Belfast Once More
Inspired by my recent experiences at the Celtic Media Festival, I flew to Belfast this morning for a collaborative chin-wag with Susan Lovell. She鈥檚 my opposite number at 91热爆 Radio Ulster. There鈥檚 no messing about with Susan. I had barely peeled off my coat when she guiding me to a table around which she had gathered her senior team. We talked for an hour. Music programmes seemed to offer the most obvious opportunities for co-operation. The Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, for example, is a big hit with the 91热爆 Radio Ulster audience. We also discussed pipe music, folk, jazz and, well, everything save the kind of thing you used to see buskers do with a paper and comb.
Susan flashed through the agenda with the air of a woman who believes the office walls will close in on us if we linger beyond our allotted time. Actually, that鈥檚 not a bad idea for 91热爆 meetings. In fact she had a taxi waiting to take both of us to meet another of her colleague鈥檚 who was waiting in a trendy restaurant near Queen鈥檚 University. This part of the city looked, to my eye, to be an upmarket area but Susan鈥檚 colleague told me that it was getting a reputation for disorder.
鈥淧eople have been known to just walk into someone else鈥檚 flat and fall asleep in a stranger鈥檚 bedroom!鈥
鈥淲ell,鈥 I said, 鈥淲ho among us hasn鈥檛 done that?鈥
鈥淵es鈥ut in our student days.鈥
鈥淣o, I was thinking about last week.鈥
An hour later I was in a taxi heading for Belfast City Airport. The driver told me he was a big fan of 91热爆 Radio Scotland, but only at weekends when he listened to the football coverage.
鈥淪cottish teams have such wonderful names,鈥 he told me, 鈥淗amilton Academicals, Queen of the South, Inverness Caledonian Thistle鈥h there鈥檚 nothing like that here.鈥
But it鈥檚 the Irish who have the real way with words. Even the airport information screens had a poetic quality to them. They didn鈥檛 just tell you if a flight was delayed or on time, not, they also offered a lifestyle choice.
鈥淩elax and shop鈥 said the screens.
So I did.
