Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

or, rather, the same perfume but at a lower price.

As always, the way to get this is via an online retailer like discountfragrance-online.co.uk who strip away all the expensive demonstrators and fancy chairs and provide you with the same perfume that you could buy in the fancy shops but at a considerably more sensible price.

Of course, in reality you don’t save that much money on such things but what you end up with is a much higher quality of perfume for your money. The only downside is that you can’t make it a last minute thing as you need to allow for a few days in the post.

With only two days of heritage days and a massive booklet listing what must be hundreds of places, you really need to take some time to identify what will be the best places to see (assuming that there’s decent weather, of course).

Be careful of the small print as some places are only free on one of the days or have, say, the gardens open both days but tours only free on one of those days. Slightly misleading is that many of the places listed as free (getting on for 90%) are always free although you can find a tour or something similar added in specially for the heritage days.

Always at the top of the list are the National Trust places with all of them open although do read the small print as not all of them are free on both days. However, don’t neglect the equally magnificent privately owned mansions that are only opened on the heritage days eg Killymoon Castle in Cookstown. Although going to the National Trust places will save you a few quid, going to the private houses is something that you can’t normally do and of those I’ve seen the value is at least equal to the National Trust places.

Top amongst my picks has to be the Titanic Boat Tour. Normally at a tenner a go (£30 for a family ticket) this is a little expensive but you can get the same tour free on the 2pm and 3.30pm sailings on both days. It’s fully booked but I’m reliably informed that many people didn’t turn up last year so you’ve a good chance of getting on if you go on the day. If you’re into boat trips there’s one to one of the islands on Lough Neagh leaving at noon which sounds like a great picnic spot.

A little different is the architectural bus tour on the Friday afternoon which looks like it’ll go round some places that you ordinarily wouldn’t see. In a similar vein there are walking tours in a number of towns around the province which, for the most part, are only run for the heritage days.

Reopening just for the heritage days is the Ulster History Park at Gortin. This was an excellent protrayal of pre-historic Ireland but a combination of being a little off the beaten path and not being well sign-posted lead to its closure a few years ago. Hopefully this is a sign that it’ll be reopening properly next year but in the meantime, don’t miss it as in addition to its usual attractions, it’s one of the History Alive events.

Their server isn’t quite up to the job of handling all the requests at the moment so best to pick up the paper form of WonderfulNI instead. Obviously since it’s a European event, Ireland also do an equivalent event although, somewhat more sensibly, it’s at the end of August during the school holidays.

We’re not quite fully back into the swing of the school run yet as we have yet to adjust to the different route to the new school though we managed to get there on time today for a change.

The kids are fully into their new school uniform now with the bags properly full of the appropriate things for school rather than the accumulated junk that they had acquired over the course of the previous school year. James seems content enough which I suspect is mainly down to him knowing that he’d have to go to a new school anyway. John still isn’t too happy about the change so it’ll likely be another week or two before he adjusts.

It’s a little strange for me too with the kids going to my old school. Although it’s been 39 years since I was there it hasn’t changed a whole lot. They’ve updated the entrance and the desks aren’t the little school desks any more but the biggest practical changes are that they boys don’t wear short trousers now and there’s a roof on the toilets.

Parking-wise we can’t use the old parking space as my granny’s street was demolished 10 years ago and replaced with a totally different arrangement of housing which has messed up everyone as it’s no longer possible to swing down the street and there’s a bit of dodgy three point turns required every morning and afternoon these days.

Dad’s sister-in-law died at the end of last week after quite a stay in a nursing home. Her kids have placed the usual type of announcement that you get for such things in the paper, of course:

STEWART, JEAN – August 26, 2010, peacefully, at hospital, dearly-loved mother of Muriel and Jean. Service on Tuesday 31st August 2010 at 2.00 p.m. in Kirkwoods Funeral Home, 150A Kings Road, Knock, Belfast, BT5 7EJ and afterwards to Roselawn Cemetery. Family flowers only please. Donations in lieu may be sent, if desired, for N.I. Chest, Heart and Stroke, c/o Kirkwoods Funeral Directors (address as above). Will be sadly missed by her daughters, sons-in-law Gerald and Colin, grandchildren Simon, Sarah, Jenny and John, great-grandchildren and brother George. The Lord is my Shepherd.

As in all such announcements, a full life is condensed down to just a few words of farewell and, as usual, this means that a great deal about the person is omitted.

For instance, in Jean’s case she was buried with her husband John who she spent decades and Allan, the brother of Muriel and Jean, who died when he was only six months old. Jean’s brother George lives in New Zealand and couldn’t come over to the funeral as he’s getting on a bit himself. Sadly, Jean never made it over to visit him in Auckland as John had a heart attack before he retired so they were never able to manage the months long trip that would have been needed in those days. Still, at least George was able to spend time over here with them several times over the years although perhaps not so much as they both would have liked over their 50 year separation since he emigrated. Jean was the eldest of the two being born on April 14, 1923.

She met John through her employment in a drapers shop on the Crumlin Road and they married in 1951. Between Muriel and Jean she now has four great-grandchildren Josh, Emma, Ben and Sophie as well as the grandchildren mentioned above.

Missing also is mention of the trip taken to Portrush every Easter Monday for decades along with the family above, my Dad and us, Dad’s sister Ena’s family, and their parents (four car loads at the height of it all in the 60s). And, of course, lots of other things besides, many of which I’ve forgotten and some of which were reviewed during the funeral service.

The church itself was a major part of her life and although much of her involvement with the church wasn’t known to me at the time, that she was a person who cared about her religion came across always. She was in the choir and taught in the Sunday school and was one of those relatively rare people who you just know are Christians without being told because of the things that they do and they way that they behave generally.

I can’t say that I’ll miss Jean because with John’s passing 15 years ago we weren’t as involved with her as we had been previously which is sad really. As always, there were so many people at her funeral who I should be seeing now and again but who I rarely see outside of funerals these days which is something that I’m working on changing.

We set out for there this morning and even skipped out on the tailback into Ballycastle by going down a side road as soon as we reached the end of the traffic jam so were pretty much right in the thick of it at the off.

The problem was that “in the thick of it” meant that we could see just how packed the crowds were before we needed to decide on car parking. Way too packed to make it any kind of a pleasurable visit so instead we changed tack and had a nice BBQ along the coast road and had the BBQ area pretty much to ourselves the whole time. Much nicer than packed solid into a mass of people.

The problem with the Auld Lammas Fair is that it was pretty much at full capacity a few years ago yet there are lots more people in Northern Ireland these days and so it looks very much over capacity now. Time for a change to add a few days to it and spread the crowds over a longer period I think.

Anyway, tomorrow is back to school day for the little guys (though John is feeling poorly so perhaps not for him). That means hunting out the uniform (done), labelling it (not done yet), trying to remember where the school bags were dumped a couple of months ago and getting back into the buying something for their snack.