Thought I'd add this to give people a little bit more of an idea who I am and where I'm coming from. Its not fancy and may not be interesting but this is me. I've also left out my surname and the name of the company I'm now working for as I don't really want any of my blog showing up in a google search.

My real name is Niall and I was born in the Mid Ulster Hospital in Magherafelt in Co. Derry Northern Ireland in 1973. My Mum's name is Carmel and my Dad is Martin. About a year after I was born Mum and Dad moved back to my Mum's village to live with my grandparents. This is were I was to grow up and is a little village called Castlefinn in Co. Donegal which just happens to be in the Republic of Ireland (much nicer than the North!). They were living with my grandparents while they built their own house next door. This was finished when I was about 3 1/2 and during this time Mum had my two sisters Charlotte (1975) and Barbara (1977). They were to be followed by my only brother Ronan (1981) and my youngest sister Rachel (1983).

Currently Charlotte is engaged to Niall (a Garda Siochana officer) and is working and living in Dublin as a Speech Therapist. Barbara is a fully qualified accountant and is currently working in Sydney, Australia. Ronan works in the warehouse of the same company as me and Rachel is studying computer programming at Letterkenny Institute of Technology.

From the age of 4 I attended primary school at St. Mary's National School, Castlefinn which I have vague memories of and none of them too unpleasant. To be honest I enjoyed school and didn't get too hung up over it. In 1985 I made the momentous move to the 'big school' which was St. Columba's College, Stranorlar. This was quite a change for me and as I was the oldest in the family I was on unfamiliar territory. However, I soon settled in and it wasn't really that much different from primary school.

At secondary school I was a good student but nothing remarkable. I did my Intermediate Certificate in 3rd Year and my Leaving Certificate in 5th Year. During that time I played for the school volleyball team and I was a Senior Prefect in 5th Year. During Secondary Level my aim was to finish school and go to college to train to be a vet. As part of this I attended an interview at Cambridge at the tender age of 16. I was quite young for my year and we do one less year at school in the Republic compared to the UK. Also the interview was in December of my final year.

Unfortunately I was neither intelligent enough or sufficiently hardworking to get the required grades for vetinary college (had an offer from Liverpool but none from Cambridge!) so was a bit lost at the end of school. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but I was sure that it had to be something in the area of biology. Shortly before term began I managed to get a place on a BSc Biological Sciences course at University of Ulster Coleraine, Co. Derry. This was a good move for me and much better than if I had managed to get into Cambridge. This was a 4 year course with a work placement in the 3rd Year. I ended up spending this year working as a research assistant within the Ecology Department of the uni. I had decided to specialise in Ecology from 2nd Year onwards.

It was during these 4 years that I really began to grow up. I was only 17 when I started uni and I had led a very sheltered life coming from a small rural village in Ireland. I began to meet and interact with people from lots of different backgrounds, started socialising, discovered the female sex, stared drinking and basically grew up and became a lot more independent. I really enjoyed my time at uni and was reluctant to leave at the end of the 4 years.

During my 3rd Year I met a girl from Strabane, Co. Tyrone and 'fell in love' at the tender age of 18. This was my first serious relationship and we got engaged when I was 19. Needless to say it was more teenage infatuation than anything else and after just over a year together we split up. At the time it seemed terrible but now I look back from the life that I have now and realise how childish I still was at 19.

When I did leave uni (1994) I discovered how difficult it was to get a job in the area of Ecology when you only had a degree. I toyed with the idea of doing a PhD and actually applied for one but changed my mind when I realised that it just didn't suit me. To give me some time to decide what I wanted to do I started work in a wages office for a company in Strabane. It was a meaningless, boring job but it was money in my pocket and my first real job. It was a twilight shift (5:30pm to 10:30pm) so it left me all day to pursue whatever I wanted.

As I wasn't all that well paid I started to do some supply teaching at my Dad's instigation. I had been moaning about being skint and he pointed out to me how well paid it was. I had absolutely no inclination to become a teacher but the lure of the money soon persuaded me. I figured if I hated it I could stop any time I wanted. As it was I found that I quite enjoyed it and kept doing supply work for about a year and a half.

I was laid off from my wages job in November '95 but at this stage I was still doing supply work and seriously beginning to contemplate applying for teaching college. I had all the forms and information when I was offered a research assistant's position with the Northern Ireland Forestry Service based in Ballymena, Co. Antrim in February '96. I decided that before I was going to apply for teaching that I wanted to give working with my degree one more shot. Unfortunately research within the Forestry Service was a pretty uninteresting and outdated procedure. I spent most of my time there climbing trees to take needle samples and measuring girth and height of trees in sample plots. Also money was short within the Department and in December '96 I was laid off yet again. However, this time I was given 4 weeks notice and I was able to land another job starting the week after I finished in the Forestry Service.

This time I was a quality control lab assistant for a Ballymena based dairy production company called Dale Farm. The work here wasn't exactly rocket science but I was working with loads of people and it was inside. Also it was a bit better paid than anything I had being doing so far. I worked there for almost a year and during this time I had decided that I definitly wanted to go on to teacher training. Unfortunately, by the time I had made my mind up I was too late for most of the courses. So to cover myself and to help my application for the following year I decided to also apply for a Masters course back at my old uni.

It was a Master of Research (MRes) and I specialised in Environmental Studies (back on old familiar ground). I had high hopes of what going back to college was going to be like and unlike the last time I would be receiving a grant which would help make life a lot more comfortable. Like most things going back to Coleraine was nothing like what I expected it to be. The course that I was doing was half theory and half research. The theory aspect was fairly uninteresting but not too difficult and my project although interesting to me was one in which I was able to put in the minimum of effort, make up most of my results and blag my way through. I wasn't particularly proud of how I conducted my studies during this course but I still managed to pass with a merit. All it ever was to me was a stepping stone to teacher training.

I was very lucky during this year to meet Catriona. I was sharing a house with 4 girls and one of them was friendly with a friend of Catriona's who was also at Coleraine. Catriona was in her 1st year at Salford University, Manchester but was home on holidays at Easter when she came to our house for the 21st birthday party of one of my housemates. We hit it off eventually that night and she stayed around a second day to be with me. It wasn't love at first sight or anything but there was quite a strong immediate connection between us. We met up a few times over Easter and agreed to meet again in England. We had met on April 1st and I had an interview for teaching in Aberystwyth on April 27th. After the interview I went to visit Catriona in Salford for the remainder of the week. The rest as they say is history. I applied for a teaching job in Oldham to be near her while she finished college and she got a job in Manchester and moved in with me when she graduated. We got engaged in May 2000 and decided that if we were going to get married it would be in Ireland. We moved back to Ireland in June 2001 and married on July 28th 2001 which was and still is the best thing I could ever have done. Since then we have been living in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.

When we moved back to Ireland I had a teaching job in an all boys grammar school in Derry (St. Columb's College). I was full of high hopes of what that was going to be like but unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations and I became quite unhappy working there and with teaching in general. In February of 2002 I had an opportunity to change career and work for a company that my Dad had a substantial share in. We agonised over the decision but in May 2002 I gave in my notice and decided to leave teaching for good. I started work for my Dad's company (a wooden floor retail company) in July 2002 and am still working there now.

As for the future I'm not sure what is going to happen. Financially the company is having a bit of difficulty and I am now looking for a new job. Also we are contemplating moving house back to my home village. This would be a good move for us both financially and family wise over the next couple of years. Where exactly we're not sure as we're waiting on news of a new development that is about to start building but hopefully the next couple of months will bring good news to us.