I was brought up in the countryside in Ireland and would go bonkers if I couldn't escape the city. I like to wake and hear birds tweeting, not the low drone of traffic.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm involved in Northern Ireland Screen and have been for a long time, so I keep my eyes open and ears to the ground.
At home, I hardly ever leave London. I don't like the countryside in England.
I grew up in the countryside in the middle of nowhere in England and got out as soon as I could!
I'm born and raised in the Northeast. My parents are Irish immigrants. So our tendency is to shy away from the big yellow ball that comes up in the sky every once in a while.
I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It's the only place I'm completely alone - up in the air, detached from everything.
I was brought up in the north of Scotland, and where I lived was so lowly populated, it was used as a low-flying area by the Air Force, so lots of exciting aircraft used to fly over my village.
I've always been fascinated with Ireland, especially Northern Ireland, having lived in London in the '80s when there was an Irish republican bombing campaign there.
I don't really go around feeling very Irish at all. I don't go to Irish pubs. I've lived so many places, and I'm still so curious about the bigger world. It's grand to be alive in a time when mobility is so accessible.
I've only been to Ireland once, and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head, almost like music, and that if I were a songwriter, I would be very inspired.
All you would hear every night on the news was that somebody had been shot dead in a certain part of Belfast. We lived opposite a judge, and there were always soldiers crouched down in our garden. We'd sit and talk to them, and I even used to sing to them!