Can't stay away from Parkside

More about my job search: out of curiosity I checked out a care home called Parkside. It's an old three storey house that has been turned into a care home. I started casual work there last week. The people are nice but nothing compared to our beloved friends in Parkside, Canada! (See also here and here and here and here.) I just phoned friends in Parkside and I was tempted to hold the phone out the front door so they could hear the fireworks. Apparently fireworks were banned in Northern Ireland for a long time and now they have fireworks almost every night but on the weekend it lasts for hours, and Hallowe'en is, apparently, the time to bring them all out. Tonight it has been going on for the last two and half hours. What they really like is the loud banging that sounds like booms going off. It sounds like fun to have fireworks so often but I think the youth who are setting them off are getting a lot more enjoyment from them than people in their homes and especially the poor dogs that are scared to death!

Culture in Belfast

This is a busy city! There's no way we could take in all the events, and they take place at a variety of very interesting venues, from the new Waterfront Hall to fantastic heritage buildings and everything in between. (Lisburn, too, has a lot going on at the Lagan Valley Centre, but we haven't made it there yet.) There are lots of museums and art galleries, too (like the Naughton at Queen's). Today we found the Ormeau Baths Gallery--a very cool place. Last Saturday when we were looking for it we bumped into a Canadian from Kingston, ON who is working in England and was visiting Ireland on a holiday. Yes, we invited her to our place, and she stayed with us 2 nights before moving on to Dublin.

Belfast Festival at Queen's

We've been enjoying the (free) classical concerts that are part of this festival--which in the UK is second in size only to Edinburgh's. Last Saturday's featured two very accomplished vocalists and today we enjoyed a fantastic concert of saxophone & guitar--classical, but recently composed music, so very interesting fusions with jazz & some folk. Several of the compositions were from Ireland, and a couple of them were being played as their "world premiere." Last Sunday evening we went with friends to a concert at the Ulster Hall (from the festival blog: "This year’s BBC Invitation Concert will feature the world premiere of a major new work by Belfast-born composer Deirdre Gribbin. Gribbin wrote Goliath for percussion and orchestra but has used the distinctive drumming patterns of the Lambeg Drum complement the symphony orchestra. This performance at the Ulster Hall on Sunday 22nd October will also feature virtuoso solo percussionist Colin Currie"). Currie tired us out just watching him move from one instrument to another (a total of 21, if I remember rightly). "Goliath" very effectively captured the city's shipbuilding heritage and promise for the future. I'm usually unimpressed with "new music," but this was very good. I really enjoyed the two lambeg drums. "Lambeg" (the name of our community) means "little church"; the only connection I can think of is that the drum is almost as big as a small church!

Finding part time work

The time had come for me to find a part-time job. I went to the job centre to find out more about how to go about it. The only thing I gleaned from there was that I needed a National Insurance Number. So, first things first: I phoned to get an appointment to apply for a NIN. They asked allsorts of questions and made me an appointment for a week later. They mailed out 15 pages of information, all of which repeated itself over and over again. When I went for the interview it took almost an hour. They photocopied around a dozen various forms of ID: electrical bill, marriage certificate, driver’s licence, passport, birth certificate, student visa, rental agreement, etc. I’m sure I signed my name over twenty times. They had said that I'd need 2 letters from businesses to say that I'm actively looking for a job. I asked about employment in over 30 businesses before I got my 2 letters. Apparently here you don't drop off resumes - you can only apply for jobs that have been advertised and most businesses use employment agencies ( that take a % of every pay cheque) It's a catch 22 situation! After I'd finished applying for the NIN he said that I could have found a job without the number! He said I should hear from them in 3-4 weeks to let me know if my application was accepted or not. I have applied for a couple of jobs and in the next post I will describe the results.

Telephone fun

The day after we arrived we signed up to have our phone activated. Unlike Canada you are charged for every call you make. During the day you are charged 3 pence per minute and 5.9 pence per call in the evening. The old phone that was in the house was really bad; it sounded like we were in the remotest part of Siberia because the static was so loud. We made a trip to Argos—for those who remember Consumer’s Distributors, it is that kind of shop—and bought a digital phone that works well. Our friends told us about Tele-Discount, who only charge 1 pence per minute. We just checked our BT bill and found that in the last month I have phoned Canada and talked for 8.9 hours! We also have signed up for wireless broadband and are enjoying using Skype to talk to family free of charge.

