Billy Dennis and Dan Mullally have both spent almost all of their lives in Shinrone. Between them, they carry a living memory of the town stretching back through their own childhoods and into the stories their parents told them; of a rural Ireland shaped by wartime scarcity, hard labour, and a way of life that has largely disappeared within one single lifetime.

Dan Mullally was born during the Second World War, into a household that, like most in the parish, felt the reach of wartime rationing. Tea, petrol, and cigarettes were all controlled by coupons, and families managed carefully the little they were allocated. His father worked as a greaser at a factory roughly six miles away, cycling the full distance there and back each day after a long shift. "There were hard times," says Dan. "There were no cars, and I barely remember the electricity coming."

What Dan remembers most about those years is not so much deprivation as the practical arrangements families made to get by. Because his father smoked a pipe rather than cigarettes, the family regularly had spare cigarette coupons, and neighbours would call to the house asking if any could be spared. The same happened with petrol. His father's car was used just once a week for the shopping and Sunday mass, to preserve the family's allocation, but others who needed to travel further would come looking for a coupon to make a journey or get to a match.

Tea was rationed just as tightly. Once a pot was brewed and the water drained, the used leaves were spread out on a plate or saucer to dry and reused. "My parents would have had to watch every spoonful of tea that they would use," Dan says. Because the family farmed, they had their own milk, butter and vegetables, which gave them an advantage over households in the village who had no land to fall back on. "They did feel the pinch of the food being rationed," he adds, "but they were lucky enough compared to some."

Without cars, getting anywhere meant cycling. Dan grew up about four miles from Shinrone on the Offaly-Tipperary border, and he and his friends thought nothing of cycling considerably further for hurling matches. He recalls that while cycling to a tournament at Mount Saint Joseph's, the group accidentally fell in alongside the competing team at a crossroads, and when they arrived at the gate, the stewards waved them all through together. "We felt thrilled," Dan says. "When you're fourteen or fifteen years of age, to be mixed up with a senior team — that was a great experience, a great thrill."

Saving turf from the bog was a fixture of summer life. Dan recalls spending full days at the bottom of deep cuttings, cutting sods by hand. "When you're young, you do that," he says, "but it would have been harder on my parents - my father must have felt the physical disadvantage of having to do physical work like that." Both men agree that life has become considerably easier in that respect. "It is easier, there's no question it's physically easier," Dan says. "You don't have to get up in the morning and do physical work all day."

Both men are very aware of the contrast between their parents' generation and present day. Financially, they note that things have cut both ways. "We didn't probably have the financial worries that our parents had," Dan says, "but everything is so expensive now." He cites the price of a car service today versus what his first car cost him (around £100) as an illustration of how the cost of living has shifted. "In some ways, particularly for the young generation, maybe it's a bit more stressful than it used to be," he reflects.

Whether the thread of community will hold across another generation is a question Dan and Billy approach with hope rather than certainty. "The next generation are different - no fault of the generation," Dan says. "We grew up in a much different time. We had no social media, we had no television, very few cars. We went most places as part of a group." That communal element of life, in sharing struggles, is something both men feel is fading from Shinrone.