Although I was born in England, my father told me not to let it hold me back; it was nothing to worry about. I was as good an Irishman as anyone in my family back home in Kerry. There was no room for debate; Coventry accent or not, I was Irish, and that was that.

This early inculcation worked a treat. By the time of my first trip back ‘home’, I had a wide knowledge of all things Irish; it was my own insurance policy, which I had cobbled together, to protect me from being unmasked as an Englishman. I had invested time into learning the thirty-two counties, the names of the Kerry footballers, and, even, the signatories of the 1916 declaration. Like a conscientious student, I was prepared and ready for my examination.

I was a ten year old boy, travelling to my parents’ birthplace, for the first time, and life was good. It was like a half dozen Christmas Eves had been somehow put together, wrapped up, and then presented to me all at once; Ireland was the present, and I was about to unwrap. The sepia shots of brylcreemed relatives I had stored in my mind’s eye were about to be upgraded to real moving, talking, characters, and I could barely wait.

My horizons were to be extended as far as a small village, in the south-west of Ireland - Lixnaw. My father had been born and brought up there and he always spoke lovingly of it. Before I had even set a foot in Ireland, I loved the place too, so I would not be letting my father down. All the tales I had heard about Lixnaw and its characters, had given me the idea it was the most exciting place imaginable. Naturally, then, when I saw it, I was puzzled.
Lixnaw was nowhere near the size of our local shopping precinct. It was just a dot of a place to me. There was only one street, with a row of houses and to me, the place seemed the wrong way around entirely. Instead of occasional open spaces disrupting the houses, like at home, here, it was the occasional house interrupting the patchwork of brown and green fields.

Everything was different. For a start, everyone lived next door to each other; the solitary, snaking road of houses kept you close. Someone had painted all the post boxes green; someone had drawn different faces on the pound notes. Someone had even sneakily turned the B and I ferry into Apollo 13, while I slept, and deposited me in a different world.

On arrival, I was paraded, like the Sam McGuire Cup, to relatives, neighbours and almost anyone who seemed to be passing.
“Oh, will you look at the little crater, God bless him so,” the grandmother swooned.

“Another fine O’Brien boy, without a doubt,” an uncle confidently declared.
“Not at all, not at all. He has the build of an O’Brien, but he has the head of a Keane,” an enraged aunt retorted.

No one had told me that my head and body had arrived separately and I was worried. Being the only exhibit on the ‘child from England’ display had a novelty value at first, but I quickly found it wearing. Luckily, an older cousin, in need of fun, rescued me.

Sean, was three years older than I was, which gave him a clear seniority. I did exactly what he told me, when he told me, without thinking why he ever told me. Spending time with Sean suited me well, as I could greedily hoover up more and more snippets of Lixnaw life from him. It seemed a fair exchange, as I spoke of the girls, the football and the drink, back home in my rampant Coventry, while in return I got to hold hurleys and hear about where Englishmen had been slaughtered in days gone by.

After a while of course, the talking gave way to actions, and it was then that the mischief began. First, I met the oldest woman in the village, Mrs O’Shea. She was a miniature old woman, nowhere near five feet tall, who camped in front of her impressive open fire, even though it was July. She was badly stooped and had hairs sprouting from her chin. Sean told me she was nearly a hundred and twenty and I had no reason to doubt him.
To oblige Sean, I asked Mrs O’Shea about a school friend of hers, called Brian Boru. I was unprepared for the spitting, the shouting and the waving of her walking stick that immediately followed. I suspected nothing other than the accumulated crankiness of two lots of three score years. I knew nothing of the eleventh century icon, Brian Boru.
The discrepancy between what I thought I knew, and what I actually did know, was as wide as the Kerry fields themselves, but I hadn’t a clue.

“The year of the Easter Rising?” Sean quizzed

“19. . 60 . . 61” I mumbled.

“The greatest Kerry footballer? Mikey Sheehy, or Mick Collins?” Sean barked.

“Collins.” I replied.

As Sean’s interrogation took place, he became tougher and more insistent. I wilted, like a no-hoper on Mastermind.

“Name the man who signed away the six counties.”

“Er. . . er . . .Charlie Nelligan.”

“Mother of God, he’s the Kerry goalkeeper, you stupid English boy,” Sean cried out, almost in pain with the awfulness of my ignorance.

It was at that moment, as I felt the first trickle of a tear, that I was rescued. Our loud voices had, luckily, been overheard. My incandescent father blew Sean’s explanation of fun and games away in seconds, and shamed him for the aggressive interrogation he had administered. My father suggested that cousins might just be able to cope with one being a bit English, and a little bit Irish as well, ‘twice the trouble and twice the fun,’ he offered. I nodded dubiously, while Sean spluttered in shameful agreement.

Moments later, with my father out of the room the natural order returned; I winced as Sean walloped me in the ribs. ‘You’ll do, for a Brit’, he declared and with that our very own peace process had begun.