Last week my handsome friend Neave turned 40 and my wife and I decided we’d like to let our hair down at his birthday party. For the first time in three years we decided we’d put our son out to pasture for the entire evening, ensconcing him with his cousins Ardal and Nora for an overnight trip.
This was not a decision we took lightly, as he is only three. I watched my phone intently, convinced we’d be summoned from our revelry to pick up our devastated child. Perhaps I feared the worst because my own history of sleepovers was pretty mixed. I always envied my city friends who had next-door neighbours with whom they’d stay over. I grew up a few miles outside Derry city, in the deep countryside bordering Donegal. Most people from Derry don’t know where it is, even when I mention the name and, on several occasions, even after they’ve visited us. It’s remote enough that visiting the nearest pub is a 45-minute walk, and one that requires you to leave the country, since it’s located across that one international border, which nobody in England knew existed five years ago.
Continue reading...from Lifestyle | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3Akok5i