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In my dream, the Blessington Street Basin fills with the Liffey’s stout-­bottle waters, but still the swimmers come, in droves, on the stray sovereign of an Irish summer’s day. The river courses through the city, turning concrete roadways to canal banks that shrug their shoulders into dark water; a man rises, seal­-like, in his caul of silt, to wave. At the sluice gate, where the river bends out of sight between toppling buildings, a black dog jumps, again and again, into the water. And there, at the edge of vision, my parents, ready to join the swimmers, gesture their cheerful farewells.

Whatever a CV says, we are born in rooms and grow up in houses. Cities come later, long after streets and shops and villages and churches and a signal box at the level-crossing on Sydney Parade where an elderly man with enormous ears, who is almost deaf from fifty years spent switching points on the coastal track, gives you a Victorian penny to insert in the slot of a thing never seen before in the whole wide world: a vending machine that sells British bubblegum called Zapper to twelve year-old schoolboys who wear short grey trousers in mid-February.

Why do any of us choose what part of the city we live in? Budget usually dictates, as well as practicalities – Is it near a Luas stop? What are the local schools like? – or sometimes, well, it’s just for random reasons. Occasionally, we’ll get a yen to live somewhere in particular, because we’ve decided we like its village vibe. When I moved to Harold’s Cross six years ago, my motivation was less notional and more prosaic. We’re talking about a room in a very nice house, with people I liked and most importantly of all, it was only twenty minutes’ walk into Dublin’s city centre.

For the love of spice bags... In Dublin pubs, the conversation has now evolved from queries of ‘What is a spice bag?’ and ‘Have you had a spice bag yet?’ to more pressing issues of etiquette and availability. Because everyone’s mother probably now knows what a spice bag is, that celebrated, moreish takeaway meal combo of chicken, chips and spices in a bag (foil or paper) and the occasional bit of onion and red pepper thrown in. She may have even eaten one. Once seen as something only millennials should let past their lips, it’s now gone properly mainstream, and was voted Ireland’s favourite dish at the Just Eat National Takeaway Awards last year. A mere culinary craze? We don’t think so.

Some weeks ago, I was leading a group of World Heritage masters students on a tour of the north city which began in St Mary’s Abbey Chapter House and finished in Mountjoy Square. At the end of the day we were invited in to view one of the houses on the square, and I found myself back in a ground floor apartment that I had first encountered decades earlier. At the age of nine, I was brought to visit my uncle who was living in a flat at the corner of Mountjoy Square and Grenville Street. I remember a vast bright interior with a beautiful bow window, and a raised sleeping mezzanine over the kitchen.

I didn’t get to Dublin until I was five but I embraced it, pronto. Either that, or the force of impact turned my California twang into a Dublin one, and my blonde hair mousey within a week. Aiming to please, and blend in, at all costs became a survival strategy for growing up in the Liberties, where intimate, narrow streets hosted hops heavy breezes from the Guinness brewery. There, they

I’m a burlesque performer, bellydancer, producer, stylist and maker. I make a lot of my costumes from scratch; you might take an item, say a pair of shoes, and completely reimagine them. My sitting room is my studio, so half the time everything’s covered in sequens and glitter. I describe Dublin as a little powerful nugget of genius; there been an incredible influx of people from so many different cultures, we’re able to take those influences and put our own spin on it. It’s very important, especially in this centenary year, that people get out and engage with everything Dublin has to offer. There’s art, music, theatre, comedy, and it’s all very accessible. That’s the brilliant thing with the burlesque scene here, there’s such a diverse pool of performers from all walks of life. I’m very much about cross-pollination.

I remember seeing the DART for the first time. I was 7 years old. It was 1984. I thought it was some impossible machine out of a science fiction movie. At that time, I lived with my family in the remote wilds of Blanchardstown, West Dublin, and as such, the DART wasn't likely to be a part of my daily life. But the very next year, we moved to Donaghmede. Howth Junction Station lay just around the corner from our house. And, from that moment on, if we were availing of public transport, we were hopping on the DART.

I blame my father. His Super 8 film projector got me where I am today. That, and his collection of one-reel highlights from all the great Disney movies. Since Cabra didn’t have a cinema anymore, I was forced to migrate... to Phibsborough. The building was once home to the Silver Skate Ice Rink, but to me it will always be the State Cinema - the jumping off point for a life-long addiction. The place where I saw Grease, Empire Of The Ants, The Cat From Outer Space and so many others. And then there was Star Wars, from which, I gather, none of us have ever fully recovered. There were times Phibsborough just wasn’t big enough. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Arnotts’ car park... sorry, formerly the Adelphi Cinema, on Abbey Street! In 1978, Superman: The Movie was a watershed. Outside of mass, I’d never been in such a huge building, filled with so many people. As John Williams’ music buckled my ears, I finally realised I was part of something far greater than myself.

There is unfortunately no blueprint for happiness, but a maxim to think about is ‘create, don’t consume’. Fighting Words is where Dublin’s children and young teens can learn to express themselves, but also get to grips with the tools that make that expression possible. Numerous studies have indicated that it’s our experiences that give us the most satisfaction and not the things we accumulate. That’s not always easy to remember when faced with the new car purchase that will change our lives, or the dress that makes you look like a better, slimmer version of ourselves but in our hearts we know it’s true.

After living in Jersey City for the first decade of my life, we moved to my mother's hometown, Dublin. My parents had divorced and the neighbourhood we were living in was starting to deteriorate rapidly. My father stayed on in his native city and we hopped on a plane to Ireland. It took a long time for me to find my peace with this place. The food here in the 80's was brutal and I quickly realised why. There was nobody here of any skin colour that wasn't lily white and freckled. Consequently, no proper New Jersey pizzas, bagels and barbecued chicken. These had been my dietary staples. And although I was well used to tough city kids, on my own I was no match for the lads from Charlemount street and Swan Grove, who on my first day of school beat me up because I asked the teacher if I could please use the "bathroom."

I believed up until relatively recently that I was a mixed-race Dubliner. ‘My dad is a North Sider, and my mother is a South Sider!’ I would declare, explaining away my propensity for Chipstix-and-cheese bread rolls washed down with a carafe of Amerone. My brothers and I have always joked that my Coolock-born dad must have nicked our Dun Laoghaire-born mother’s handbag, led the chase north of the Liffey and eventually coerced mam into staying there.