots of tea a day.

They think that is unbelievable.

But then Larry used to say that Kit was a ‘once off’ and that ‘there would never be another’.

Is it true that honest hard work and being interested in people leads to longevity?

“In my day, people worked very hard,” says Kit.

“Often, they were ‘out in service’ at 14.

“I was the eldest of six, and when I worked in England I’d send money home to your granny for the other children.”

At 96, Kit, neé Lyons, is like a wise old owl.

“Don’t be going fast on the road,” she advises everyone.

“And don’t be on your phone when you are driving. Pull in for a cup of coffee. Take your time.”

Kit’s life and times are fascinating. We’ll talk more about them on Mother’s Day when we go out for lunch.

“I only want a pot of tea and the paper,” she says.

“Then I’m happy.”

As Larry said, ‘there will never be another’.