Growing into my teens I worried I might never not feel homesick. That was despite evidence to the contrary. Some evidence, anyway. The first time I was away from home was a couple of nights in Ambleside with my primary school. I survived, but missed home. A year later the lure of a week in the Isle of Man proved greater than the fear of missing my parents and sister. I had a whale of a time. I managed a couple of secondary school trips away which by and large passed without incident (though listening to Live Aid in a tent as lightning danced around the trees surrounding the school campsite in Saundersfoot is quite a memory). I even managed a French Exchange fortnight, but the yearning for home was much stronger that time. However, I baulked at cub and scout camps and could find any raft of excuses not to join them.
In the summer of 1990 I decided that, with the prospect of three years away at University looming increasingly large, I had better prove to myself that I could be away from home for a sustained time. I'd tried the year before, but tearing a ligament in my ankle half way down a mountain overlooking Grasmere sort of put paid to that particular plan.
So anyway, in summer 1990 I went to Ireland; County Cork to be relatively precise. I didn't know the family I was staying with, although I had been writing to one of the sisters for a couple of years. The plan was to work in the family pub/hotel/bed-and-breakfast/take-away/restaurant and enjoy a part of the world I had never previously visited. The alcoholic father nearly put paid to that, but when he went awol the family instated me in employment where I could be found working in the fish and chip servery at the height of a blistering heatwave.
'How Green Are Your Eyes' draws inspiration from some of the experiences I had and the people I met. It is, however, very much a work of fiction. Indeed, very much the lived experience I imagine Wilf might have had once he had left school in Croalworth, and is the follow-up to his adventures in 'The Broken Bottle'.
The novel can be ordered in ebook here: https://books2read.com/u/bPGOPl
It can also be ordered in paperback, signed by me, here: https://brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch
