The Wee Wet People of Northern Ireland

A remembered conversation, overhead on the walk to Tesco last week:

First Schoolgirl: Augh, it’s so rainy and cold out!

Second Schoolgirl: I bet there’s people who’d like it here. I bet there’s desert people who’d say, ooh, we’d love weather like this. While we say, ooh, we want some o’ that sun.

First Schoolgirl: Desert people?

Second Schoolgirl: Well... Africa? Y’know.

First Schoolgirl: What are we, then?

Second Schoolgirl: We’re wee wet people. We’re the wee wet people o’ Northern Ireland.

Says it all, really.

It’s as if someone designed a country to my specifications, scaling familiar places down and humidifying the them all: it’s small and damp. Everything here is small and damp. The buildings are small, as are the streets, with little nooks full of little flowers, or full of little windows with music inside, and little birds hunting dropped chips in puddles.

Tesco is the size, maybe, of a clothing store in the States. There’s no Supercenter of any kind round here. There doesn’t need to be – that’s the reason for the size – because everything is so much closer to everything else. I can walk all over Belfast if I want. It’s all right here. I’m eating much better than I thought I’d be, for instance, because I can walk right down the road to Tesco, and it’s only a short walk – though I still have to follow Maureen so as not to get lost – to the City Centre where St George’s Market lives.

We went to the market again this weekend, where we acquired potatoes, tomatoes, Clementines, and other tasty little plant bits. As we were walking past the tables, we spotted a used-book stall, and I caved at the presence of Discworld hardcovers and The Hounds of the Morrigan – this last being a book I’ve only seen once in my life in the States – and I had to try my best not to get them greasy when we stopped at the fish & chip shop next door for lunch.

I gave up meat for Lent, mainly in order to force myself out of my comfort zone and be less of a picky/demanding eater. So, I’m learning to like fish. The UK is the best place, I think, to learn. There’s a fish & chip shop every block.*

On the way back from lunch and shopping, we went by Craft World. I bought a few small bags of beads to make myself a set of Anglican prayer beads (or an Anglican rosary, or Christian prayer beads, or whatever you want to call them). Then we went further down the street and discovered a shoe store. This is a good thing – after all this walking over city streets, our shoes are beginning to go to pieces.

This was before I spent the next week stressing over essays. Today, however, the essays were dead and gone – done and submitted, that is – so I began once more to appreciate the lovely smallness and dampness of my surroundings. I love it.

After class today, I had to turn a pile of books in to the library. So I walked there, blunked** them through the self-service scanner, and walked back – and stopped. There’s an entrance to the Botanic Gardens right beside the library door.

The Botanic Gardens are right beside Queen’s.

Ooh...

I wandered into the garden and found myself at the Palm House.

The Palm House was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, the Belfast architect for whom the Lanyon Building is named (he probably designed it, too – I don’t remember). It was completed in the 1850s, and is, according to the signs, one of the earliest examples of a conservatory built with curved glass and cast iron ribs.

It’s also a magical change from outside. Outside, it’s cold and the flowers are only just blooming: but in the Palm House, it’s warm, and humid, and you step right into the middle of a range of exotic plants from all over the world – the tags I could fins read “S.E. Australia” and “Madagascar.” Palms are just the big ones. To your left, then, is the wing full of flowers – here, ones like daffodils. To your right, are tall green plants that make you feel like you’ve shrunk to the size of a mouse and all the garden’s above your head.

And those would be the palms.

A carved wood Saraswati, in the main section of the Palm House

"Polypodium" is right...!

 Anyone know what kind of flowers these are?

Back behind the giant plants...

  

Daffodils!

I came out on Stranmillis, and went down the road to the local charity shop, the Marie Cure Cancer Cure shop. I needed some more clothes, but couldn’t find anything I liked and that I was certain of the size of, so I browsed for a while for fun. In the cd/dvd shelf I found a dramatized Narnia audiobook by the BBC. It was []1.50.

Uncertain as to whether it was really worth it, I flipped open the case and skimmed the insert.

Aslan ~ David Suchet

And so I bought it.

Leaving the shop with my newfound treasure, I bumped into a familiar face. This is a rare occurrence for a stranger in a big city. It was Janice, on her way home to the rectory. She recognized me at once, saying, “Ah, I see you’ve been shopping at the best shop in Belfast!”

I showed her what I’d bought, and we talked about the relative quality of charity shops, and I followed her back to St. Bart’s to take a picture of the church.

Here’s the street it’s on, Stranmillis:

And this is a side street.

Last Sunday, one of the church members and a friend took me across the street to a café for tea. Despite the conversation being mainly about tonsil problems (said church member is a local GP) it was fun.

On Wednesday we went to the Linen Hall Library. In the interests of getting this blog updated, I’ll write more about the LHL later. I’ll just say it’s rather wonderful, if you’re the type who gets excited by 18^th-century newspapers, children’s books, or Sinn Féin political posters.***

*Though on Malone, I believe, there’s one block with four in a row.

**I honestly don’t know why it makes that noise. But it does.

***If you’re me.