Influences

I was born on a farm in County Meath, about two miles from the nearest village, it wasn’t a very big farm, only about 25 acres of poor bog land. We lived in a thatched cottage with just four rooms, plus a dairy and larder outside. There were seven of us children. I’m third from the top, which I think is very well placed. We’re all very close in age, which made for a tight-knit group when we were growing up.

We were poor - not poor in the sense of what is classed as poverty today, but we were poor. There were no airs and graces in our household. Most of what we ate we grew or killed, shot or poached. My dad is a legend in our area for poaching the salmon. Never caught once. We only poached for the table, not for gain. If you have a family to feed, anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies is fair game. People should not be jailed for putting food on the table, let alone hanged for it, as was once the case. There were huge estates in west Meath. We felt no resentment towards the landowners, but we did take their venison. Country people generally don’t like authority, and they don’t like people in the city telling them what do and what not to do.