It also rains in the City of Culture
My mom and i walked with our umbrellas from shop to shop. There was little sign of the city of culture in the deluge. The shops were quiet. We went to the craft village and had lunch there. We were invited to knit a row of the square of the city of culture quilt. We went to The Playhouse. After that we walked around the Diamond and we decided to go home. It was just too wet.
Derry is a strange place. I said to my mom, people here are divided about being the UK's city of culture. When the office was set up it was bombed. It was actually part of the Bloody Sunday deal. But people were not happy. I was delighted to see roundabouts approaching the city getting done up and a really lovely park installed in Creggan. Pavements were recobbled. The Guildhall Square was all redone as well with lights and fountains. It was good to see so many places which needed to be tidied up and repainted given a new lease of life. For me that is the best part of the City of Culture.
I am a simple person with simple needs. To be honest Derry doesnt really need the City of Culture accolade to be cultural. As far as i can remember Derry has culture coming out of its ears. The cleaning up and repainting it needed. So i loved that.
I love Ireland you know. I dont know what it is about the place. We drove back to Belfast going through Lifford and Strabane. It had been a long time since i went in that direction. I do not get out to other parts of Northern Ireland as much as i used to when i worked in the you know where. This is great in part, because i don't miss the driving, but i do miss seeing new things. Even if they were small new things. I told my mom that when i drove about i would take minor backroads back to Belfast because they were the most interesting. As a result i did get to see lots of amazing places which few Norn Irish people would have even gone to.
But as always the recession had hit lots of little towns, and many pubs and inns had closed. My mom lamented this, and i said, i know it is bad, but you know when i hear stories of how bad it was, like in the 70s and early 80s, when Ireland was in the midst of this terrible recession and Britain was going through the miners' strikes, the breaking of the unions in the North, etc it was even worse. It is hard to imagine that it was worse. But it was. Much much worse. People pull through. Somehow we survive and Irish people i think are famed for their survival. I think that is what i love about them the most. How hard they are deep deep down. Their resilience. Their idealism. How, until they went mental with the pretend money, there was something very true about them. Dreamy but at the same time realistic. I do feel sad when the genuine act of resistance is then transformed into a cheap trick, the simulacrum of resistance. That i do not appreciate. It takes away from the importance of the real thing. It is as cynical as the advertising man's appropriation of youthful idealism for their own commercial ends, and no less corrosive.
So today we are home. I'll be cleaning the house a bit and then it will be time to get ready for school. It is a soft day, as they say. I love soft days in the summer. When we get the summer. They are the best ones to sit and reflect upon. To get things in the house done. To have cups of coffee. To read. To catch up on the things that we miss when we are running around. So, for these soft days, for these blackbird and thrush song filled days, let it rain.
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