Thanksgiving

We invited two sets of Canadians over to celebrate Thanksgiving. We started 3 weeks early to prepare for the event, trying to procure the necessary ingredients. It took a long time to find a turkey—Thanksgiving is not a celebration in Northern Ireland, though most churches mark the harvest on a Fall Sunday of their choice. I finally found a Butterball Crown turkey, which means just the breast and wings. R was a little upset with me for carrying a big bag of potatoes and the 7-pound turkey all the way home from Lisburn. We were unsuccessful in finding canned pumpkin so I got a recipe from Parkside and made a pseudo-pumpkin pie out of carrots. If you want the recipe just email us. It tasted just like pumpkin pie. What about the cranberry sauce? Well, we looked at many shops but could not find any, but we went on line and found that there was some @ Tesco. So off we went for an hour and a half walk to hunt down the cranberry sauce. When we got there, we found pallets of the stuff! All the shops are gearing up for Christmas already, so cranberry sauce has suddenly arrived on the shelves. On Saturday night a couple and their 2 young daughters, a young Irish man from Belfast Bible College and a girl from Saskatchewan came for supper. As it turned out, she was born and lived about a half hour from Parkside. On the airplane we had met a young lady from B.C. who was coming to Northern Ireland for a year to do youth work. She came over and stayed the weekend. On Sunday morning, the church that we attend just 5 minutes from here just happened to celebrate Harvest Sunday, so the church was beautifully decorated and we were thrilled to be able to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” We told the pastor how nice it was for them to plan their Harvest Sunday to coincide with Canadian Thanksgiving! That evening, four Queen’s University students R had met at the induction (orientation) for international students came over. We had a great time celebrating with our new Canadian friends. Surprising how bonding it is to celebrate away from home. We have plans to do a monthly meal with the Queen’s students. We really have a lot to be thankful for!

Market Day in Lisburn Town Centre

You’ll have to come to downtown Lisburn on a Tuesday. The place is packed with shoppers, and the vendors have a great array of wares. There are fishmongers, folks selling fresh produce (some of it from local market gardens), and others selling bedding, clothes, jewellery, crafts and art. On the main street there is always a Brethren preacher who is preaching using old-fashioned language in a voice that makes him sound like a town crier. Just around the corner last Tuesday a busker who appeared to have emigrated from India was playing an accordion. As I listened more closely, I realized that he was playing the song, “Red River Valley.” The incongruity made me smile but so did the song because it made me think of growing up on our farm in Pipestone.

Kindness of neighbours and friends (some of them new)

Our next door neighbours have been such a blessing. In the first few weeks it was hard to find the things I was looking for in the grocers. I had asked my neighbour about where I could buy fast-acting yeast. The next day she was over with some for me. I had borrowed some cinnamon to make cinnamon buns and gave her some to taste. A few days later she was over with 2 bottles of cinnamon for me. Her sister (from whom I borrowed the Toyota sewing machine) was over for tea and, in the conversation, she asked if I liked to knit. Three days later her sister brought over a big ball of wool, a pattern for easy slippers and some knitting needles. That was very kind of her. What made me smile was that the wool was a very bright pink. Her sister said that the choice was very limited: either a dull grey or the pink. Her sister said, “G is such a cheerful person; I’m sure that she will want the pink.” I knit them up that evening and told R that I will wear them with pride and celebrate pinkness! The parents of the man from whom we are renting the house have also been very helpful as we settle in our new home. She has brought over baking pans etc. which I have really appreciated. (She said that she doesn’t bake any more so I was welcome to use them—seems like a common theme. Every time I bake something and take it to the neighbours they are surprised that it was homemade. They say that they just buy theirs at the bakery. R and I enjoy playing Scrabble but had looked for a long time for a game and couldn’t find one. We mentioned it to our landlord’s parents and they must have remembered because just the other day they brought over one they had got from their friends.

R’s cousin’s daughter and 3 of her friends stayed with us for a few days while they visited Northern Ireland. We really enjoyed having them here. A couple of weeks after their visit a big parcel was delivered to our door. It was from Canada, and contained a wonderful array of items that are impossible to find in Northern Ireland: maple syrup, Kraft peanut butter, Chipit chocolate chips, maple leaf-shaped maple cookies and homemade Nanking cherry jelly. What a wonderful surprise! And then, when we looked at the parcel, we realized that she had spent $92.00 to send it. Her kindness overwhelms us.

G's Projects

I like to take on projects. Within just a few days of arriving in Belfast I had been down to the greenhouse to get a bag of soil and off to the market to buy flowers. The front of the house is adorned with heather, pansies, primrose window box and two very large pink fall chrysanthemums. I’ve furnished the house with a variety of articles found in charity shops and second hand shops. We were in need of a couple tablecloths for the dining room table. I found a shop on Chapel Road and purchased 6 metres of material—enough for 2 tablecloths and some napkins. I thought I’d just hem them by hand and then thought that it would be a whole lot faster if I could borrow a sewing machine, so I went to the neighbour next door to see if Icould borrow one. The neighbour said that she had never used one before but that her sister had bought one from a boot sale last year and that she was sure that I could borrow it. The machine was a 1960s model Toyota sewing machine! We have always driven Toyota cars, but I had never heard of them making sewing machines. Except for the unpredictable tension, it works fairly well. The next day I walked back to the store (35 minutes one way from home) to buy some material to make napkins for a birthday present for a friend and a gift for our neighbour and her sister. I found some really beautiful designer material that was on a fantastic sale so I bought a few more yards. That project went so well that I decided that I should go back the next day (35 minutes each way) to buy the rest of the bolt. It was 50 pence cheaper a metre if I bought the whole thing. I thought that it would be around 8 metres. Actually, it was 17 metres, so I lugged my big parcel home and started making more tablecloths, wheat bags, aprons and napkins. I know it’s hard to comprehend, but I went back one more time to buy just 1 metre of material to make some more masculine looking wheat bags. Do you wonder what you are getting for Christmas?

