Kiss me I’m Irish-ish

I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner émigré, grown long-haired
And thoughtful…

Seamus Heaney: ‘Exposure’

I have always had a bit of trouble defining myself. The cut glass accent, “generic Southern”, as my husband terms it, betrays my inherent sense of Irishness…as does the fact that I was born and raised in Watford, outside London: how very English, I hear you say. And yet…

What gives us our identity? A mixture of genes and environment, surely. I like to think that my genetic makeup is Irish – a gift from my parents, who left the country where they were born when they got married and are no doubt aware of the pitfalls of ‘national’ identity, having grown up in a Troubled Northern Ireland. My environment, on the other hand, was quintessentially English; I grew up outside London, was privileged in my education in Watford and later in Cambridge, and that is what is projected when I speak. Never did I feel this so keenly as when I walked the streets of Belfast as a solitary teen when visiting family in the summer holidays, hugely self-conscious and aware that if I opened my mouth I would be instantly identifiable as something ‘Other’.