Northern Ireland - how do you perceive it?

DS and I had a fantastic week in Belfast, rural Antrim and Derry last Easter.

My perception is that Belfast is pretty cool now with loads to do. Derry small but with the friendliest people in the world (maybe we just got lucky?) and Antrim is very beautiful.

The Titanic museum is one of the best we have ever been to. We ate some brilliant food in Belfast and Derry and we also had some amazing live music.

If there is any possibility you could do something about the weather over there, that would be great.

DS was fascinated by the political situation and we did the open top bus tour about six times. If I'm being honest, I feel pretty scared to talk to Northern Irish people about politics for fear of causing offence in some way. I have lots of friends and family from the Republic of Ireland and don't feel as similar caution there. I guess it is all a bit raw. And I still don't really understand how things working in places like Belfast- for example, would you know if your GP was protestant or Catholic and would it matter?

The protestants VS catholic clip in Derry Girls is funny as it is quite close to the truth.

Absolutely! Irish catholics have a very different culture from many of the more traditional protestants that I know. Particularly in relation to drinking and socialising!

When people talk about Irish culture, they mean Irish Catholic culture, don’t they. I read descriptions of people queuing up to go to strangers’ funerals, enormous, riotous wakes and everyone knowing everyone else’s business, and think I can’t imagine much further away from my Northern Irish Presbyterian family. Who have been known to spend four hours in a room with relatives they haven’t seen for five years, without any sentence longer than “aye, well” being uttered.

@@thisiswheretheseagullfliesaway No, the water in Ballyholme is lovely and warm :) I really never realized it was cold until I went to boarding school!! It's like everywhere I guess, there are good people and bad people. I should clarify we (DH and I) moved back to England a few years back. But I recently lived/worked remotely there for 4 years prior to my parents passing.

@OwlishPeering

In fact, one of the oddities of the relationship between England and Ireland (and my experience of NI isn’t extensive enough to grasp where, if anywhere, it fits in to this) is that English culture has a weird habit of ascribing things to Irishness that are really just as much aspects of English culture it either doesn’t see or doesn’t want to see, or are largely or entirely imaginary. Reviews of Irish literary fiction are often fun hunting grounds for this.

TBF this goes both ways. I've had a couple of relationships with ROI men and Irish friends who were very keen to give lectures on how the English/Brits had an entirely different culture to Irish people. I grew up in suburban England Midlands and South where I couldn't tell the difference between what Irish or British people did that was in anyway stereotypical of either. Looked pretty similar to me, there are plenty of native culture differences within the UK population as there seem to be in ROI depending on where you live but at the same time mostly similar too, I just couldn't really see what was so typically English about it.

I didn't feel I had to change anything to fit in when I travelled to ROI. In fact most people I met in ROI seemed greatly surprised I wasn't Irish, having been caught in possession of an English accent, as though there is a discernable Irish look and way of being as opposed to a English or British one. Obviously I kept my mouth shut on that because I'd pretty much had enough of the lectures of not being Irish enough in whatever constituted that i.e. the way I made a cup of tea (???), using the word sarnie, ate black pudding instead of white, and any other weird or unacceptable English type behaviour.

@DonnaHadDee I suspect you live reasonably close to me with that user name 😂.

Our area certainly has it's issues but the community spirit and support is like no other. I always consider myself quite lucky to be from that area. It's definitely becoming a bit more diverse with all the new housing in the surrounding towns and villages.

My dad moved down from Holywood when he married it was a standing joke in our family for years after how many layers he wore the first winter.

My granny's house in Scotland is grey pebble dash. My ADHD-self spent many a summer picking the pebbles off the wall, much to her annoyance. And her textured wallpaper in the bathroom 😬

For good reason! Love it or hate it, it’s a very good way of keeping a house weather-proof in even the most exposed conditions, and it’s virtually maintenance-free. I bet it will circle back into fashion at some point.

Surely pebble dash is coming around to being posh again - I associate it with older houses.

It surprised me by how beautiful it is (Antrim). I know it should not be a surprise, but if you grew up in the 1970s, all you heard about NI was the bombings and shootings, so I had am impression of a grey, depressing place, which it is not at all. I really liked Antrim. It is beautiful and quiet and quite sparsely populated compared to many parts of England, sort of how you imagine the rest of the UK was like in the mid part of the twentieth century.

