Can you share three stories from your youth that made you remember this time as feeling creative?
The amount of play that we did, it just seemed to be one long Summer Holiday, Subbetteo indoors, outdoors, it could be anything, holding our own World Cups in the garden. When Wimbledon was on in July, we would play tennis and when it came to the time of the Horse show in Dublin, we would set up our own jumps in the garden and start jumping over them.
We climbed trees and explored the bogs and local farms we shouldn’t have been on. Pushing the boundaries was a lot of what we did growing up, getting into danger. Climbing very high trees until your heart almost seemed to beat too fast as the trees start to snap beneath you. Throwing stones at cars. It’s not something that I’m proud of. Standing on the upturned bonnet of a car, sailing down the slate river like Huckleberry Finn. It was quite dangerous. Making peg guns which were closed pegs we’d taken apart and engineered to make into guns that use a rubber band to project the little silver part of the close peg as the bullet, very dangerous things to make.
I remember making one that I had… it was like a machine gun version. It had two pieces of wood and it had four clothes pegs attached, and it could shoot four bullets at one time. And going on adventures, robbing orchards and making picnics and camp fires.
I got into gardening and I made this irrigation system with my brother Niall to run the water from our house to the garden to water our plants.
Later on, I had a darkroom in my bedroom. So, I divided the room, it was big enough, I had my own enlarger and I was able to develop and print films overnight and often stayed up late printing in the darkroom, which was really, an unusual hobby at that time.
And then there was football in the garden. We would be out there all day with our friends playing the beautiful game. I made my own home-made goals from water pipe and crates. After school I’d practice shooting the ball through a gap in the shed hundreds of times. I told the career guidance teacher I wanted to be manager of Liverpool Football club and started to read the FA manuals on football coaching, I always wanted to know as much as possible about whatever I was curious about.
Like everyone my age, I got into music, and I assisted my friend John Crofton who was a DJ at discos and gigs in Maynooth University.
But overall, I remember just being seriously busy - between school, sport, and these other interests like photography and music.
Mike OToole is a Photographer, Film maker and Creative Teacher. Lürzers Archive recognised him twice as being among the 200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide, and he has won awards for his work from The Association of Photographers (Uk) and Communications arts (USA) and The New York Food Film Festival. His work in the field of Commercial Photography has been featured in publications ranging from Conde Nast Traveller, The Wall St Journal, and The Washington Post.
