No - No attempt to be selective, and thanks for the respectful approach, plus respect back for not compromising at the same time.

Where You say I am being naive, I say you are underestimating the impact and power of the home.

We are all aware of the potential consequences on a persons life if their famiily home is dysfunctional and even of shallower concepts such as "like father like son."

Within the four walls of his home there was a little scottish colony. His two most influential teachers gave him an education in nuance, approach, humour, personality, moral values, interpretation and an infinite number of other subtleties.

They didn't even know they were doing it and neither did he becaause it happens in everything from "pass the salt" to "well done".

Rhythms of speech and manner of expression run deeper than the more obvious differences beetween different peoples accents. Who someone is, their soul, their heart and their passion come from their home.

His Identity was extracted ultimately from his roots and they were not wishy washy and back in the mists of time, but a real living part of his childhood and adolescence.

I would give a strong family home about 85% of the credit for shaping a person. The rest is adaptation and evolution.

This is why I so stubbornly and apparently unreasonably keep referring back to my second post. There is nothing about me that isn't Irish except for a little social camouflage.

I don't go round preaching on the subject of Irish politics, I don't pit prod against mick, I don't do many of the things that might fit the stereotype, but there is a fundamental and very deep core of me that goes back a long way and is Irish.

When I am with my cousins, be they in Ulster Munster Leinster or connaught, as I have them in each province, it shows, and though my accentt is not complete, noone feeels patronized because I speak from my heart and make no pretence about the things that I say.

I love to sing and I love to play my "instrument" (hold back on the innuendo please, I mean my voice). My accent changes for lots of reasons depending on the song, and when I sing Irish songs, a lilt comes out naturally. More than that though, something else comes through which is my character. It is the thing that identified with the song in the first place and that revels in it when I reproduce it.

There is an Irish Rhythm in delivery, and an Irish idea of spirit, humour,subtlety and melancholy. I got these things and more from my Home life and my parents. It wasn't something that they ever consciously taught me, but something that was imbued in me by spending my formative years with them.

I picked up on what got them excited. I picked up what made them upset, and how they perceived the world and what aspirations they had for it.

It's not about romance or naivety, its psychology 101 ;-)