Quote from: Tills on June 16, 2025, 11:04:02 PMPolice Service of Northern Ireland. It's a bit old hat now since The Good Friday Agreement between the two countries. The Troubles, as they were euphemistically termed, are a thing of the past.
The Troubles are over in one way but they're not in another. I love the place, but over the decades have learned to see it through Irish eyes. It's a land where there are constant reminders of the division, in the form of the many ruins left from the disastrous Civil War that followed the War of Independence. The split that followed is reflected yet in Irish politics and while the border remains, the tension will always be there.
It's a quiet thing, barely visible at first, but the better you get to know Ireland, the more you'll begin to see it. We were in a bar a few years ago in Cork, still a hotbed of Republicanism, as the south and west tends to be, and our friend's wife said, 'People are looking at you because you're singing along.' I was, 'Why?' and she said, 'Because you're Brits and they don't expect you to know the words, let alone repeat them!' In the end we were invited on the stage by the band and I had to admit to the crowd we'd not being doing it consciously, but we got a cheer all the same.
In the south, it's still the case in some areas that catholic farmers won't work with protestant ones and vice versa. This thing runs deep, but once you're aware of it, it's easy to stay out of it.
Two films are worth seeing by anyone who wants to visit Ireland. The first, which absolutely captures the spirit of the old border, is Eat the Peach. It's sweet and funny and we've seen it three times, I'll not spoil it by spilling the plot. The other, more serious, is The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which captures the essence of what the War of Independence and the Civil War did to Ireland.
If anyone wants to read a book about what Ireland was like not that long ago, J.G. Farrell's Troubles is an absolute must read. It's not serious and it's extraordinarily well written. If the content at times seem unbelievable, there is hardly anything in it that I haven't seen in Ireland at one time or another. It's the most magical piece of writing.
