I asked Oisin, pronounced (O-sheen) how to spell his name, suspecting it could be spelled like ‘ocean.’
He asked me to guess.
Three minutes later I stumbled across the correct five letter wording of his Gaelic Christian name.
I first met Oisin Shipperlee at the ticketing tent of ConFest, officiated by his children’s high visibility vest.
I told him my last name, and he exclaims excitedly “Hoffmann, we have a Hoffmann in our system.”
It was not me, but he found the name in seconds on his iPad.
I was taken aback by his ability to remember one name in a list of what seemed like a couple of hundred people.
However, the other volunteers just looked on amused and non phased.
“That is Oisin for you,” one volunteer remarks.
I watched on as he scanned tickets and told his adult counterparts how to work their computerised system.
I could hear festival directors asking after Oisin over the radio network, further proving that he was a fully fledged cog in the wheel that is ConFest.
At just 10, Oisin is one of the longer serving ConFest volunteers having proudly earned his ’24 hours of service’ wristband which identified him as a volunteer.
For more on this story grab a copy of today’s Guardian (21 April)
