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Noireland, Brexit and All That
Mar. 23rd, 2019 10:51 amSo I recently got back from Belfast, where I was attending the second Noireland crime fiction festival:
http://www.noireland.com
It was my first trip to any part of Ireland, be it Ulster or the south. And I figured now would be a good time to go, while the U.K. pound is still pretty affordable and before Brexit wreaks whatever havoc it's going to wreak over the next month or so.
While the event was held in Belfast and focused particularly on Northern Ireland writers - people like Adrian McKinty and Brian McGilloway who write about the Troubles - there was also a strong contingent from the Republic of Ireland and from Scotland and England too. It was great to discover a lot of new (to me) Irish writers. Claire Allan. Claire McGowan. Jo Spain. Gerard Brennan. Steve Kavanagh. Andrea Carter. Haylen Beck (Stuart Neville). Scotland has Bloody Scotland, held annually in Sterling; England has Crimefest (amongst others), held annually in Bristol; but Noireland to my knowledge is the first crime fiction festival to focus on Ireland.
But Noireland also bills itself as an international crime fiction festival, so there were lots of big name authors too. Anthony Horowitz. Denise Mina. Ann Cleeves. Stuart MacBride. Belinda Bauer. Scandinavian authors Thomas Enger from Norway and Will Dean from Sweden. It was a full weekend of programming, running from early evening on the Friday through 5 PM on Sunday. I played hooky on the Saturday morning to visit St. George's Market and do a bit of a walking tour of downtown Belfast. It was good weather for it then. I was impressed at how pedestrian-friendly their downtown area is, with little maps all over the place so you can locate their major landmarks. Then I had lunch at the Crown Bar opposite my hotel before going back to the conference for the afternoon and evening sessions. Sunday I attended all the sessions and when the festivities ended at 5PM I ventured out on foot again (the weather was not so great by then - windy and rainy/sleety), determined to find a dinner venue where I could enjoy some good live music.
I headed for the Dirty Onion in the Cathedral Quarter but discovered that it was strictly a drinking venue; it had a restaurant upstairs (the Yardbird) but that was mainly chicken-oriented, so I went to the nearby Thirsty Goat which was still pub fare but rather more vegetarian-friendly. After enjoying a decent meal washed down with Irish coffee, I was ready to enjoy their live music which began at 7 PM. One guy with a guitar, a fairly traditional folk-singer who may or may not have been mostly performing his own compositions, although he did a couple of covers too that I recognized - The Boxer and Working-class Hero. After sitting through one set, I decided to return to the Dirty Onion for a nightcap. The live music there was strictly instrumental, on traditional Irish instruments (or what I think of as traditional instruments anyway) and I enjoyed that as well. When I got tired, I left and found a few taxis waiting patiently outside, so I took one of those back to my hotel.
Monday was my free day and while many museums are closed on Mondays, the Titanic exhibits along the waterfront were open and after seeing several dramatic versions of the Titanic story, I knew I wanted to see those. So after a leisurely breakfast, I got a taxi outside my hotel to take me there. I spent the next few hours wandering through the exhibits and the gift shop and ambling about outside, then gradually made my way on foot back to my hotel, stopping anywhere that looked interesting along the way. I was very impressed with their post offices - not only can you buy stamps there but you can perform a number of other transactions there including exchanging Canadian dollars for U.K. pounds. I wish we'd get proper postal banking here in Canada!
By the time I got back to the hotel, it was time for afternoon tea - the piano lounge there serves it seven days a week from 2 to 5 PM - and since I hadn't had lunch and didn't want to be out too late as I had an early flight next morning, that seemed like a suitable occasion for a lunch/dinner combination-meal.
Then it was back to my room for packing, napping and a bit of TV-watching before turning in for the night. Coronation Street, I discovered, is about 2 weeks ahead of us in Canada. The time shift to Daylight Savings, on the other hand, worked in my favour for once - they had "sprung ahead" in Canada over the weekend I was in Belfast, whereas the U.K. was still on winter time; so it was only a 4-hour time difference when I flew home.
