I was born in Cricklewood, or County Cricklewood as it\u2019s known, to Irish parents. That part of London often felt more Irish than Ireland itself.<\/p>\n
There were five girls, and we were dragged to every Irish dancing competition known, or to the nearby Galtymore Dance Hall. I loved that feiseanna weren\u2019t just competitions, but were about community. When I later moved to Ireland, I found Irish dancing was a lot more competitive and didn\u2019t have the same feeling. <\/p>\n
My father\u2019s from Castletownbere, Co Cork<\/a> and my mum\u2019s from Belmullet, Co Mayo<\/a>. So our trips back to Ireland in the summers would be travelling up and down the country for six weeks at a time.<\/p>\n We\u2019d often visit my nan in West Cork. She was originally from Achill but met my grandfather in London before moving back. He was a farmer and fisherman, and they had 11 children.<\/p>\n She was absolutely incredible. For dinner she\u2019d pick all the vegetables, and make her own butter and cream. It was constant work. So at night, she\u2019d sit with seaweed on her legs to ease the pain. Around the fire, she\u2019d tell us many different stories, including about seaweed. When my dad was sick as a child, they\u2019d use carrageen moss and milk to help them recover. These stories made an impact on me. <\/p>\n One summer I had a really bad breakout of eczema. I tried cortisone and all sorts of products, and it wouldn\u2019t heal. It wasn\u2019t until I went into the sea and just had seaweed around me that it began to get better. And that stayed with me. <\/p>\n We moved back to Ireland when I was 12. We bought a pub in Mayo, between Swinford and Bohola. That experience was interesting in itself!<\/p>\n In Ireland I was the English girl, whereas I thought I was the Irish girl all along. I had expected I\u2019d fit in very quickly and easily, but there were cultural changes. In England we really celebrated being Irish, but then in Ireland, that culture was just normal. But we loved being back there, we felt we were home.<\/p>\n So we sold the pub five years later. And then my parents moved to West Cork, to my dad\u2019s family home. <\/p>\n I moved back to London at 19. I wanted to get into fashion \u2013 there wasn\u2019t a lot of fashion going on in Dublin. I worked in fashion and beauty for about 30 years, and travelled around the world a lot.<\/p>\n I worked at Gant as buying and merchandising director, and at Fred Perry as global commercial director. They were pretty high-powered jobs, but I didn\u2019t feel as though I was doing enough to fulfil what I wanted to do. So I started to look around, and retrained in beauty therapy and aesthetics. <\/p>\n