‘Northern Ireland's my soul’: Home and Identity in Britain

February 2010. I receive a lovely card from Aimie, an elderly informant from Belfast who has lived in England since 1946. She writes, ‘I am losing my sight. No more lovely books and poetry … I will never be able to go home again but have happy memories … these memories help to sustain us at sad times.’ My own vision blurs with tears for Aimie is a woman who loves literature, poetry especially, and reading has been the only way over the past few years that she has been able to ‘travel’ home. Her words bring me back to our interview a few years previously at her apartment in Colchester, Essex, in London's commuter belt. Of all the people I interviewed, Aimie touched my heart most deeply. It is hard to explain the emotions in me that our encounter provoked but it was not because Aimie had had a sad life. On the contrary, she was quite content to be in England, living with her husband Arthur, near her children and grandchildren. She described her life as very average, the greatest sadness coming at the loss of an adult son six years earlier. So why when I boarded the train back to London after our interview was I hopelessly unable to stop the flow of tears?

Aimie had seen my advertisement for study participants in the Irish Post, a newspaper for the Irish community in Britain and asked her husband, Arthur, to contact me via email. As arranged, Arthur met me off the London train and we walked around the corner to their apartment building in Colchester. There I encountered Aimie who was not very mobile as she had contracted a serious infection after a routine procedure in hospital and had been under treatment for several months. Despite this setback, Aimie was full of life and cheer, and greeted me with a big hug as if we'd known each other for years. This set the tone for our visit and throughout the interview we talked and laughed easily together. She had also taken the trouble to write much of her story down, including important details of her family history and she gave me a copy to take away with me.