From the auld country

There are lots of direct flights between Houston and Gatwick. However, a detour via Newark allowed a stop in Belfast to visit my aging mother and offered a reduction in the ticket cost. That opportunity to be a dutiful son and a cost-conscious employee is too good to be missed.

Northern Ireland is a strange mixture of change and stability. On the side of “change” guided bus tours transport camera-clicking visitors up the Falls and down the Shankill to record the sectarian murals that that are now tourist attractions. On the side of stability and “nothing changes” are the loyalist flags remaining from the recent celebration of “the Twelfth” and the news reports that the “Apprentice Boys” marched at Londonderry (or Derry) yet again on Saturday.



The same mixture of change and stability applies to the landscape as well. Donaghadee is a small fishing village near Belfast. The old folk-song claims that it is “six miles from Bangor to Donaghadee” but that must have been before the ring road was built. Nowadays, it is a little further but once there, the scene is the same as it was when I visited as a little boy. Global positioning has probably made the lighthouse redundant but a lifeboat is still based in the harbor and adds a splash of special color.



In Belfast, the iconic gantry cranes at the Harland & Wolf shipyard also add a splash of color to the skyline. Sadly, they now preside over a relatively silent workplace. It looked like the yard was doing some repairs to a small jack-up rig. That didn’t need the services of these gigantic cranes. These beautiful neglected wrought-iron gates are a sign of the shipyard’s former prosperity. Their sad decay is likely to be an indicator of the fate of these cranes. The curse of geography that puts Ireland at the western edge of Europe has always added to costs and probably will continue to doom the yard to slow decline.