I want to say something about Brexit before I conclude this piece, since it is so much on the minds of folk over there (and in fact, one of the conference panels was devoted to that very subject). Generally speaking, it seems to be the "little guys" who are apprehensive about the prospect of Brexit and would prefer to ally themselves with the Big Boys, the European Union. Back in 2014, the Scots held a referendum and voted to remain within the U.K. But then in 2016, when the U.K. opted for Brexit, Scotland made noises about staying within the EU, even if that entailed another referendum. Northern Ireland is similarly uneasy about Brexit, fearing that it could result in a "hard border" with Ireland-the-separate-country and perhaps compromise the delicate truce reached twenty years ago at the end of the "Troubles". It's the "big guy" (or gal) - England - who wants out of the larger trading bloc. And they, in a way, were never fully in, in the sense that they maintained their own currency and their habit of driving on the other side of the road!
Comparing it with the Canadian situation, I find myself a little baffled. Here we're so defensive about Canadian content, culture and identity. Thirty years ago with Brian Mulroney and the FTA, all my friends were lamenting that under a Mulroney government, Canada was doomed to become the 51st state (Canada 5-1?) Then we had the Mulroneys and the Reagans (he probably already descending into dementia, though it wasn't acknowledged back then) singing "When Irish eyes are smiling" on prime-time TV, followed by the great federal public service strike of 1991, and... well anyway. My point is that we over here have always cherished our unique identities and distinct societies and have prided ourselves on being a mosaic rather than a melting pot. Why are the Scots, the Northern Irish, and for that matter other unique groups like the Welsh, the Cornish, and so on - so anxious to be assimilated - or re-assimilated - into the European Union?
It's their decision, of course. And I can fully understand that people want the trains between Belfast and Dublin (like those between Ottawa and Montreal or even Ottawa and Gatineau if we ever get our bridges and light rail) to continue to run smoothly without annoyances and delays like Customs and Security checks. But is that really what the future holds? Will it even be an issue a year or two hence? We'll see.
http://www.noireland.com
It was my first trip to any part of Ireland, be it Ulster or the south. And I figured now would be a good time to go, while the U.K. pound is still pretty affordable and before Brexit wreaks whatever havoc it's going to wreak over the next month or so.
While the event was held in Belfast and focused particularly on Northern Ireland writers - people like Adrian McKinty and Brian McGilloway who write about the Troubles - there was also a strong contingent from the Republic of Ireland and from Scotland and England too. It was great to discover a lot of new (to me) Irish writers. Claire Allan. Claire McGowan. Jo Spain. Gerard Brennan. Steve Kavanagh. Andrea Carter. Haylen Beck (Stuart Neville). Scotland has Bloody Scotland, held annually in Sterling; England has Crimefest (amongst others), held annually in Bristol; but Noireland to my knowledge is the first crime fiction festival to focus on Ireland.
But Noireland also bills itself as an international crime fiction festival, so there were lots of big name authors too. Anthony Horowitz. Denise Mina. Ann Cleeves. Stuart MacBride. Belinda Bauer. Scandinavian authors Thomas Enger from Norway and Will Dean from Sweden. It was a full weekend of programming, running from early evening on the Friday through 5 PM on Sunday. I played hooky on the Saturday morning to visit St. George's Market and do a bit of a walking tour of downtown Belfast. It was good weather for it then. I was impressed at how pedestrian-friendly their downtown area is, with little maps all over the place so you can locate their major landmarks. Then I had lunch at the Crown Bar opposite my hotel before going back to the conference for the afternoon and evening sessions. Sunday I attended all the sessions and when the festivities ended at 5PM I ventured out on foot again (the weather was not so great by then - windy and rainy/sleety), determined to find a dinner venue where I could enjoy some good live music.
