I decided to stop with the flying, stop getting on planes. I just do pick-ups now.

Rewind to a few days earlier and a chill, blustery early April night, Fergal picks me up from Shannon airport, wearing wellies. He’s a little bit late, for which he’s sorry, he’s tired from a big a day in the garden. We get in his Transit and rattle towards the car park exit, there is untold amounts of crap piled up on the dash, the seat and the floor. Books, clothing, bits of tools, driftwood, glass bottles, flasks, tupperware, packets of seed, sweets, a tin whistle, a 5 month old black collie lab named Bua – Gaelic for to win. It is clear from the man’s dashboard and passenger seat that he does not suffer from OCD or other cleanfreak disorders.

“It’s been a while since I’ve flown out of here,” says Fergal in a sing songy, but not Father Ted caricature Irish voice, a softer maybe more upmarket version. He’s talking about a decision he took a year ago to no longer fly on planes, for environmental reasons. He is a small man, his features quite big for the size of his face. The numbers are generous in proportion to the surface area of the dial, so to speak. His eyes are both raised-brow attentive and lidded at the same time, like a balance of sleepy and engaged. “I decided to stop with the flying, stop getting on planes. I just do pick-ups now.” Diesel chugs smokily out of his aging exhaust at the barrier, without irony. Does he miss going on trips? “I got asked to go to Iceland to shoot a TV commercial recently.” The commercial was for Jagermeister, and featured prominent Brit/Irish surfers. “So I kinda had to ask myself, am I really doing it? Or just sort of doing it? So I decided, nope I’m really doing it.”