bonnie olde Belfast

I am officially on my self-declared lunch break right now. I was off sick for half of Thursday and all of Friday and there's a lot of catching up to do. This morning I've been some kind of organisational demon, multi-tasking as I calmly handle a list of last-minute fuckups that tend to accompany the impending doom of a deadline. But right now it's time to write- about me.

I think I've got my groove back- I've been slightly off kilter for the past two weeks, maybe even the past month (since getting back from NZ really). I've been kinda down, almost constantly tired, not a jolt of endorphin to be found anywhere near the gym, it was all kinda blerck really. But this morning I woke up before my alarm for the first time in a month and felt very fresh and rejuvenated and not even the rainy London sky could turn my smile upside down. I went to the gym and powered through the cross-trainer and onto the bike and came out actually feeling like I'd achieved something. And I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch but maybe, just maybe, my normal chipper self is back in the game.

Speaking of counting chickens, the martial arts people haven't called me so now I'm going to have to call them. Bugger. I'm really more of a mountain-come-to-Mohamed kind of girl but in this case I fear I may have to be slightly more pro-active. How vexing.

This weekend Kerry and I headed to Belfast to visit Corin and, tired as I still was, I had a pretty cool time. Getting up at 4am to catch our early flight was not so cool but luckily other people flying over buddies of Corin's from London and Edinburgh also had to get up a similarly ungodly hour so we all were equally in need of an afternoon kip. Before the much needed kip, Kez and I took a black cab tour of Belfast which was a politically-based one that involved going around a lot of the murals in the Catholic and Protestant areas and having the politics adn history explained to us. It was an eye-opener and quite saddening in a way. The situation in Ireland is in no way simple and is really more political than religious but the phrase 'can of worms' doesn't even begin to describe it.

The first place we stopped was in The Shankles, a Protestant area. The vibe of this area is hard to describe but desolate comes close. There are various political murals on the sides of the buildings but even though the sun was shinging, this place felt scary. The impact of these massive paintings with strongly emotive political messages is quite overwhelming.

This is one of the murals with close-ups of the messages on the bottom at either side.

These are most of the other murals scattered around the outside of the 'park' (if that's what you want to call it).

Our next stop was one of the "peace walls". This is not once continuous wall but rather has sections throughout the city. It's different heights in different areas but has been erected upon the request of both sides (because in this city, lines are still drawn). It's hard to convey the height of this and I know I'm short but this should give some idea of the size. This section is just bloody HUGE.

Here's a pic of Kez signing the wall (like I was in the one above). Apart from weird political art and general graffiti, tourists who come to visit the wall also sign it.

I asked our taxi driver but he didn't know how long this particular section of the wall was. This shows it stretching out behind us and it was about the same ahead of us as well. Belfast is not a pretty city, it's mainly industrial and on the whole feels quite gritty and you commonly get very 'nice' areas right beside the decidedly dodgy ones with no real merge between the two.

Directly behind the wall is a staunchly Catholic area. You can see how close the house is to the wall and why it needs to be so high. Also note the metal grid lean-to at the back of the house. That's there so that things lobbed over the wall, like Molotov cocktails, will roll off the roof and off the grid and not land right beside the walls of the house. What a lovely place to live. This house is also right beside a memorial to martyrs- and this is where I started to get really angry.

This is a plaque in the memorial, it's about a meter high and has 2 1/2 columns of names to the left of these. This is a "martyrs memorial" and these three columns of names list innocent people killed in the struggles. Not martyrs but innocents who were killed because of the people (is it wrong that I want to call them fucktards?) like those who are named in the 2 1/2 columns to the right of them (no pic of them).

Last stop was this massively long wall of murals (sorry for shockingly awful slapping together of a panorama-wannabe) which are more generally political than the historical ones we'd been looking at. There are ones about Palestine and Bush as well as Ireland.

And on the way back to Corin's place he drove me past this lovely area. Also a scary place but if through my poorly taken photo, I hope you can note the flags strung across the streets. This was a majorly Protestant area.

And then my camera batteries died. I'm really glad I did this tour but it was, well, not depressing but it definitely drove home the fact that the situation in Ireland is in no way simple. And it's not really about religion, at least not any more and there's no pithy way to sum it up either. It's gosh-darn complicated.

Once I get emails from people I'll be able to upload some more upbeat pics of shenanigans and tomfoolery at Corin & Caroline's housewarming and the lot of us in the rain at mini-golf. Right, so now my lunch is definitely over so I'll have to save my footie and Jesus posts till tomorrow. Peace out.