‘It’s a door into a brilliant world’
Hugh Heatley
UNTIL Warrenpoint man Hugh Heatley was medically retired at the age of 54, he had never even used a computer.
Now, at 62, he describes himself as “an avid user” of Facebook and has amassed 322 friends on the popular networking site.
In fact, he loves it so much he even logged on whilst I interviewed him over the phone.
“I am on it at the moment, I am not kidding you,” laughs the sprightly father-of-two, who got a Kindle for Christmas.
Hugh recalls how learning to use the internet gave him a new lease of life when he left work in 2004.
“I didn’t know what to do with myself, I was at a low point,” he says candidly.
“I’d been working in the same place for 37 years.”
He decided to study a course in Dundalk and needed a PC, and having been “born in 1949 - the age of the abacus”, he truly believed he was “well past” trying to catch on to the modern digital era.
Nonetheless, he bought a computer, and with a bit of help from his children, got the hang of using it.
He smiles: “It was so foreign to me. I was OK at it, it was a bit scary but I battered away anyway and got a wee bit of confidence, and by 2007 I got involved with a website here in Warrenpoint called the Old Warrenpoint Forum - it’s a historical forum with old photos and that type of thing. So I got used to posting photos and items of historical value to the town.
“I lost over 200 photos one day; I hit the wrong button and deleted them - they were of great historical value! I tried to blame it on the wife of course, but anyway...”
Hugh says that when he first heard of Facebook he “thought it was for young people”, and then around 18 months ago he was told that his son, who lives in Manchester, and his three nieces in Australia were on it.
“I started to tentatively post family photos of us to them and that’s how I got started, and I have been an avid user ever since,” he continues.
“Not only that, I have cousins in London and two of them have moved to Spain and I’ve made contact with them. It’s like living next door to them now - it’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable.
“They’ve left here 50 years so there’s an awful lot that has happened in our family that they wouldn’t know about, so I go to the archive, get things like old obituaries and old articles about our family and send it to them. There’s a whole generation that’s just been lost there.
“I’ve also re-aquainted myself with people I haven’t seen in years.”
For someone like Hugh, who says that he was “ just a lost soul” when he stopped working eight years ago, Facebook has been a lifeline for him.
And he adds: “I could do without the TV - but I couldn’t do without the computer.”
I ask him if he ever worries about his privacy, or people seeing things about him he’d rather they didn’t.
“I’ve nothing to be worried about,” he says.
“I can’t be blackmailed - I’m not a millionaire!
“I’m in the last third of my life now and I could live for another 30 years, but there’s not too much can annoy me now.”
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Weather for Belfast
Friday 25 May 2012
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Temperature: 13 C to 24 C
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