Northern Ireland: Things it taught me.

Just to reassure you, I did return from Northern Ireland, I just haven't got around to writing anything here for while. The following things I learnt as a result of our trip:

1) If you step off your plane in a new part of the world and it is windy, rainy, and cold, that place might well be Northern Ireland.

2) Getting lost in Belfast is potentially risky, especially if you end up on the Falls Road. Gladys advised us English to keep our mouths shut and our accents locked away. Here its worth making my first profound observation about Northern Ireland. It might seem from the news that things are all rosy there but you couldn't help feeling the division all over the shot - there are still villages which can be described as Republican or Unionist strongholds. And no-one has done anything about that anti-British murals dotted around areas of Belfast.

3) Waiters in Chinese restaurants don't much like groups of eight ordering only a jug of water instead of real drinks. They tend to be keen to get rid of you after an hour or so, their circling approach to 'encouraging you to leave' is strangely similar to tactics employed by the Stasi.

4) The youth of Belfast like to hang out at the Odyssey, seemingly doing very little and wearing slightly less.

5) Its quite important when you're hiring a car to work out things like how the headlights work before you drive. That way you avoid the risk which Rebecca ran of driving us into the car park of an IRA pub to test them out. Once again Gladys' helpful advice meant that the naive English didn't get killed.

6) An Irish potato farm in Limavady is exactly as you'd imagine it. Right down to the copy of farmer's weekly on the kitchen table and the tractor calender.

7) The McCollum clan are an immenesly hospitable bunch who like to feed you cake and let you feed the lambs or, in my case, talk to the 'more mature' sheep. Limavady itself is a very attractive part of the world which I would be tempted to describe as 'Seriously Farmy' if that wasn't a label already given to a bran of mature cheddar. It is, however deceptively far from Belfast.

8) Northern Irish motorways have only two lanes apart from a briefly extravagant patch of motorway in Belfast which slightly overcompensates with four. A roads are country lanes and B roads are known in the rest of the UK as 'farm tracks'.

9) The Giant's Causeway is slightly smaller than you;d expect but is immensly beautiful. The Northern Irish claim this was the sight of a mudfight between a Scottish and an Irish giant. The Irish giant's aim being somewhat lacking, he missed Scotland and the resulting clod of mud is now known as the 'Isle of Man'. No jokes. Be warned if you go on a day which is windy enough, and with a mixture of hail, snow and what quite possibly may be bricks, you will return to the car looking slightly as if you have been right in the middle of one of these giant battles. Also be warned that with a direct Northerly wind blowing at you from the Atlantic, drinking tea can be a messy experience.

10) We English have been, and very often continue to be, a load of total ignoramus's when it comes to understanding not only what our meddling has done to Ulster, but also quite how immensly spectacular this country really is. The views over the snowy mountains on Monday morning on the way to the wedding in Belfast were, quite simply, magic.

The wedding itself was excellent fun. Kirsty (the bride) looked fantastic and the elusive Derek (the groom) was finally revealed to be a thoroughly nice man (he was, no doubt, a thorughly nice man before, but we'd never met him, you see) Myself, Hazel and Gladys went to the sit down meal at a posh hotel/castle by the sea, and the others joined us for the ceileg..Keildgh...ce...Scottish Dance... at the end.

The photos attached aren't actually from this wedding, they're taken my brother's a few weeks ago, but thought I'd attach them anyway because I've only just got them. One is of my bro looking rather noble and dangerously clutching a sword and my new sis in law, Rachel, and the other is of myself and Hazel.

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