THE MOMENT MY LIFE CHANGED FOR EVER

I want to talk about the moment my life changed, irrevocably and for ever. It's amazing how the thing that brings you the most pain can also bring you the most joy.. what happened on that day set me off an adventure that has taken decades to fully work out..

Some of you might know that I was brought up in the countryside of Northern Ireland, and we lived in the most amazing spot.

It was called Castle Island in an amazing little area called Ringhaddy, and to get there you had to drive past a little marina, go through a heavily private gate with large warnings written on it (the access to our neighbour's place) and then along past said neighbour's house all lined with electric fences and barking snarling dogs - up through more barracaded gates and cattle grids, through their field with the ancient ruined castle, down a potholed road with a steep verge leading down onto a rocky shore (careful here!) with the sea lapping in and then finally over another cattle grid and onto our own lane..

My mum had planted shrubs and small trees on the right of this lane, to stop people from accidentally falling down the steep verge onto the rocks below.. and the plants and bushes stood faithfully to welcome us while on the left of the lane a large garden sloping up was filled with the most amazing daffodils and all sorts of trees and amazing bushes of every kind.

As you would drive along this lane you'd catch a glimpse of our house, it was a four hundred year old farm house, and it was right by the sea (make sure you've enabled the images to see below). 

My mum and dad had bought it only a few years earlier as a wreck, and my mum had put everything into doing it up..

I was born in 1976, so at the time of time of this story I was just three years old and my brother Max was four. The troubles were raging but you might never have known it, because this place was a parallel universe of what seemed tranquility. 

But on this morning something was definitely wrong. I could see the back of my mum looking out the windows of the living room, across her garden and out to the sea, with its myriad little islands - you see in Strangford Lough there's an island for every day of the year.

It's a very special place.

But on this day.. I remember that her shoulders were moving a tiny bit, and it alerted me that she wasn't just looking out to sea, she was sobbing..  and I was thinking how odd it was because usually it was me who was usually crying back then as a three year old - and this reversal struck me as deeply worrying. 

I cross the room and hold her hand and she looks down and smiles at me, one of those smiles that connects through the tears and that somehow all these years later I can still remember. I ask her what's wrong, and she tells me that my dad had died in the night. To my very young mind, no doubt influenced by all the TV news programmes I listened to in the background, I'm sure that it must be the IRA, so my first question is "who shot him?" The truth was that no one had. He had been one of the pioneers of combination treatment in chemotherapy. In his early days as a young researching doctor he had often experimented with radioactive isotopes without even putting on the proper gloves and safety equipment, and so at the age of 47, he had died from the disease he did so much to help treat.

As I grew up I was surrounded with the stories of my dad.. He had started what became the second biggest charity in Northern Ireland - Action Cancer and had been a consultant in two hospitals simultaneously, one in Dublin and the other in Belfast. His own family had arrived in Belfast as Jewish immigrants who had escaped the Russian Revolution..

As I heard all these stories I felt the shadow of my father right across my childhood, and I hoped that when I grew up I could be as useful and important as he had been. He became a sort of yard stick, but he was a very hard act to follow, and I wondered as I grew up whether my mum was pretty disappointed in the man I became. Because I wanted to live my own life, even though I had no clear idea what that was yet and I never felt I would be a doctor. But I had the same urge to contribute to the world around me. I guess I am not at all unique in this..

No matter what I did, this shadow followed me. I tried everything to make it go away, at university I changed my hair color, tried drugs, played in bands, and then after it, when I started making films, I tried to do things that were useful - but nothing ever seemed to match up or be good enough. I think the search went on for many years, but the low that preceded the breakthrough was after finishing my first film Vodka Empire.

I had done all I could (with Hilary) to resurrect my family's vodka distillery in the far-flung countryside of Ukraine. We had imported the vodka and sold it to Selfridges, The Dorchester and even the Ritz..

I had met a 103 year old lady who said she remembered my grandmother from before the Russian Revolution. I had been touched very deeply by the village and the story of my family, but I had no idea how to sell vodka at scale, and indeed I was repulsed by the very idea of having to market a product at all.

You see I belonged to the legions of artists and change-makers who had been told that mass communications were actually the devil's work, and that artistic purity demanded a very quiet and organic form of story distribution - otherwise known as total obscurity. This pattern was something I was so deeply connected to that I couldn't even have expressed it clearly at the time. 

After the vodka film came out and the business went under, I was left searching for what I would do next, and to be honest had totally lost my way.

I had a 2 year old girl and a brand new baby boy, George - named after my dad. But I no longer knew what I was doing or really what I stood for.. I read a lot of books - and it was 'Man's Search for Meaning' that really helped me the most. I learned that we all have our unique journey and that meaning is always changing for all of us.

As I read the book a big weight began to fall from my shoulders. Maybe it didn't matter if my mum was disappointed in me, or if I couldn't quite live up to whatever it was that I was supposed to be.

Maybe it was enough to follow my own instincts, and my desire to see a world where people were treated equally and fairly - the feelings I had learned to bury in my misplaced quest for importance.

I had to abandon all these things that I had been told were important to actually uncover the unique meaning.. 

Around the same time I found out about The Debt Collective and most of you know the rest of the Bank Job story.. but now that the film is out in the cinemas and I have had a little time, I wanted to share some of the key things I had learned with you.

So I have been breaking it all down into steps and have been live streaming it to the members of the Powerful. Today I wanted to share one of the episodes with you - as the system is really powerful and who knows, it might help to take some weight off your shoulders.

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