What was shocking: the evidence of sectarianism still visible in Belfast. And, it was rather sad the way that every tour guide began their tour by asking the visitors where they were from and marvelling that people would come to their beautiful country. The Northern Irish clearly still expect us to have a 1970s/80s view of their country.

The PP aversion to pebble-dashed houses is funny. I didn't know that was a thing in NI. Best you avoid Scotland too. Half the houses there are like that!

I used to travel regularly from NI to Manchester for work. Whatever the time of year Manchester was always noticeably colder (especially in winter), and almost always raining.

Good username, @DonnaHadDee! 😀

And I agree on racism. In fact, one of the oddities of the relationship between England and Ireland (and my experience of NI isn’t extensive enough to grasp where, if anywhere, it fits in to this) is that English culture has a weird habit of ascribing things to Irishness that are really just as much aspects of English culture it either doesn’t see or doesn’t want to see, or are largely or entirely imaginary. Reviews of Irish literary fiction are often fun hunting grounds for this.

Penelope Fitzgerald reviewed a collection of Anne Enright short stories in which she says the stories are still ‘prey to ancient Irish certainties’, among which she includes things like rain and there being ‘no friend like a sister’, and tending to babies. Which is pretty weird. I lived in various parts of England for over 25 years, and it rained a lot in almost all, people were just as likely to be close/ not close to their sisters, and, I mean, do English babies not need to be looked after?😀

Racism for sure! But it is not any worse than I'm used to seeing in the rest of the UK? ... or in Dublin, Ireland ... where we lived for 12 years

Being from NI, I typically refrain from posting, though I find it amusing to glance through some thoroughly uninformed opinions. One of the joys MN :)

For any people that have never been there, I'd strongly recommend the north-east coast of Down and Antrim. It's a wonderful place to visit, great walking, cycling, scenery and so affordable compared to many places on these islands. I've recommended this to many friends over the years, and they've universally had a good experience.

I'll only comment the on the area I'm from in the North East (90%+ Unionist). It's much better than 20 years ago, but there is still a significant amount of toxic sectarianism, drugs (run by you-know-who), under-employment, poor science education, poor job opportunities. Racism for sure! But it is not any worse than I'm used to seeing in the rest of the UK?

I can't remember the last time I saw someone in a tracksuit - and I live on the same road as a rugby club. Can you even buy tracksuits these days?

Yes, which is why I specified how long ago this all was and why I hadn’t been back pretty much since the GFA.

But I was just responding to a question which I thought was being disingenuous about a post from someone else about why a person from elsewhere on the island of Ireland might have specific response to Union jacks on the streets/kerbs. If I were teleported right now to such an area, I’d be remembering incidents from the past and would be on my guard until I had new experiences to supersede them.

Not that all experiences were obviously in any way negative — one of my best friends (met in England at university) is a Protestant from a very much ‘not mixed’ area in Armagh, though the first time I went home with him in the vac, his (lovely, but quite elderly and very trad) parents were clearly terrified he was going to marry me!

Which was never going to happen, as he’s now married to a (English, CofE) man.😀

Okay thanks @HollyKnight.

I thought British and Brit were the same thing, (though the latter a slang sort of term that you'd just see in papers etc.)
Okay, pp's comments make sense to me now if the term refers more to English people than British ones.
Thank you - you learn something new every day!

Sorry, @HazelPlayer, I had misunderstood what you were saying and we were talking at cross purposes.

I have never been but I'm afraid in my head Northern Ireland is pretty grim. It looks grey and rainy with lots of pebble dash houses and people in tracksuits. Before anyone shoots me, I'm sure it's got lovely parts like the mourne mountains etc. But that's what comes to mind.

@RaymondaHolt She means mainland Britain. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone in NI call themselves "a Brit". British, yes, but I think "a Brit" is more of an English/England thing.

Yes, I understand there being mixed feelings of course.

But i was confused when pp said 'Brits didn't want NI to happen' (I'm paraphrasing here).

I mean who else wanted it to happen?
The only reason it happened at all was because (at least some) British people/Brits wanted it to happen.

Most of the British who wanted it to happen were themselves in the NI region, granted.

It's just the terminology used that is causing me problems. I previously understood the term Brits to include the British of NI, but pp was using it to mean those in GB only I think, and excluding NI.
Is this how the term is commonly used in NI?

I'm not quite sure how to explain it to you but while a majority of the people in NI wanted to remain British, not all of the English were happy about it.

NI people are obviously British if they want to be but some like Edwina Currie resent that.