Susan was born in Dublin in 1969. In her interview she talks about her childhood as an identical twin, her jobs as a teenager, and her social and love life in 1980s Dublin. She relates the difficulty of obtaining contraception and advice even from women’s clinics at the time. 

Susan describes her holidays and travels, both in Ireland and abroad, including a period in the United States. She details her successful career in floristry including how it all began in a flower shop in Bray before progressing swiftly to an advanced level in the industry.

During the recession in Ireland, Susan returned to education and achieved a degree, an MA and a PhD as a mature student. Her interest in art and design has continued across the years including a project on visual culture street trading in Dublin.

Susan talks about a holiday to the Aran Islands when she was 18…

“The first -up until I was eighteen, I didn’t leave Ireland. It was all Ireland. It was the first foray with the real- first real boyfriend was going to the Aran Islands. And that was my first time on a plane, a tiny little plane and I was mortified because when I got to the airport, it’s an airfield, it was tiny. Because it was such a small plane, they had to weigh you as well as your luggage, and this is in front of my gorgeous boyfriend, and I was like, what? I have to be weighed? Nobody told me I had to be weighed, and I said, here, you look away [laughs] there, you’re not going to look at this. So I remember that, and I remember being behind-I was sitting behind the pilot and I could see like-I was so close to his neck that I could see pimples in the back of his neck and I was thinking, this is bizarre. So the whole time of the flight, I focused on his neck.

We got to the- we got to the island- we got to the first island and it landed in the small island-there’s three islands in the Aran Islands, there’s Inis Mór, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, and we were going to Inis Mor, but because it was such a small flight-and like Mary from Inis Oírr was going over for her weekly shop, so she was getting dropped at the first island and then Paddy from Inis Mór, the other one was getting dropped off because he had- I think there was a sheep on the plane. I actually think there was some kind of animal on the plane, I can’t remember, but there was something anyway wrapped in a blanket and it moving, and I think that was Paddy being dropped off the next one, maybe taking it to the vet. This is now in the eighties, ’89, so it was still a very small world view and actually when we went-when we went to Inis Mór we stayed at the guesthouse and that would have been a bit more sort of- are you two married? And we were like, no, no, no, we’re not married, and we were put into a room with two separate single beds. And as soon as your woman left the room, of course we pushed the beds together, but it was still very much a like- this is what you get.

And at that time I was a vegetarian, and my vegetarian option was mashed potato with a twist of orange for dinner [laughs] and a fair play to her- the Bean an Tí, the woman of the house, she was gorgeous, she was like, now, I made a bit of an effort there. They’re lucky mashed potato with a twist of orange, and I was like, ah bless, thanks very much, and then there was like a bit of vegetables around, but she was so lovely and so gracious. I think I ended up having porridge for dinner a couple of the nights, but that was her way of making sort of fancy food, and she goes, I can stick a few onions in it for you [laughs].”

For more information on accessing Susans’s full interview or transcript please email faisneis@unaganaguna.org