Growing Up

I'm from Dunboyne, Co. Meath. Moved to Inchicore, Dublin then moved to Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath.
I can't remember much about growing up in Dunboyne. I can remember climbing huge trees, and running around foundations of houses. Playing football against my older brothers and their friends. There is a 4 and 6 year gap between myself and my elders.

Off to Inchicore, where my antics grew.p, as well as myself. Kind of. I was always small, and I still am. 5"6. Im convinced I'm taller then my girlfriend Yaz, but she will say otherwise. I'm not Rod Stewart!!

I was going into 1st class when I moved to Inchicore. I had already made my Communion, in which I confessed to "going to the toilet off a bridge". So in first class when everyone was making theirs I was bored. When we where told to say a prayer in the church, my prayer was "rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub" which made everyone laugh. I was called into the principals office afterwards. I recited my prayer. I knew he wanted to laugh but he just said "ok Evan, you can leave now"
This is the sort of cheeky personality that would get me into a bit of trouble growing up. I was probably the wild one in the family. Constantly asking my brothers "am I a madzer?". I can't remember asking that. I remember one day which would have concreted my "madzer" persona. A few of my friends and I decided to throw some rocks at the junkies who sat at the canal. We threw them constantly until we hit one of them. She was pregnant. Thinking back now, the child probably would have been born retarded with a mother strung out the way she was. Anyway, I have never seen one person run so fast. When he turned the corner, smoke came out of his runners. Off I went, sprinting down the road, laughing and thinking I'm clearly going to die here. I jumped into a garden and he followed me in but couldn't find me. I clearly remember him saying "I'm not gonna hurt ye, I'm just gonna break yur two legs". Off he went. He tried finding my other two friends, but someone put him off by saying we went into the flats. I didn't think of what I was doing, but after that nothing really seemed to scare me. I was 10 at the time, and like my junky friend, I wanted to get my next high.
The flats where something that seemed odd. It was full of burnt out cars, and what seems odd to me, I always wanted to explore. Only one other of my friends would come in with me. We headed to the "H Block". This was the Horror Block. The highest tower of the flats. The worst tower in the heart of ST Michaels Estate. We went into it, got into the lifts, and went to the top floor. We heard rumours of people being killed in this lift. It was probably true. That high wasnt enough so on our way out of the flats, we started to throw stones at the flats windows. I'm not sure what my obsession with stones was, but it seemed to piss people off.


I was always a "normal" child growing up. I never told anyone about my CF. Nobody knew. Even taking my enzymes (tablets I take before every meal). Nobody knew I had taken anything. Even to this day my family don't see me taking them at dinner or out at a restaurant. I wasn't embarrassed about having CF. Actually maybe I was. It was weird. I knew other people would either treat me differently or think I'm going to die, or maybe stop hanging around with me for the fear they might catch it. These are all stupid ideas, but this is what I was thinking back then.
During the day, I played football. I was playing against older people so j had to practice to hit the ball harder then them to try beat them. Or run faster then them to get by them. This turned into playing football for ST Pats Athletic. If I wasn't playing football, I was playing Man Hunt. This involved two teams. One hides, and one chases. Or kick the can. Nearly everything I did involved running. Whether it was doing nic nacs on people's houses or playing games. We used to do the nic nacs (knocking on peoples doors and running) on the nut cases in Inchicore because we knew we would get a chase. There was two who would always chase us. Mad Joe. He was nuts. Then this other lad who actually caught one of our friends and start hitting him. That didn't really stop us from doing it on his door.
There's was also the time I ran away to an Orphanage. Don't ask.
I also found a gun in my garden and shot it at my friend but it was empty. I will leave that story for another time.

After all the madness of Inchicore. We went to the sticks. Dunshaughlin. This was completely the opposite of Inchicore. One of my first days involved running around a farm and making the bulls chase us,or getting electrocuted by the electric fence. I have a fear of electricity now. Mainly because I was going to the start of a race and needed to go for a wee. In a panic I went beside a ditch. At the ditch was an electric fence. Going to the toilet on an electric fence is by no means fun, and has left me emotionally scarred. It's not bloody funny if your laughing at this.
Throwing things at windows didn't change in Dunshaughlin. Actually, because I was "a Dub" I was instantly mad. I took some eggs from the fridge and threw them at windows. I was one of the lads after that. Haha.
I got to know the farmers around the fields, and to this day I run in their fields, even if the cows chase me. It's a funny site turning around and seeing 100 cows chasing you with those stupid looking heads on them.


This is a loooooong post so I will leave part 2 for another time.

Adios