I've had a few days away in Belfast doing some training work with the Computer Centre staff at Queen's University Belfast and a couple of other institutions.
Since someone else was paying I took the Heathrow Express out to the airport from Paddington station and it is quick, clean and efficient - unlike the Tube. I don't know whether or not it's £10 each way worth of quick, clean and efficient but I can imagine that it would be a boon for anyone with bags of bags who had been based in the centre of town.
It was fun flying as well. It's not that I like flying. Well, no, that's not true. I don't mind flying. It's the taking off and landing I don't like. Anyone who tells you that that's not frightening is unnatural. Being shot into the air inside a metal tube attached to a couple of fireworks is not a natural thing for a human to be doing. So, I think the best way of getting through it is to quietly say goodbye to all those people who I love and hold dear to me. It's about as near as I can get at the moment to approaching a state of grace between the stirrup and the ground.
We landed at Belfast International shortly before the First Lady and through a rainstorm which produced rainbows on the wings of the plane and a rainbow which was stroked across the land. For as long as I can remember, I've felt rainbows to be symbols of optimism and hope. I don't know whether it is Noah or DH Lawrence which is the source of that mythology. Anyhow, I took the rainbow as a sign of personal fortune and the hope of promised peace for this benighted land.
The work went well. I don't want to dwell on that. What was more interesting was Belfast itself. It's been 8 years since I was last there - on a professional conference. I took some time off to look up a lad called Vincent who I'd shagged a few years previously. We didn't do the bad thang that afternoon but he did show me around the city. I was appalled by the troops on the streets. Young men. Hardly out of their teens if at all. Full combat gear. Guns. Rifles. Small groups suddenly appearing by our car when stopped by traffic lights. Using a mirror on a pole to look for bombs or arms under the chassis. Check points. Armed patrols. Every few hundred yards.
I freaked. Vincent didn't see anything abnormal about it which freaked me even more. He had fragments of glass embedded into his skin by the side his right eye. He'd been in a car some years before which had been rammed by an armoured patrol car full of squaddies speeding back to barracks after a night of drinking. He was lucky to be alive. He wasn't particularly bitter about it. It was just part of the life around him.
Some things have changed now. Despite the simultaneous visit of Bill Clinton, there was little security in evidence, even around the Europa Hotel. I experienced only one check point and that was just outside the airport. Belfast, itself, was completely free of them so far as I could see. I encountered no soldiery although the pigs (I think they used to be called - sort of armoured tank-like police cars) are still about.
Also you could see an amazing amount of new building and renovation and gentrification about the place. The sort of work that would not have attracted the inward investment 8 years ago. So, maybe it is working despite some of the gloom that I heard from some of the delegates I was working with.
Belfast is also another contained capital like Edinburgh. You get a sense of the geography of the place by being able to see hills and green fields on the outskirts. Belfast, however, doesn't have such a dramatic topography as Edinburgh does. When we were up there, Colin remarked on how the volcanic ridges sometimes played strange tricks on you so that, as you were walking along a road, the ground floor on your road would suddenly become the fifth floor if measured from the valley you had just crossed by bridge.
The work was emotionally and physically taxing, however. Whilst I was in Edinburgh, I used my Yoga practice to relax myself. There wasn't really room in my guest house room in Belfast. So, I made do with quiet contemplation, reading a little, a bottle of red wine and a trip out to the cinema one evening to see Armageddon starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. It was truly silly but just what I needed and Mr Affleck was quite cute in a purposely unkempt groomed sort of way. Still not as gorgeous as the Rossi I was looking forward to seeing on my return.
When I got back, there were two disappointments waiting for me.
Ross had left a note to say that he had
come down with a bad cold and had fled back to Barton to see his doctor before
it became a bad chest infection. So, I didn't have my little chum to cuddle up
to. And Dale can't come to visit next
week because his airline is on strike - well the pilots are which amounts to the
same thing. So, it looks as though I'm going to have a quieter and more rested
time than I had planned.