Generations: Travel tales and home truths

‘I look at Dublin with interest, as a tourist might’

Jennifer Geary, 39, is from Dublin and now lives in London

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Aine Ryan lives in Cork

I remember moving into our new house in 1979. We had a brown bathroom suite and brown shagpile carpet through most of the house. My best friend lived next door and we would talk for hours across the two houses, each of us sitting at our landing windows.

My family were comfortable and Dad always worked. Even still, money and unemployment were big, undefined worries spoken about regularly in the news. The very word “mortgage” seemed terrifying. It was only years later when I understood what it actually was. I remember in second class my parents telling me that they were starting to save for my university education.

I went to Muckross Park College in Donnybrook and on to do a B.Comm in UCD. The overriding ambition of parents was for their children to be “employable”. There was tremendous pressure to get the points you needed. Even the mock Inter Cert was a big thing. Mine was the last year to do the Inter Cert before it became the Junior Cert. I got my first e-mail account in college.

I had thought I wanted to be a pilot. I knew I wanted an exciting international career. When the accountancy firms came calling I went for the one I liked most, forgot about the pilot thing. My chosen firm was Arthur Andersen.

By now, it was the late ’90s and the dotcom era had arrived. I met my eventual husband, Conor, in Andersen’s. He had joined AIB and they were opening up an office in New York. So, I asked Andersen’s to transfer me and they did. We left in September 2000.

Our two years in New York were very much delineated by 9/11. Before seemed carefree and fun, after seemed grim, exacerbated by the collapse of Andersen’s. My working visa was tied to my job, so we had to go. After the bright lights of New York, we didn’t feel ready to come back to Dublin. Conor had an option to transfer to London, so we said we’d try that “for two years”.

I got a job in Barclays and I have been there ever since. We never did go home. We toyed with it in 2007, when we started thinking about having children. We looked at a €1m house in Dublin. It was all so close – I had even resigned. However, something made us change our minds. Conor likens it to getting off the Titanic in Cobh. That house was worth €480k last time I looked.

Now we have two children. They have English accents and celebrate Poppy Day. When my son asks me if he’s English or Irish, I tell him he is a little bit of both and he can choose which he wants to be. Our roots seem to go deeper with each year. It is a big wrench not to have a base in Dublin. Now, when I visit, I have to rent a car and stay in a hotel or with friends. I am truly a visitor now and I look at Dublin with interest, as a tourist might.

‘I found things had become a bit obnoxious’

Brendan Nugent is 45 and lives in Kilkenny

I went to America on a running scholarship in 1989. Going to New Orleans back then I think would be the equivalent of going to Mars now. There was no internet, so letters and the occasional phone call from a phone box was how you stayed in touch back then. It was an amazing experience but it was not going to be a long-term thing, and I returned to Ireland and Kilkenny after one year. I did not stay in Kilkenny for long and a few months after I returned home I moved to London to start work there. I was going out with Karen, a girl from Kilkenny at this time, and she was training to be a nurse in London, so there never was a question that I wouldn’t go there as soon as I could.

We got married in Kilkenny in 1995 having spent 18 months sending savings home to an account here in Ireland. Two of our children were born in England. We bought our first property in Middlesex and moved in in 1997. We lived downstairs for the first three months as we had no furniture and no reason to go upstairs. Things were tight enough. I have recalled this many a time, especially when we returned to Ireland in 2003 and the Celtic Tiger was in full swing. I found it irksome to hear couples buying big houses back here then and not daring to move in until all four bedrooms were fully kitted out. This was alien to us.

Settling back into Ireland was tricky more than difficult. I found things had become ridiculous, a bit obnoxious if the truth be told. Our third child was born here in Kilkenny. The three children now take up most of our time. Their development and schooling is central to everything that we do together.

‘The pressure to drink was huge in my teens’

Torunn Dahl is 42 and lives in Dublin

I grew up in Dublin with an Irish mother and Norwegian father. I was always quite aware of being “different” from many others in certain ways – Norwegian name, different Christmas celebrations, and possibly largely due to also being Protestant. My mother in particular emphasised throughout our childhood why being Protestant was different – by implication superior. This is one of the changes for the good that I notice: the decline in the importance of religion, particularly religious difference. My parents would have had very few Catholic friends and had friends who married Catholics whose families never spoke to them again. My friends are completely mixed.

Another change I notice is around drinking – I found the pressure to drink huge in my late teens through my 20s in Ireland. As a result college was a hugely lonely experience – partly my own lack of confidence and partly my feeling that if I wasn’t getting hammered then I wasn’t really part of things and was considered to be boring. The availability of decent wine by the glass in pubs everywhere now is great and gives more options than beer or spirits which was the norm in my late teens, early 20s.

Another thing that has changed is the rise in use of domestic help. My granny came from a privileged background and would have had servants. On both sides of my family the wealth was lost by my grandfathers, and my parents started from scratch again. I don’t remember anyone I know having cleaners or nannies growing up. Now I know lots of people with one or both, regardless of whether they work outside the home or not.

‘I didn’t really do the Irish in London scene’

Aine Ryan is 47 and lives in Cork

I was born in Co Galway and grew up in Cavan until I was 12. Living close to the border in the 1970s, I remember bomb scares in the town. I remember visiting friends in Castleblaney the night a car bomb went off in 1976; when the bomb exploded us kids thought the noise was from us breaking a bed we were jumping on. We were due to go down the town earlier but were delayed because the adults were watching The Riordans which was a must-see on Sunday nights.

All our holidays were spent on the north Mayo coast where my mother grew up. My brother and I ran wild from morning till night – out on the bog and along the cliffs. We helped save turf and hay and listened to the call of the corncrake in the evenings.

The highlight or our week was the travelling shop. Every night a few of the local older men would visit. We knew each one of them by their knock on the kitchen door. Their greeting was always “Go mbeannaí Dia anseo”.

The nights were spent discussing salmon fishing, the old days, and there was usually a song or two. As we moved around quite a lot when we were kids, I still think of this part of Mayo as my “soul home”.

After university, I went to work in London for a few years and had a ball. I had made friends with a lot of English people in college so we all hung out together. I didn’t really do the whole Irish in London scene. After completing a Masters degree I came home in 1993 and started working in the environmental sector, moving from the marine to waste management and finally ending up in environmental consultancy in Dublin and then Cork, where I now live.

I was made redundant in late 2012 and my husband and I decided to travel the world for a year. Within a three-week period we booked our flights, sold our car and rented our house. It was the best thing we ever did.

Since coming back I decided not to rejoin the corporate world and I have set up a mobile coffee business on Cork Harbour.