THE TOWN THAT I LOVED SO WELL.........

The Irish are a sentimental race and I must confess that mawkishness is deeply etched in my DNA. Some years ago, I was reduced to a gibbering wreck watching the SDLP's John Hume and a school choir launch the Manchester Irish Festival with a wonderful rendition of The Town I Loved So Well - a haunting little number about Derry which is now part of most folk singers' standard repertoire. Tomorrow I am heading off to Belfast for NUJ annual delegate meeting and it is a place full of family connections. My grandfather worked at Harland and Woolf (on the Titanic!) and his home village of Portaferry, on the Aards peninsula about 15 miles away, is where my dad was brought up after being sent there in the 1920s as a small Manchester boy in a family where five kids were too many to feed. It's a beautiful little spot ( apart from the graves with my name on them!) which I first visited 8 years ago when my dad was 80 and made his first visit back for 70 years. In 2006, I returned with him and blubbed for Ireland after too many Jamesons in one of the local bars .
However, I have never had the chance to walk round Belfast and get a feel for the place . I hope to find time inbetween ADM sessions to do that ( probably won't) . I also hope the lurgy which I have had for the past two weeks ( and which is now threatening to remove my voice) dies down a bit. Paracetamols get top priority in rucksack