One very much happy time of my childhood and teenage years was spending summers in County Clare in the Republic of Ireland. My mother’s big sister had inherited the family cow farm that my mother had grown up on. My mother’s big sister had 3 children of similar ages to me and my 2 younger siblings. It initially started with my father driving us across in a car and getting the ferry and then driving through Ireland to Clare. Initially the big common hobby of the 5 of us (and my father too but not my sister) was football. There was no shortage of green fields on that farm in Ireland. My cousin’s had a border collie called Murphy who was also just roamed free there was so much space. I think we played football everyday. We cycled up the country roads with little supervision and with few cars to force us onto the side. Ireland is much flatter and greener than Scotland. My big cousin was 4 years older than me, a boy. My second big cousin was a year older than me, a girl. Then my younger cousin was 2 years younger than me, a boy. All three were competent football players. Myself and my brother were also enthusiastic football players, in our primary school in Scotland in Oban where we used to play everyday. Unfortunately we were all very competitive so there would often be arguments. However my mother and my aunt were very close so all arguments got ultimately resolved. I myself fought often with my brother who was 2 years younger. But we’d always forget about it by the next day and be back playing football. We all supported different teams. With Dad raising us supporting Arsenal and my big cousin supporting Manchester United. My big cousin had a Man Utd strip with Jaap Stam on the back. They were the two big teams in the English Premier League at the time so there was fierce competition between us with regard to our team’s glory.

However eventually my Dad stopped playing with us (due to old age), my cousin of a year older stopped playing too and then all of our interests began to evolve.

Another big shared interest, that came after football, was the Japanese card game and TV series Yu Gi Oh. My younger cousin introduced the series and the game to us and had a large deck of cards and we would play the card game most days. There was no instructions and we had to rely on my cousin’s explanation on how to play. We later found out some of the rules in the TV series were different to his explanation! The cards were all worn from wear and play. My cousin also explained the TV series story to us with all the various characters. When we went home we began to watch it. Every episode would end on some sort of cliff hanger and start with an explanation of what had happened the previous episode. There were ancient Egyptian artefacts and conniving villains with brilliant schemes. For some reason I loved it.

Eventually my father got tired of driving us all to Clare and I was old enough to travel across myself by aeroplane. I must have been only 15 years old or so when I first went across, as I definitely went for a few summers before I went away to Strathclyde at 17. 

My older cousins by this point had either developed other interests or were working or involved in other friendships. So it was just me and my younger cousin. Looking back its actually quite surprising we had so many shared interests. We liked similar music, similar books (Darren Shan, Harry Potter, Eragon), similar films, similar computer games. I think we both were a bit shy socially at the time, both in state schools were there were often quite badly behaved kids who would dominate.

Eventually I went to university in Glasgow in September 2010 and I stopped going across to Ireland for my summers.