Northern Ireland.

Hey,

The last couple of days have been spent in Northern Ireland, mainly in Moira and Lisburn. I think Lisburn is a city, and Moira is within the City of Lisburn, right? I'm not sure. Either way, most of my time in Northern Ireland, bar an afternoon in Belfast was spent in these places. Now, if you had been watching the news, you would probably be aware of the 12th July celebrations and I'm going to assume you know what the reasons for the 12th July and why they are, to put it nicely, controversial.

You've seen the coverage, the CCTV, the flutes, the fires, the orange, the injuries, the parades. You know what's happened. It's not nice.

This blog is a defence of Northern Ireland. I was in Northern Ireland for roughly four days, in which I stayed at my friend's house (Hutchy, here is your name drop, are you happy? I hope so!) in Lisburn, and, if we ignore the flags - they love their flags, those Irish - for most of the time I could've been in any part of the United Kingdom. The hospitality was great, my night out in Moira - a converted shed, true story - was really good. I say shed, it was a barn, with two floors, one of which was closed off. If you get the chance, go to the Four Trees there. It's lovely.

The thing is, Northern Ireland is not just any part of the United Kingdom; everything about it is unique, from the ethnicity, the political parties, devolution (or lack of), to the flags. I will not shut up about these flags! They are visually impressive, all orange and British and red-handed and what not. English folk may be used to them, because In-ger-land qualify for major football tournaments on a regular basis and it is an excuse for this excessive patriotism. But I am Scottish; we don't do football tournaments. Heck, we don't even do football most of the time. So this flag-obsession doesn't come naturally.

It's important to find humour in some of the things I saw or else we would all become so depressed with life that we would just go into self-induced comas from Sky News coverage. For instance, the orange marches have massive banners, which all contain the phrase "L.O.L". This means, to them, the Lodge of Something-that-I-couldn't-find-out-on-Wikipedia-before-I-wrote-this-blog.  To most of us, however,  this means "laugh out loud". If we are honest, if these flags have I.D.S.T on them, there might not be all of this trouble going on. After all, if deleted, it's still true.

Northern Ireland has it's problems, but what country doesn't? Luxembourg? Maybe. But who would want to live in Luxembourg? Luxembourg is only famous for, errr, I'm not sure what. Not being France? If you are going to visit Northern Ireland, the 12th July isn't ideal. But the centre of Belfast is a modern, vibrant place which can appeal to anyone. So overall, my point is, don't be put off by the scenes of the last few days, for if you do that you may as well rule out Rothbury. After all, they had Paul Gascoigne roaming free on Friday night.

DC
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p.s. Congrats to Spain and especially Paul the Octopus, who successfully predicted the result once again (see previous blog). News has it he is going to retire now, which I worry is fancy talk for "calamari".


DC
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