‘My feet are on foreign soil, and my mind is at home’

There is no straightforward way to love Ireland. I often envy the Americans I meet who, though they may have things to mourn about their country at present, feel immense pride in the philosophy that formed its genus. They believe in its endless potential and feel connected to their homeland.

Ireland is not so straightforward. Since moving to the UK a few months ago, I have fallen into the trap that seems to torment the Irish person abroad. My feet are on foreign soil, and my mind is at home. That may sound melodramatic – England is not the Middle East, or Africa, or eastern Europe, or some other culturally very different place. It is in fact culturally similar, but the subtle differences, on a day when you feel permeable and remember what Dublin looks like in the blur of winter sunshine, jam themselves up under your fingernails and send a jolt to your very centre.

We have moved to a rural place. Had we made the trek to London like so many before us, the accent would largely have been lost in the cacophony. As it is, the tame sheep in the field next door offer the least judgemental companionship. Unsure of their names, I have called them Donald and Hillary. Donald is a black sheep with an orange cast to his overgrown fleece and a penchant for bleating at the decibel level of a ship’s engine at inopportune moments. Hillary is a creamy blonde colour, far warier and more dignified than Donald, though I must say he is more likeable than his namesake because he lets you scratch the woolly tuft that sprouts between the rather menacing horns on his head.

Nasal breathiness

I miss Ireland. I miss the cadence of accents, from the nasal breathiness of my native Limerick to the ripping sheet metal of some of the northern counties. I miss the aroma of Dublin. I am conspicuous here. A lady in a shop asked where I am from, and responded “Ahhh Blesssss” in an impossibly insincere way. She spoke as though there was a raw egg rotting softly on her tongue and the end of the word “bless” disappeared ephemerally into the air around her head. It was irritating. There was a man who asked the same question, then responded that he didn’t visit regional parts of the UK like Ireland or Liverpool. Something in me keeled over and twitched. If you have a few of these interactions in a day, they are enough to make you want to remove your skin and wash it in a 90-degree spin cycle, then hang it to dry over the bath while you crouch beside it, a scrunched mass of bloody pulp and muscle.

I was born in Limerick and spent my adolescence in a furious rush to leave it. Its smallness and lack of variety rubbed against my skin until it felt raw. No one I encountered asked searching questions and the ceiling always felt as though it was placed right above your head. For the most part, people around my age didn't leave and the restlessness drove me to desolate frustration. When I read Edna O'Brien's Mother Ireland, her description of wanting to get away to Dublin, though originally published in 1976, resonated: "one could not stay forever, by the fire with its pictures and its sighs, or the people with theirs, or witness the eerie intimacy of a man and a woman at odds with one another... To go away, to run away if needs be. To put a big blanket over all those things, sighs and sounds, to forget voices and roars, to leave a note saying 'I have gone with the razzle-dazzle gypsies, oh'."

My brother, who lives a busy life in London with his wife, recently told me that they are thinking of moving back to Limerick. I understand this impulse more now – Ireland has a habit of pushing out the young, but it always calls them back, whether they answer or not. Though youth is restless it is only after leaving that we realise the true comfort of familiarity. Ireland is deeply imperfect, but there is nothing like time away to make us sigh for home.