Not so much a poem as a few impressions following my recent visit 'back home' to Northern Ireland...
(my hometown Ballymena)
Pack Up Your Troubles
Wide,
sweeping rain-lashed roads of few cars and limits and still fewer speed cameras
Alternate
with narrow mud-flicking lanes of interminable bends, hills and dips
Weather
passes through many moods in a day
Growing
Ulster grass in iridescent green.
Character
farmhouses vie with abortion bungalows
For
landscape dominance.
Even in
designated areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Even on the
breathtaking North Antrim coast
Unless boarded
up to await the wrecker.
Brave new
brutalism straddles traditional towns
Carved up by
evermore glistening tarmac roads
To the point
they are hardly recognisable as the places I once knew.
These days depressed
by out-of-town shopping developments.
Poor Antrim.
That county town wears more of a frown when it should be the jewel in its
county’s crown.
Lottery-funded
vandalism abounds in what lucky heritage is left standing.
Now a giant £8.50
each to the Causeway from a trendy new black hole in the hill.
Yet
traditional values remain in the people themselves.
Shirts and
suits are still commonplace and women take their sartorial seriously too.
Nuclear family
fall-out lags behind that of the mainland
Drug and
binge-drinking rates also woefully lacking while belief remains big
No one
apologises for themselves.
The Nor’n
Irish know who they are.
And their
hospitality is second to none.
(just don’t
overstay your visitor’s welcome)
Todays ‘troubles’
are more manageable and gone is many a pub I could pass saying ‘So-and-so was
shot there by the you-know-who in 1977’
Some people even
stay out ‘til after ten now.
Ulster, country
of contrasts, province I grew up in, I love and value you but wish you would
too, before you’ve sold out entirely to the Emperor’s Clothes of the new.
Tradition is
what you do best so capitalise on your USP
(not a new
terrorist wing)
It could be Titanic for tourism, but in a good way...