A Curious Message

I (R) chatted with a young fellow named Robert from Colorado while standing in line at the international students’ orientation days. He was interested in my bicycle and said he’d like to get a bike while he’s here & do some touring, and we exchanged email addresses & phone #s. The other night we got a phone call. G answered it and was very quiet for a long time, listening to a message, so I came over to see what was up. She seemed puzzled, even serious, and I was getting worried. She replayed the message for me, and it took me a while to figure out that this was a computer reading a text message. It was a female voice and the message sounded like poetry or some kind of code, so I was flabbergasted until I heard “Robert” and remembered that the first line was, “So I got a bike . . .” I was so flustered, though, that I just hung up, so I've lost the message and I can’t for the life of me find the scrap of paper that I wrote his info on. Tonight, though, when I told that story, one of our new Canadian friends over for Thanksgiving said, “I think I know Robert,” so I may be able to return his call—and we may even be able to take the bikes for a ride!

Update: I bumped into Robert at Queen’s & found out that he had indeed got the message from Des, but his bike has a flat tyre (note NI spelling!), so the ride is still postponed. Meantime, I’ve been cycling in to Queen’s a couple days per week, so I’ve been keeping the clothes washer busy!

Little things of interest

Funny how a person notices little things in a new culture. People say "Hiya" when we meet on the pavement (sidewalk), and a man will often nod, but not like we nod on the Canadian prairies. (I remember a hilarious essay on the varieties of hand-waving you will likely encounter in Saskatchewan as you meet someone in a pickup truck, but when walking, people nod.) We do a quick down-then-up nod that seems to say, "Yes, I acknowledge you as a fellow traveller. I agree that it's a good day, but we could use some rain . . ." Here in Ireland, the nod is more a wry twist of the head that makes me think of, "Ach, yes, things are tough, so they are, but we'll make the best of it, so we will!" I haven't got the hang of it yet, so I don't dare return it. Maybe by the time we return to Canada. Then all the people I meet on streets in Saskatchewan will wonder, "What does he mean by that?"

People just like me

It's pretty obvious to me that I have roots in Ireland; besides the fact that Nolan is a well known surname here, I have been fascinated by how many times I have met a man in the street who looks like my grandfather or one of my uncles . During the induction (orientation) sessions for international students, the pro vice chancellor who welcomed us to Queen's said that we would notice how briskly Belfast people walk--he joked that, with all the rain, they choose to get wet quickly. Maybe that's where Grandpa Nolan got it. He was born in Manchester shortly after his parents emigrated from Ireland. After the war, he began work as a mail carrier in Regina. When I got to know him he was retired, but he still walked at a pace just short of jogging; in fact, he did everything with verve, and his enthusiasm never seemed to flag. When he was in his 70s, he discovered Hockey Night in Canada, and Grandma showed us the spot in front of the TV where he had worn out the run by "skating" with the NHL players up and down the ice. At about the same time, he started writing poetry, and in his 80s, he taught himself to play the keyboard so that he could put his poems to music. My dad clearly has the same genes; even now when he's in his mid-70s (how can that be?) I haven't a hope of keeping up to him.
Now here I am in my 50s, bringing the family line full circle by coming back to Ireland. I'd love to do some searching to see if I can find the link back from Manchester to Ireland--and I will, if I can find the energy.

Finding a church

We're experiencing something new--to this point,our choices about where to worship have pretty much been ready-made for us, but now we have to decide whether to attend the church closest to us geographically or denominationally or in terms of age bracket/distribution, or the friendliest, or one in which we think we might be able to contribute, or . . .
A friend from Northern Ireland knows that we are having trouble deciding, and has been recommending hers: Finaghy Presbyterian. The first time she mentioned it, I had to suppress a laugh--because the Irish pronunciation of "gh" can sound to the undiscerning ear much like "ck," I thought she said "Finicky." I thought, "The last thing I need is to hang around some finicky Presbyterians!" We haven't made it to that church yet; it's a bit beyond the comfort zone for hiking in dress shoes. What compounds our problem is that Northern Ireland is so churched. There are all kinds of churches within walking distance of us, and I just cycled today past one I hadn't seen before. We both feel like it's time to decide, to just pick one and see how we can serve and worship together.