Going Home

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...

 

The North Antrim Coast & Other Bits

To conclude my series of musings on my homeland, here's the prettier pics I promised and a poem.




In Northern Ireland

Whole valley vistas at a stretch rise into view
Dotted with barns, farms and random bungalows
Driving through the green hills of home,
along fresh tarmaced, pristine dashed roads
Of unexpected dips and zed-bends
Set off by lurid verges
Glistening from the last rain.
A backdrop of mountains,
Alternating between the road to myself
Not a speed camera in sight,
Or trapped behind a tractor.

Occasionally I’m tailed
For miles and miles
By some BMW that should have overtook
Then a rear view mirror check
Reveals a tiny farmer’s wife
Straining to peer above the wheel.
Hay bales poking out the boot.

Red, white and blue kerbstones by decorated flagpoles
Announce a middle of nowhere, Orange Hall.
Eventually the village
A collection of 60’s council houses beside an old church
A high-wire fenced, sandbag-surrounded, Police Station
And a chemist.
All smothered in hanging baskets,
Riotous flowers trying to escape
From the regimented gardens and
Fresh painted street furniture of red, white and blue.
Best-Kept Village competition is fierce round here
And this village has won five times.

Beyond, a bleak and desolate stretch
An RUC officer was blown up along here in 1978
Near the checkpoint, long gone
I remember it vaguely on the News
His three we’ans will be grown by now,
In the new Police Service of Northern Ireland? I wonder

But apart from the odd hotspot of hatred, it’s really ok.
People ask ‘how ‘bout you?’
Say they’re ‘sorry for your trouble’
And drive bloody good cars.

© LS King 2004

Notes From a Northern Ireland

A few random jottings and photographs from my recent parental visit to the home country.



Is it the London Eye?



No, it's the Belfast WHEEL!



Is it the Gherkin?




















No, it's Belfast's very own Pickled Onion!

Is it just me or are tourist attractions in danger of becoming as homogenised as High Streets these days?














Though there's always Tesco's ceiling to admire in Belfast city centre.














And railway stations to marvel at in the former UK capital of terrorism flaunting LITTER BINS.

Dear readers, you'll be heartened to know I resisted temptation. Probably something to do with my ecstasy at the £6.40 return fare from Ballymena-Belfast, a journey of some 26 miles which would have cost at least three times that on the mainland. No wonder English railways don't trust we disenfranchised 'travelling public' with LITTER BINS! Oh and NI trains arrive on time and have empty seats as well.




















Civilisation in railway stations goes on.
Hmm. I wonder if this would work on the Tube?






Did I mention the splendid shopping in Ballymena?






'Go Gay. Now. Before it's too late! And don't forget our big Gay giveaway on late opening Thursday.'




















Where else can you buy a brand new 1980's radio alarm with no FM band on, as I did (inadvertantly) on my last visit, and see clock and watch boxes stacked up to the ceiling on all sides?
It will be a sad day when shops still selling 1970's/1980's stock are no more. Northern Ireland is pretty well the last bastion of these treasure houses to catch one before they die. But make no mistake, Donaghy's sells some pretty funky clocks and pocket radios (as long as you don't mind about the FM thing).















You will find household emporia by the dozen, so no excuses not to perfect the art of Housewifery. I guarantee you will care about the perfect tea towel weft within the space of a week and truly appreciate the difference between the good and the type water drips off. Northern Irish linen is second to none. NI bath towels even cover your whole body from neck to ankles. As a tall girl, sick of trying to dry myself on English face cloth size bath 'sheets', I salute them.















But never fear, the Northern Irish housewife likes a bit of glamour too.

Like a lot of UK towns, Ballymena has made some planning mistakes.










Demolishing this for example.














To make way for this















And plonking a brand spanking new museum to celebrate Ballymena's history (for which a row of Edwardian buildings were demolished)

.












Next to this! (Town Hall)





















Meantime on a main street in Belfast city centre I was shocked to see
this. What a fortune a Period city centre pad would be worth in the middle of Oxford, whatever its parlous state!

Blogging Kills!

