Well, well, didn't we have psephological fun since we last met with the Westminster and local elections in the North and the Nice Treaty refer-endum in the Republic (a never-endum until Bertie gets the result he wants). In the North both Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's DUP picked up seats, partly at the cost of the SDLP and Ulster Unionists respectively. Anyhow, it should make for an interesting time ahead as The Man Who Always Likes to Say No gets a bit of fire in his belly again (I'm old enough to remember him being severely discomforted in 1976 with the failed loyalist strike then, and in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement). In the long term, don't worry, his day will go again. In the short term - panic like hell.

I must say that I amuse myself as I trundle about thinking of what the election posters don't say that they could say. 'Experience Counts' - add 'for nothing when it comes to ......'. Don't be DUPed. Sin Fine. The Slightly Democratic Leftish Party. The Ulster Onionist Party. Vote Allianz (a big insurance company - Ed). As for the PUPs, they didn't have a dog's chance. The Unionist candidate with the surname Lemon, in east Belfast, adapted the Orange Telecom slogan to "The future's bright, the future's Lemon" but his visual image got 10/10 for location and 0/10 for consistency with a bright future; the Samson and Goliath cranes at Harland and Wolff in Belfast's shipyard is hardly the place to talk about a bright future.

I'll just end off this bit with one wee story from the height of the Troubles, a wee story about a wee woman at a time that bombs were two a penny in Norn Iron. Anyway, this oul wan was out doing her shopping in north/west Belfast when there was a loud 'BOOM'. She stopped a passerby and said; "Was that a bomb?", and got the answer "Yes, I'm pretty sure it was, just about a mile away over there I'd say". "Thank God," sez she, "I was worried it was thunder."!!

Modern marketing has labelling down to a fine art. But it interesting when other things are labelled. Take my local urban park. When I arrived in this neck of the woods a long, long time ago (here we go again - Ed) the whole place felt strange and scary (this was the height of the Troubles), the streets, the people, even the park which I got to know so well over the years, and the first time I walked up that road and over that bridge became just a distant memory. Then recently the city authorities, or at least the parks division, put up signs to proclaim the name of the park and who ran it. The park suddenly felt strange again, that it had to be labelled. And yet it's quite sensible because all too often in life we take for granted what we're familiar with and forget that other people aren't. Personally I think all signs for routes, including walking routes (lost in the hills again then? - Ed), should be tested by 'strangers' before they're launched to see if they are followable. Because sometimes they're not. On another hard tack altogether, I recently bought some Marshall's cereal in my local hupermarket; the packet revealed a logo of a thistle (for Scotland) and 'Maduinn mhath' ( 'good morning' in Scots Gaelic); so, made in Scotland presumably. No. Made in England, the 'Scottish' connection just a trademark. Oh well. So presenting as Scottish rather than English makes cereals sell better?

Baron Kelvin of Largs, the famous scientist/physicist/mathematician (1824 - 1907) was from Norn Iron before Norn Ion was Norn Iron, or more specifically Belfast. His statue in Botanic Gardens there proudly proclaims that he was 'born in Belfast of Ulster lineage' (translation; he was a good Prod born in Belfast). Great scientist and thermometer he may have been but prophet he was not. If my memory serves me rightly [from the original time the predictions were made? - Ed] here are three of his predictions; x-rays were no use, heavier than air flight was impossible, and radio would never catch on. If you were trying to say how 'hot' he was in relation to the correctness of his predictions, you could say he was near absolute zero [Ed- so you're trying to get people to notice your 'clever' scientific reference to the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature, well, it won't work, nobody will get it].

We are over familiar, not to say sick as a dose of Blue Flu*, with the one about the Jew being asked, in the context of Norn Iron, were they a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew. A more advanced variation of this goes as follows:

It was a dark, wet night on the grim back streets of a ghetto in Belfast. A figure hurried homeward, their collar turned up against the cold and damp. Suddenly, out from the shadows stepped another figure with a gun and demanded that the passerby stop and answer a question; "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?" The reply came back - "Neither, I'm a Jew". To which the gun man replied - "OH good, I'm the luckiest Palestinian terrorist in Belfast!" I've told that one to both Israeli Jews and Palestinians and not been hit over the head, I think it's OK as a joke if you take it as absurdist, a mocking of violence, prejudice and geography and not being against the Palestinian cause.

