Yes, I’m ‘soooo west Belfast’ – and like Lola, I’m angry too

I often say I don’t need to tell lies doing stand-up comedy, because my whole life is a joke.

While this may seem gratuitously self-deprecating, it also happens to be true in terms of how I think about this journey we call existence, as each day I look out for wee things that I inwardly call “God winks” – coincidences so perfectly timed it feels like it couldn’t be random.

I think of it as a wink from above, a reassurance that I’m seen, guided and not alone.

It might be running into someone that I was just wondering about, a song that plays at exactly the right moment, or a word or sign that answers a question I’ve been carrying.

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When I first went to university I studied government and politics, before quickly becoming disenchanted with the twisted system and lamenting the fact I didn’t have the confidence to go for a degree in drama, where my passion truly lay.

One day I was whinging to a girl sitting next to me in my seminar, who cajoled me into tagging along to her meeting with our head of studies, in which she generously offered to give me five minutes of her allotted time to explain to him.

We arrived 15 minutes early and, just as I gave it up as a terrible idea, the door opened and the professor came out and called for me by name.

In my stunned stupor, I asked how he knew I would be there – was he a Wizard of Oz-type figure behind a Big Brother camera, who watched everyone in the Jordanstown campus?

To which he replied, with an equally quizzical look, that he had sent me an email arranging a meeting at that very time.

When I relayed the story of my chance arrival to him, coupled with the truth that I was currently unable to access my student email, the man was so bewildered by the serendipity of the situation that he offered to write a letter of recommendation to the head of drama at the Magee campus on my behalf, earning me an interview and audition to study there, which would become the most empowering experience of my young adult life – and remains the ultimate wink from the divine I’ve ever received (although it may have been more of an eye roll).

Throughout my three years in Derry I suffered from imposter syndrome, surrounded by people in my course that I never quite thought of as ‘peers’ because their experiences and backgrounds were vastly more privileged than my own.

I even had one girl sneer at me that I was “sooo west Belfast” during a playwriting seminar, which made me feel like a bit of a stinker if I’m honest.

After all, I had never attended any prestigious theatre groups, or even got to view plays often, due to the fact that it costs a lot of money to be cultured.

However, my hard work paid off and, if nothing else, my degree taught me to have confidence in my abilities, as I was just as capable as those who grew up with greater opportunities.

Imagine the solidarity that I felt watching Lola Petticrew’s recent speech on collecting her IFTA, dedicating it to the kids of west Belfast, and stating: “I am under no illusion that a lot of the reason that I am here is because of luck, and that is not me negating any of my hard work, I worked really hard. But the system is not designed for kids where I am from to survive, let alone thrive.”

I became angry at the amount of truth in this statement when I thought of the vast number of talented kids that I have worked with in community groups all around Belfast, and juxtaposed it to the countless funerals I’ve attended where those same young people have taken their own lives or died because of substance abuse.

Yet another ‘God wink’ occurred while writing this as I discovered that Lola and I are in fact related – so perhaps this ire is in our DNA, because I agree it is “a political violence” when a few votes can lead to the kind of cushy job that lands MLAs a huge pay rise, while kids go without teaching assistants because of impossible education budgets – not to mention the fact that a politics degree isn’t even mandatory to do their job.

So yes, I am “sooo west Belfast”, but I am also so pissed off!

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