Blogging Kills!

according to the New York Times.

Mind you if I could find a way to get paid for blogging (without plastering my blog in ads, 'cos obviously we all love reading blogs to catch up on our purchasing opportunities!), I'd probably become a 24/7 blogoholic too!

But just before 'terminal' blogoholism sets in I'm off to Northern Ireland (verdant land of Philomena Begley, fishing & the odd spot of knee-capping) for a week to see my parents. Who, I might add, don't even own a steam-powered computer and are still awaiting official reassurance about the Year 2000 meltdown problem. So no posting from me for the next ten days, but hopefully I'll sneak a chance to catch up with my fellow blogging brethren at whatever airport internet cafe I can find.

Meantime I'll leave you with my favourite old Irish e-mail chestnut and some cool shots I stole off flick'r.

Dear Receiver

This is an Irish email virus.

Since we are not very technologically advanced in Ireland, this is a manual virus.

Please delete all the files on your hard disc yourself and send this
email to everyone in your address book. That'd be grand, tanx

Paddy O'Hacker


*The author wishes to make it clear that no moles were harmed for the creation of this posting.*

More Tales from Northern Ireland

Every afternoon at around 3.45pm, our town bus station became a hub of Protestant/Catholic relations as we all disgorged from our respective school buses to await our destination buses home.
As a rule we tended to separate into our little cliques, the odd elastic band-powered missile or bit of abuse hurled from time to time between brick bus bays.
As a timid first and second year I didn’t tend to stray from my ‘tribe’, no matter that I was just there to make up the numbers as far as they were concerned with my grey, red and white school regalia standing for what was right and good/god.
The moment the 105 to Martinstown swung in, there would always be a mad dash between we Prods and the Catholics to get on first. When the driver finally opened the doors, whichever faction managed to scrabble aboard first commandeered the back of the bus, lording it over the losers, and for the next half an hour the ‘Troubles’ were won.
As time went on, and I often failed in my personal battle to sit anywhere other than in the middle, between the two, I noticed that the ‘Fenian bastards’ were really not as bad as I’d been led to believe and didn’t often tie ones’ long hair to the back of the seat rail either.
Further time elapsed and I found myself slowly gravitating towards them and joining in with the odd Fenian joke or bit of banter.
Naturally I suffered a few sneers for my treachery, but since my ‘tribe’ didn’t exactly like me anyway (what with my being all these things beyond their ken such as English, athiest-familied, vegetarian etc), I wasn’t about to lose too much sleep over them. Or at least, no more than usual.
One day I found myself idly gazing at dreamy-eyed Josephine with her long shiny hair in her St Patrick’s uniform, sitting on the bench seat facing me, as the bus huffed up a particularly large hill, and realisation slowly dawned. She and her friends had glowing cheeks, bright eyes, glossy hair, no braces, no spots, laughed a lot and were markedly nicer than us. I then looked round at my fouler-mouthed Protestant brethren (still crowing at their back-of-the-bus victory that day). Braces, spots, pallid skin, lank hair and NHS glasses abounded.
Suddenly it all clicked into place. Catholics were the chosen ones!
Of course I kept this profound revelation to myself, and from then on found myself proud to consort with ‘Fenian bastards’, ignoring all jeers and catcalls, and even secretly hoping that some desirable Fenian qualities might rub off!
Over the years since I’ve been amused to note my Catholic boyfriends have tended to outweigh any Protestant or CofE considerations, though sadly one or two didn’t turn out to be such great tributes to their creed.
About five years ago I was reunited with one of the few friends I retained from my Protestant school. During the course of my visit I asked K about a mutual friend whom I had also lost touch with after moving to England as a teenager, and was shocked to hear ‘Oh, no one speaks to Angela anymore. She married a Fenian.’ I was genuinely aghast that such prejudice would still exist in 2002 between two factions which were supposedly both Christian. Not to mention now adult! And this from an individual who’d just been out to Africa to help at a mission for the poor, (albeit a Protestant one of course!)
Naturally I didn’t let on to K that I’d been out with at least four Fenians and nearly married one myself!