Derry

"Fuck the Irish, fuck the English, fuck the Nationalists and the fucking Unionists - fuck the whole sodding lot of you."

- what I wanted to say to the guy running the Free Derry museum, but didn't. 

When I left the museum, I just smiled and nodded. The guy running the Free Derry museum looks to be a real hard bastard, and I wager he'd be able to flatten me without raising a sweat. So when I left the museum, I decided not to chance offending him by swearing at everyone on the whole fucking island. 

But still, after walking through Bogside today, and Shankill yesterday, it's shitting me off. When I was a kid, I remember watching the news and getting confused about Northern Ireland. In my mind, every conflict had a villain and a saint, and I was having trouble figuring out who was the goodie and who was the baddie. 

Turns out I needn't have bothered. Both sides were fucking nuts. 

It's not like they don't have just cause, I suppose. There are enough incidents littered throughout the Troubles for communities to pick up weapons and defend their own. And Bloody Sunday was appalling no matter how you look at it. But it's galling to see the same reasons used by both sides, the same insults and grievances, and in the end, the same bloody outcomes. 

And to think that it all started because some fucking English king wasn't content with ruling only one cold, wet, mouldy island in the middle of the North Sea, but wanted the other one as well. And because the locals proved intractable, he decided to ship over good, solid British folk. Fucking English. Reminds me of this Renton quote from Trainspotting:

"Some people hate the English, but I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can't even pick a decent culture to the colonized by. We are ruled by effete arseholes. It's a shite state of affairs and all the fresh air in the world will not make any fucking difference."

I've been thinking that those sentences should be written in gold ink. In the preamble of every constitution of every fucking Commonwealth nation in the world. Half the world shared the English affliction at one stage or another, and it's weighed upon some countries heavier than upon others. Just Ireland's poor luck that they got the motherload of English shite.