*Blue Flu. Nonviolent activists will be interested, nay absolutely fascinated, to know that this fits Gene Sharp's typology No.112 in his 'The Politics of Nonviolent Action', "Reporting 'sick' (sick-in)". 'Blue flu' was when the Garda Siochana in the Republic all reported in sick in their campaign for better pay and conditions seeing that, legally, they're not allowed strike [Copyright, Arcane Nonviolent Action Features Inc(redible)]

Gene Sharp's typology reminds me of my schooldays. I went to a school with a 'good' name but its glory days were long over. Nevertheless, our cleric principal wanted to Uphold the Fine Reputation of the School (tee hee), and one way he thought to do it was by writing a terrible dirge which he called a School Anthem ('Floreat *******, that sort of rubbish). Next stage was to get the whole school to learn the anthem and be able to sing it at the drop of a cap. Except he hadn't reckoned with Gene Sharp typology numbers 133 and 136 - 'Reluctant and slow compliance' and 'Disguised disobedience' respectively. So 'singing' meant us school students being as half-hearted as we possibly could, and as slow to pick it up as we possibly could, until, eventually - and presumably in some despair - he gave up. 'Floreat *******'' never made it beyond the trial stage, proving more conclusively than our cleric principal ever could that there is a God and that, while the devil may have all the best tunes, we'd be devilled if we were going to sing that bunch of pretentious drivel.

I'll tell you one more story about them days of yore (at least you didn't say 'a long, long time ago -Ed) (but you did - Billy). This school was situated in a town in Norn Iron ('I'll take you home again Kathleen' is the only clue I'll give you) which being Norn Iron was as divided as hell (How do you know hell is divided - Ed) (Course it is - Protestant bigots on one side and Catholic bigots on the other - Billy). But there was an annual inter-schools conference which brought together senior students from the various schools. In preparation for this, there was a meeting between the principal of our school and a teacher, also a cleric, from the Catholic boys grammar school (there, now you can maybe work out which foot I kick with) plus some of their students. The Catholic teacher made, at one point, a fair enough point about 'middle class education' and our principal retorted angrily - "How can you have middle class mathematics!!!". Which showed that he missed the whole point of the comment and really didn't understand the first thing about education, its role in socialisation. And he was the school principal. Happy days.

A long, long time ago I worked a summer in a place called Shinbone near a lake that likes to say 'no', somewhere in Norn Iron, it was on a summer playscheme in a Catholic working class estate where British soldiers sometimes had had their brains blown out. But ordinary people in somewhat extraordinary times. Us playschemers stayed with local families, for a while I stayed with a woman who was murdered a year or two later, why should I feel the need to say her murder was 'not sectarian', the murder of an ordinary, decent, likeable woman? She had a brother who had drowned on the lake a year or two earlier, at an identifiable place, after a misadventure with a speedboat he had bought. The brother had a friend who was in the RUC, who was part of the searchers who looked for, and found, his body after he drowned; this RUC man was subsequently murdered by a school mate of the brother. Do you get the picture? But, before he was killed this RUC man and friend of the drowned man was in the RUC barracks in Shinbone. I don't know how it happened, whether it fell down or someone started leafing through it, an old RIC record book from a century earlier. The brother was drowned on a particular date of a particular year at a particular place on the lake; exactly one hundred years previously, to the day, a man of the identical same name had been drowned at the same place on the lake. Weird. Work out the chances of that.

That same summer in Shinbone I went up the High Street one afternoon to buy a pair of trainers. I was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and my accent wasn't local, so the shop assistant in the shoe shop I went into asked if I was on holiday. No, I said, I'm working on a children's holiday scheme here in Shinbone. Oh yes, said the shop assistant, "Where's that?". I told her the name of the estate. Then, with a totally straight and serious face I was told in no uncertain terms; "You're working in the wrong end of town."!! That from someone ostensibly trying to sell me a pair of shoes. For me that encapsulates the ignorance (in the derogatory sense) of sectarian bigotry in Norn Iron; do something for or with 'them' and it's like doing something against 'us'. The shop assistant couldn't have done more to 'shoe' me out of the shop if she tried.

I have a friend about my age, a friend you understand, not me, who's bald, well pretty bald if that's not a contradiction in terms. It's amazing how many men try to avoid looking bald by combing long locks over the top and gluing them down with superglue, or whatever they use. And all they do is draw attention to how bald they are. So, whatever the weather, vain is the word. My friend, not me you understand, is quite comfortable with the fact of being bald but still gets the odd shock - on seeing the shadow of his head (a round orb with fuzzy bits at the side) or leaning back against a cold wall with no natural insulation to protect his head. He also saves a lock on barber/haircutting bills, so that can't be bad, unless you're in that trade...... So, caps off to all bald men who are proud of the fact (well, actually caps on because they need them in summer to protect their heads from the sun and in the winter to keep warm). Baldies of the world unite - you have nothing to lose (full stop)...

Well, that's it once again, the bare truth, and goodbye for now, slán, hope you have a great summer and not a grating one, Billy.