Kylie Noble

"I had never planned to move to London, in the way many young people from inconsequential places do.

With intent and yearning, I had planned to escape, but the parameters of my childhood were so narrow (or so safe) that it was enough for me, at first, to escape from my county. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A population of 60,000. More farm animals than people, probably. Being a child of parents who hate cities, the 80 mile move to Belfast at 18 seemed daunting and exciting. My hope had been to go to university in Scotland, but I was in the first cohort of students who would have been paying £9,000 a year. This put me off and as much as I like to think of myself as brave, if I’m honest, it seemed too much, too soon. I was naïve.

I wanted to be a journalist from when I was 14. The best scholarships were in England, and I was fortunate to be awarded one from The Guardian newspaper, for people from backgrounds unlikely to become journalists. I started at the University of Sheffield in 2015. It was on my course that I made my first links with Doncaster. I was assigned the town as my “news patch”. I met real Yorkshire people. I loved hearing the accents and the slang. Most of the people I met at uni were from other parts of England. My favourite memory of this time is interviewing a farmer about being a champion Ploughman for Britain. I felt old parts of me start to stir; memories of my childhood on a farm."

Written by Kylie Noble