harboured memories

This past weekend Belfast hosted its' biggest ever event'. Yes the Tall Ships sailed in to pay us a visit again, having last visited Northern Ireland's fair shores in 1991, and it seems the world and its dog turned out to welcome them back. I was among the estimated half a million visitors to the event, and I'm sure I was not the only person there who does not exactly harbour an active interest in things of a nautical nature per se, but still had a great day out enjoying the buzz of what was going on.

It's funny, the nature of people in this odd little province of Norn Iron. Maybe I'm being too cynical, and maybe the fantastic display of the ships themselves did lure the majority of punters in (they were pretty impressive after all) but are we not all just suckers for 'not missing out on a bit of craic when it's on the go' when it comes down to it? As I was pushed and pulled through the heaving masses of screaming children, family disputes, whining and whinging people of all ages and stages of life, and was starting to rue my decision ever to bother coming down, I heard one man behind me gently remark to the person he was with, 'Sure God knows when they'll be back, they may never be down our way again.' I think this summed up a lot of what drew people out over the past weekend, and this was confirmed by what I later read in the local paper, one woman quoted as saying, 'This doesn't happen all the time, goodness knows when the next time this will come to Belfast, so we were determined to come and have a good day, despite the weather.' Ah this made me smile, 'determined' to 'have a good day', it sums up so completely the Northern Irish attitude. We WILL have a good time, even if we get wet, muddy, trampled on and crushed in the crowd. We WILL see these ships, which have made it as the main news item on our TV screen all week, and we WILL have our own experience of it to share with all the people we know at work and in our street and in our families, so we don't feel we've missed out on any of the bizz! What other ENTIRE COUNTRY* would turn out for an event that is probably of interest only to some, just because 'who knows when they'll be back' and we wouldn't want to miss out on a bit of craic and a wee nosey around now, would we?! This is part of the Northern Irish spririt that I absolutely love and I have to say it does make me feel proud to come from here, which is something I've not had occasion to say much over the years.

Another part of my fascination in being there was remembering life back in 1991 when we last went down to see them. Eighteen years ago and I still remember all the hype there was then. Let's be honest, not many events dared or bothered to come to Northern Ireland back in those days. (I'm still recovering from thr excitement of finally getting to see New Kids on the Block in Belfast in January 09 as apparently it was not safe enough for them to come over in the late eighties/early nineties when we adored them!)""> As one article that looks back to event writes, 'the city, which was still badly affected by the Troubles, was now the centre of a positive, major event which on average had 100,000 people visiting every day. Chairing the committee behind the visit was Robin Dixon, now known as Lord Glentoran“Nothing on the scale of fun like this had happened in living memory of many people,” he said.


And didn't we look like we were having the most fun we'd ever had on our lifetime?! Maybe not!

It's funny the kaleidoscopic pieces of memories that stick in your head from such an event. Queuing up against metal railings. Eating a packet of Cheeto's while we grumpily waited. Dressing up as a 'small ship' for CSSM the next week. Being in that unsettled summer between primary school and secondary school. Feeling embarrassed to be seen on a day out with my parents. Noticing a few months later that a girl from my class at school had randomly ended up in the foreground of one of our pictures and we didn't even know her at the time. These are the flashes and fragments I remember from the last time they were here.





Some things I had forgotten until I dug out these old pictures, which are dreadful and hilarious in equal measure. I didn't remember that David and I had had our faces painted, Rachel must have been 'too cool' for it by that stage (in a peach-and-white-T-shirt-wearing, Simon Cowell-waisted shorts-wearing kind of way... hahaha) I had expected my Granny, who is the only significant member of my family who has since passed away, to be there in the photos, but when I saw them I remembered that she mustn't have come along that day as she isn't in any of them, and I can't remember why, althought it was probably something completely insignificant at the time.


When I was wandering through the crowds last Saturday taking it all in, a realisation hit me that almost made me vomit on the street. No I hadn't just eaten something dodgy from one of the market stalls, or gone on one of the dizzifying rides... but it dawned on me that if the Tall Ships return another eighteen years from now I will be FORTY-SEVEN years old. How could this be?!? Surely I can't be as close to that strange alien age as I am to being eleven, which I remember relatively clearly. I don't even think I really want to know anything about my forty-seven year old self, in all honesty! This thought is really quite horrendously disturbing, and it kind of makes the average expected lifespan seem shockingly short. However one slight reassurance is that when I do think back to my 11 year old self, I don't think I could have even imagined being 29, or cared much for the person I would be at that then strange alien age, and period of life. Part of me wishes I could go back and ask myself, but another part of me doesn't, as I would have probably thought my life as I knew it would be over by then, much the same way as I feel about being 47 right now. And when I think of all I have done since then, it simultaneously seems like such a lot and such a little; in a nutshell I've done secondary school, university and a few years of work. Full stop. Under the microscope I've done and said and thought and felt an infinity of different things I'll never quite remember all at once, and grown and been shaped in ways I'll maybe never even recognise or realise. Oh and I've definitely done the vast majority of my allocation of 'being young' in all the wonderful, terrible and just plain 'blah' ways that has entailed over the years. I didn't know I'd be on this strange thing called The Internet, writing this even stranger thing called a blog. Wouldn't that be like leaving your diary on the bus for dear-knows-who to read? How embarrassing. I didn't know I'd be teaching international people to speak English so they could integrate into life in Northern Ireland. Why would anyone want to come and visit, let alone choose to actually live and work here? I didn't know I wouldn't be married or wouldn't have had all my children by now (as that fortune prediction thing I'd done by drawing round the outline of my hand and couting up to a random number told me it would definitely happen at 21! And I knew it would be either Joey McIntyre or Ned Nickerson) or stranger still, that I'd actually be semi-OK with that! I didn't know how amazingly wonderful university would be, (after all my mother warned me it would quite a difficult period of my life where I'd be quite poor and may have to live in a not very nice house for a while and work hard) or what fantastic friends and people I'd meet, the laughs that would strain my stomach or the tears that would hurt my throat. I didn't know I'd have a fish called Amber or a navy Fiesta or dye my hair blonde or start Tae Kwon Do. I didn't know my sister would marry somebody called Jeremy or my baby brother would grow a beard. I didn't know about the troubles that were yet ahead in Northern Ireland, the bombs that would go off, the people who would be shot or the fear and anxiety there would be. I didn't that progress or development or tourism or hope would exist here, however deeply it's rooted or to whatever extent it may be the real deal.

But one thing I could probably have managed to guess; that nobody from 'the Pravince' would ever dream of allowing a little bit of rain to let them miss out on a bit of craic, a wee nosey around and a free day out.



*some exaggeration may have been employed at this juncture