feganegg
About / the egg / the cast / the man without a country
About · Updated 20 April 2026

About the egg

A feganegg is a fried egg with HP sauce, cut and mashed together. It's also this place — things I'm doing, things I've done, things I'm still figuring out.

Damien Fegan Lurgan, NI Not a tagline

The egg

The egg came from my grandmother's kitchen in Aghagallon, where the family kept the three locks on the canal. Granny did Ulster breakfasts. My approach to eating was two of everything, or three of everything. A fried egg with HP sauce, cut and mashed together, was the one I never stopped wanting.

Sinead, when we met, said the nickname was "a combination of disgusting and cute." It stuck to the breakfast first and then to me. Katie-Ann continues the egg.

The house in Aghagallon has been sold. I'd like to buy it back one day.

The homes

I don't have one country. I grew up in London, which is where the English accent comes from. I summered in Connemara on the family farm — rocks, cows, potatoes, rhubarb, middle of nowhere. Granny's kitchen was in Aghagallon, NI. I've lived in Lurgan since 1998.

Nobody in NI thinks I'm Irish. That's true and I've stopped minding. I've got a specific, slightly dislocated identity that doesn't fit any regional stereotype. For a while I thought that was a problem.

The garden

Out the back there are peas and beans (Aghagallon), a gooseberry bush planted this year (Aghagallon), an apple tree, a pear tree, and a rhubarb plant that came from Connemara via my mother via a black bin liner. I didn't realise I was building this until somewhere around the gooseberry.

The garden is a list of people I loved, planted out.

The practice

I do the stupid stuff. A 50-year-old man on a treadmill at his own desk. SUP boards on Lough Neagh in fog. Kettlebells in the corner. There's a 300-mile Shannon itch I'm going to end up doing. The Mourne Wall, the long way. It's going to hurt.

I also walk the dogs first thing, meditate after, and make very good coffee. Both halves have to be present. If the writing only carried the doer half I'd be missing the other man, and he's the one who makes the first one possible.

The writing is new, in a way. I had a blog seven years ago and I left it sitting. What changed is that the friction is gone — voice note, transcript, light edit, post — and the man writing it is taking a mask off he didn't know he was wearing. I couldn't have written these posts before. I'm writing them now.

The cast

I'm not the only one on this blog. The people in my life show up because they're the ones who change me — not people I observe, the reason I keep changing.

Wife

Sinead

Partner in the pottering. "We're only happy when we're pottering." Half the reason anything on this blog gets finished.
Eldest

Katie-Ann

Our eldest. She's been ahead of me in more ways than I can count. I'm still trying to keep up.
Youngest

G

Our youngest. Has always bravely been exactly themselves. Without asking. Showing me how it's done.
Mother

Mum

Eighty-six in body but not in mind. We go places together. Rome a few years ago. Lourdes more recently. Whatever's next.
Father

Dad

Bus driver. Bought his own house and helped each of his children into theirs — said he'd rather give us the start, and did. Whenever I was in trouble, he dug me out. Gone a couple of years. Still very much here.
Friend

Brendan

The "let's do X" friend. The right coffee at the right time. Walked all the mountains in NI with me.
Friend

Scott

D&D friend. Opened the door for me writing games, and makes sure it stays open.
At my feet

The dogs

Walked every morning before anything else happens. The contemplative half of the day starts here.
Aghagallon

Granny

Lock keeper's house on the canal. Ulster breakfasts, the vegetable garden. Gone. Every gooseberry and apple and pea in my current garden is hers.

What this is

This is the archive. The primary reader is future-me, looking back at a life I'm still in the middle of. The audience is whoever finds it. It's findable, not promoted — no LinkedIn push, no subscribe button, no takeaways at the end of posts.

If a post lands with someone, fine. If not, fine — it's still in the archive. I'll add to it. I'll probably come back to old posts and note "ten years on" at the bottom. The picture keeps filling in.

End Filed 20 April 2026