RadioScope: The Tubridy Show, RTÉ Radio One, Friday, 9am
Running away with a carnival might be the last thing you would recommend to a troubled child, yet this is what turned around the life of a homeless young teenager called Charlene.
Her story, told in this interview with Ryan Tubridy, illustrates the ease with which a young person can become homeless and the resilience some children show in surviving in an adult world.
Charlene's mother went to the United States for work experience when her eldest daughter was 12 years old. Her husband was in charge of Charlene and two younger children. Charlene's father, whom she adored, ignored his duties and it was left to her, still a child herself, to rear her siblings.
Finally the strain got too much and she ran away from Dublin to Blessington. Her father found her and her mother flew back from the US and threw him out of the house, much to Charlene's distress.
Rows with her mother, which became physical on Charlene's part, led to her moving to an aunt in Mayo.
When she returned, she found her mother had moved in a new partner without telling her. She left, and for the next two years lived in facilities for young homeless people until, one day at the age of 14, she went to a carnival on the Naas Road.
It wasn't a very big carnival. The man who ran it owned only two machines. Charlene reckoned that, as she was homeless anyway, there was no reason why she shouldn't live in a travelling carnival. She looked for a job and the man put her in charge of one of the two machines and gave her a caravan of her own. It was, she said, like heaven.
Nine months later, homesickness drove her back to Dublin and her family. Staying at home for more than a short period meant conflict so she checked into the Salvation Army. There, she re-connected with her old friends.
That's when she discovered that the structure which the carnival had brought to her life had changed everything.
Now she was embarrassed walking around the streets with her homeless friends who were jackacting around, pulling people's hats off and generally making a show of themselves. She no longer belonged there.
She went back to school and did her Leaving Certificate through a Youthreach project. She's now hoping, through the Trinity Access Programme, to do a degree in modern history and then to become a history teacher.
She has a two-year-old daughter whom she adores and her relationship with her mother is better than it has ever been.
A remarkable story, it just dropped into The Tubridy Show and was handled by its eponymous host without a hint of condescension.
Charlene is the heroine of this true tale of resilience and triumph which brightened a rainy Friday morning. And I hope fortune smiles on the man who owns the carnival with two machines.
Review by counsellor Padraig O'Morain