A sunny day in London brought some happy memories.

 How lovely to return to Crouch End, not far from my former London home, to catch up with a friend and to listen to some good music.   I first met Ramon about 12 years ago but he also played music with my friend, the late great Abdou Diop.  So whilst it was lovely to enjoy the music, it was also nice to reminisce. 

Burning Belfast

 Having only just recently been to Belfast and loving it's internationalism, sadly the city is now burning - literally.  Racists are attacking anyone perceived to be an immigrant and locals are getting caught up in the terror.  Cars on fire have set homes on fire.  My friend is on the streets directly affected and these are two of her images.  

Clearly any knife attack is terrifying.  Sometimes being a trauma victim makes migrants and refugees vulnerable, as we all are, to  very serious mental health problems.     This is why supporting and welcoming people is so important,  as the more people feel safe, the less likely are their traumas going to foster violence.     The people of Belfast have also suffered generational trauma because of the troubles.  So is that is what is partly behind, so many of them taking to the streets and terrorising anyone in their way.  I do not know.  But racism and fuelled racism does seem to be one of the causes behind the terrible rioting.  We know that racism is being fuelled both by right wing activists from Musk to Robinson, but it is not helped by the anti immigrant sentiments of many more centre based MPs.  

Climate change is one of the causes of migration, but the terrible wars are really fuelling movement.  Most Sudanese are lovely,  (see Green Kardofan for example ) but that country is also in crisis, and perhaps that has affected what happened in Belfast this week.    Racism damages all of us, as these pictures show. 

 

Burgeoning Belfast.

Last time I visited Belfast, it was lovely to see friends, but the place was interesting rather than captivating.  So I am glad to have come back and got to know and enjoy it more.  Staying in leafy South Belfast helped.  So did the weather, dry and towards the end of the holiday both sunny and warm (England was broiling) and the company was good too.   But what added to all these pleasures was the sheer diversity of the place now.  A friend messaged me to say I would have lots of potatoes in Ireland, but I am not sure she has been there lately as it is very hard to find traditional Irish food, unless you go somewhere as touristy as the Titanic Quarter,  where we had a lovely fish chowder, in the Titanic Hotel.  Other days we had  salads, cheese and biscuits, Italian, Chinese, and with a nod to Irish culture and my friend's comment, bacon and farl for breakfast.  But given there was a food festival on I could have had African, Turkish, French etc.etc.  

Belfast City Hall. 

Vane family portrait at Mount Stewart

I arrived Wednesday,  just a hop and a skip from home, via Stansted, to Belfast where my friend met me, we went home for a catch up, then headed out to the city, where a stop at the Central Hotel to catch the view, resulted in tea and toast in the lounge bar.  Thursday after our Chinese, I headed into town and mooched around.  Friday morning, it was back to the botanic gardens to meet up with my other friend, before heading to St. George's market, and a walk along the Lagan.   Saturday we stepped the pace up a bit with a visit to Mount Stewart,  a famous garden, not far from, Belfast.  I only got half an hour in the interesting house, but was surprised to discover the family who owned it are linked to Raby Castle in near Durham, and the famous Governor of Boston, who was beheaded when he returned to England because of his radical ideas! 

N and A in the Mount Stewart House gardens. 

Talking of radical ideas, apparently my wormery is causing distress. Rather than throwing the old one away I thought I would share it with the community allotment, but one of the women there keeps nagging on at me about being cruel to worms.  Her digging will do more damage, unless I fail to keep my worms happy,  but ....  same old story with the community allotment, bloody out of step with the rest of them, and it is very painful, but hopefully I will only lose my temper over it and not my head. However, I did go up to make sure my worms were happy tonight, and prayed once again to the No Dig God to let my tiny plot flourish to help put my case.  7 years of gardening up there approx and I still have not been able to produce enough to convince, whilst my car parking space is packed with chard!  Hey ho.  

My final day was a visit to the Titanic Museum, which is very expensive, and perhaps surprisingly, rather wordy, so a lot to take in, but there are also fun special effects.  Unfortunately we went on the hottest day of the year, on a Bank Holiday Sunday when two cruise ships were in, so perhaps no wonder that my host began to feel very fragile and ducked out.  However, we were there almost two hours and if you are not claustrophic and ideally have longer than that, it is a story worth revisiting, even if a familiar one.  Years ago, I am sure one of my mother's friends, told me her father had been involved with receiving one of the SOS messages unfortunately there was no mention of him and I have lost touch with the family so cannot verify this, but it seems that the film Titanic was a pretty accurate representation of the ship and its catastrophy.      But as far as I can recall there was no fire on board, whereas there was one in the Titanic Quarter, which prevented us catching the Glider back on schedule, but despite that I was home in England before 10 pm.  How neat is that.  Next time I hope to go the slow route as there is more to explore,  and to understand more about our neighbour, which is both part of the UK and not part of the UK, but part of Europe and with whom we have a long, complex and troubling history as the Vane's exemplify.