Whose Life is it Anyway? Read Online Free PDF Page A

values, morals and principles are better than anyone else’s and they’re trying to protect their children.’
    ‘But you can’t protect a child from outside influences.’
    ‘You can try very hard.’
    ‘Isn’t it stifling to live that way?’
    ‘Yes and no. On the one hand it’s lovely to have such a big network of people who love you. Whenever anything happens to one person in the family, everyone comes together to help them. You can’t buy that kind of love and loyalty. On the other hand you never get a minute to yourself and it can be claustrophobic and overbearing at times, which is why I left. I needed to breathe by myself.’
    ‘Wouldn’t Australia have been better – further, more adventurous?’
    ‘Yes, but then I wouldn’t have met you.’
    ‘No, but you might have met a nice Australian-Irish Catholic boy, which would have been an easier sell.’
    ‘I’ve never taken the easy road.’
    ‘How difficult is it going to be for them to accept me?’
    ‘Scale of one to ten?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Eleven. But you’re worth it.’
    ‘Can I do anything to help?’
    ‘Be patient and trust me. I love you and I will tell them all about you. But you have to let me do it my way.’
    ‘OK. But don’t wait too long. I’d like to meet them before I’m old and grey.’
    ‘You are old.’
    ‘OK, grey, then.’
    Irish Daily News
‘The Blind Date Set Up’
Niamh O’Flaherty
Jane, Fred and Paul are discussing Paul’s upcoming blind date with Fiona. Jane and Fred know Fiona. Paul doesn’t.
PAUL : ‘What’s she look like?’
JANE : ‘Oh, she’s lovely. She has the most amazing skin. She tans so easily.’
PAUL : ‘Skin?’
FRED : ‘Skin?’
PAUL : ‘Who gives a toss about skin?Is she a minger?’
JANE : ‘No! She’s really attractive. And good skin is a huge deal.’
FRED : ‘No, it isn’t.’
JANE : ‘Really?’
PAUL : ‘Trust me, I don’t care about how good a tan she gets.’
JANE : ‘All that money I’ve wasted on fake tan.’
PAUL : ‘Is she good in bed?’
JANE : ‘I don’t know!’
FRED : ‘She looks a bit gamey. She’s not exactly Angelina Jolie, I’d say she’d be grateful for a shag.’
PAUL : ‘So she’s a minger who gets a tan in the summer.’
FRED : ‘No, she’s not a minger, she scrubs up well. Sticky-out ears. Looks a bit like your one in Spiderman .’
JANE : ‘Kirsten Dunst?No, she doesn’t.’
FRED : ‘She looks like her uglier sister.’
PAUL : ‘Uglier sister, your one’s no supermodel.’
FRED : ‘Nice rack, though.’
PAUL : ‘I like big tits.’
JANE : ‘She has the most amazing wrists – they’re tiny.’
FRED : ‘Wrists?’
PAUL : ‘Wrists?’
JANE : ‘It’s incredible, they’re so delicate. She can never find a bracelet small enough to fit her.’
Fred and Paul look at each other and sigh.
PAUL : ‘Good legs?’
FRED : ‘Hockey legs.’
PAUL : ‘Chunky?’
FRED : ‘’Fraid so.’
JANE : ‘She does not have chunky legs. They’re half the size of mine.’
Silence.
JANE : ‘Jesus, do I have big fat legs?’
Silence.

5
    London, June 1985
    Growing up is difficult enough when you’re not blessed with beauty or brains, but it certainly didn’t help with a father who insisted on re-creating rural Ireland in the middle of London. Trying to fit in and make friends is not easy when your house is a shrine to Ireland. My father thought that if he only allowed his three children to live, breathe and think things Irish, we would somehow be saved from the perils of becoming English.
    We had a tricolour hanging from a flagpole in our garden, the hedge was cut in the shape of a shamrock, we had leprechaun gnomes with fishing-rods sitting round the pond and the doorbell was set to the tune of ‘Danny Boy’.
    We were known as the ‘mad Paddies’. My father spoke Gaelic to us when we were out in public, even though none of us could understand a word he said. Well, my saintly sister Siobhan pretended she understood him, while I begged him to keep his