A Place Apart

It seems strange to be keeping a diary about travels in Ireland. A vague little sadness follows like a cloud-shadow after the realisation that I have grown remote enough from my own country to look at it with something of the detachment I might feel in Africa or Asia. Is this what it is fashionable to call ‘loss of identity’? Can’t be helped, even if it is. And there are compensations. It’s a form of somewhat belated growing-up–being weaned from that Mother Ireland on whose not entirely infection-free milk so many of my generation were reared.
–Dervla Murphy, A Place Apart