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I spent this afternoon at my friend Sinead Roche’s house out in Broomfield, Collon with the people who are my first Irish family.

You see, Sinead is the reason why I’m here. Way back when I was a university student in San Francisco, I rented a room in a big kip of a house, and Sinead and her then-boyfriend Keith rented the room down the hall. We became fast friends. Sinead and I spent many Saturday nights drinking white zinfandel from a box and chain-smoking Marlborough Lights, watching cheesy TV shows and being carefree early 20-somethings.

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She taught me about good tea, Guinness and the beauty of the humble potato; I still laugh when I think about Sinead, sitting with her head over a plate of steaming spuds covered in butter and Bisto and eating them so fast she’d huff and puff just so she could avoid burning her mouth. “Nothing better than a good plate of spuds!” she’d say, with utter satisfaction, after eating the equivalent of probably 4-5 boiled potatoes.

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