I headed for the Dirty Onion in the Cathedral Quarter but discovered that it was strictly a drinking venue; it had a restaurant upstairs (the Yardbird) but that was mainly chicken-oriented, so I went to the nearby Thirsty Goat which was still pub fare but rather more vegetarian-friendly. After enjoying a decent meal washed down with Irish coffee, I was ready to enjoy their live music which began at 7 PM. One guy with a guitar, a fairly traditional folk-singer who may or may not have been mostly performing his own compositions, although he did a couple of covers too that I recognized - The Boxer and Working-class Hero. After sitting through one set, I decided to return to the Dirty Onion for a nightcap. The live music there was strictly instrumental, on traditional Irish instruments (or what I think of as traditional instruments anyway) and I enjoyed that as well. When I got tired, I left and found a few taxis waiting patiently outside, so I took one of those back to my hotel.
Monday was my free day and while many museums are closed on Mondays, the Titanic exhibits along the waterfront were open and after seeing several dramatic versions of the Titanic story, I knew I wanted to see those. So after a leisurely breakfast, I got a taxi outside my hotel to take me there. I spent the next few hours wandering through the exhibits and the gift shop and ambling about outside, then gradually made my way on foot back to my hotel, stopping anywhere that looked interesting along the way. I was very impressed with their post offices - not only can you buy stamps there but you can perform a number of other transactions there including exchanging Canadian dollars for U.K. pounds. I wish we'd get proper postal banking here in Canada!
By the time I got back to the hotel, it was time for afternoon tea - the piano lounge there serves it seven days a week from 2 to 5 PM - and since I hadn't had lunch and didn't want to be out too late as I had an early flight next morning, that seemed like a suitable occasion for a lunch/dinner combination-meal.
Then it was back to my room for packing, napping and a bit of TV-watching before turning in for the night. Coronation Street, I discovered, is about 2 weeks ahead of us in Canada. The time shift to Daylight Savings, on the other hand, worked in my favour for once - they had "sprung ahead" in Canada over the weekend I was in Belfast, whereas the U.K. was still on winter time; so it was only a 4-hour time difference when I flew home.
I want to say something about Brexit before I conclude this piece, since it is so much on the minds of folk over there (and in fact, one of the conference panels was devoted to that very subject). Generally speaking, it seems to be the "little guys" who are apprehensive about the prospect of Brexit and would prefer to ally themselves with the Big Boys, the European Union. Back in 2014, the Scots held a referendum and voted to remain within the U.K. But then in 2016, when the U.K. opted for Brexit, Scotland made noises about staying within the EU, even if that entailed another referendum. Northern Ireland is similarly uneasy about Brexit, fearing that it could result in a "hard border" with Ireland-the-separate-country and perhaps compromise the delicate truce reached twenty years ago at the end of the "Troubles". It's the "big guy" (or gal) - England - who wants out of the larger trading bloc. And they, in a way, were never fully in, in the sense that they maintained their own currency and their habit of driving on the other side of the road!
Comparing it with the Canadian situation, I find myself a little baffled. Here we're so defensive about Canadian content, culture and identity. Thirty years ago with Brian Mulroney and the FTA, all my friends were lamenting that under a Mulroney government, Canada was doomed to become the 51st state (Canada 5-1?) Then we had the Mulroneys and the Reagans (he probably already descending into dementia, though it wasn't acknowledged back then) singing "When Irish eyes are smiling" on prime-time TV, followed by the great federal public service strike of 1991, and... well anyway. My point is that we over here have always cherished our unique identities and distinct societies and have prided ourselves on being a mosaic rather than a melting pot. Why are the Scots, the Northern Irish, and for that matter other unique groups like the Welsh, the Cornish, and so on - so anxious to be assimilated - or re-assimilated - into the European Union?
It's their decision, of course. And I can fully understand that people want the trains between Belfast and Dublin (like those between Ottawa and Montreal or even Ottawa and Gatineau if we ever get our bridges and light rail) to continue to run smoothly without annoyances and delays like Customs and Security checks. But is that really what the future holds? Will it even be an issue a year or two hence? We'll see.
