John Sweetman

It just didn't happen.

We were all in our early 20s or whatever.

fairly green around the gills and stuff, but there wasn't much else around, like, you know, there wasn't that much of a kind of, you know, secure jobs with a pension at the time, so I just stuck it out until I found a spot that suited me and that was it, that was great, like, you know.

Or would that have been looked up to?

I don't know, like...

You know, like, Scarry's a quiet enough town.

There's not much trouble or anything in it, like, you know.

And even nowadays, like, there's a Garda station there, but it's rarely open.

Like, they'd be out and about.

They'd be based out of Balbriggan most of the time.

But, you know, it was looked at as, you know, a good thing if your son or your daughter had applied for the Gardas.

It was looked upon as, yeah, Jesus.

Expectedly.

I didn't know.

I didn't have any confidence.

You know, I didn't have any self-confidence.

Like, you know, I wouldn't be able to, you know, if you got into some kind of situation where you needed to talk your way through it rather than lose the head and stuff like that.

I was very quiet, you know, and I was kind of like shy and stuff like that.

And, you know, it takes a fair bit of confidence and being assured of yourself.

And I just didn't have it.