NorthDownMuse

Midweek Mingle

I went to the weekly MeetUp tonight at a bar called The National, which is in an old bank and looks like this: I met a woman who spent her career working as some kind of tax auditor, but now works in the bakery at Sainsbury’s--a really nice grocery

Homebase

I had lunch yesterday with an old school friend who had come to Belfast to drop her nephew off at the airport. She has spent her adult life in England and is now in the process of moving back to Derry. She’s trying to right herself after going through

Gimmick

I remember a book (that became a film) about a woman who decided to cook all of the recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook and write a blog about it. At the time, there was a spate of similar books. A writer comes up with a gimmick and turns it

Toni Erdmann

After a hard day’s work on the house, David and I went to see not one but TWO films at Queen’s Film Theatre. The first, referenced above, was a German comedy about a man in his early 60s, I’m guessing, trying to connect with his daughter, a

Throwback

Today I made progress on one job: painting the hallway. It took so much out of me that I didn’t make progress on another job that’s been hanging fire: assembling favourite photos. I have a suitcase full of old photos to go through and I can never seem

Butternut squash

I rarely cook. My New Year’s resolution was once/week. I’m not sure that I’m quite making it. It depends on how you define cook. I guess if you count salads, soups, and roast veg I am. My idea of cooking is something that involves a recipe

Weebly

I’ve spent the last month designing a new website for Preventable Surprises. After a few false starts, I used a site called Weebly--the young woman who is helping me out said it’s a better platform than WordPress, which our existing site uses. I’ve had no direction from

Babs

Tonight the book club discussed a book I recommended, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. I love this book because it has three strong female protagonists. One is a forest warden, one a farm wife, and one an orchardist and beekeeper. All three fight against farmers and hunters who use guns

Home

The Seamus Heaney museum is in Bellaghy, where he grew up. It celebrates the connection between his home turf and his poetry. When you enter the museum you get this little audio thingie that you can punch a number into and then hear Heaney read each poem. It’s a

Dearest Derry

Today was beautiful and sunny. I walked along the Foyle then went to mass at St. Eugene’s Cathedral, which I’d never been in before. Here’s an internet photo of the interior: It was a strange service. No hymns. There was a tenor soloist who sang two songs.

What’s the bars, hey?

That’s how you’d say “what’s up” in Derry. I walked along the Foyle this morning with Julie and her dogs. We saw Camp Jack under the Foyle bridge, a caravan that is hq for search teams looking for Jack Glenn, a handsome young man who walked into

St. Columb’s Cathedral

This morning I finished my second edit of the Japanese competitive law article then hit the road for Derry, a half hour later than I had expected. I picked up Mary Richmond, a friend of my mom's, then we went to visit Biddy Walker, who lives in a

Humble Pie, part two

My choir sings one song per service. We’ve practiced that song several times and I know the alto part fairly well, basically through memorisation. I can see that the notes on the page go up and down, but I can’t look at a note and know how it

Humble Pie, part one

One of my professors from Queen’s, Marek Martyniszyn, asked me to proofread a paper he plans to publish in the International & Comparative Law Quarterly. The pay isn’t great, but it’s kind of fun to reconnect with black letter law--now that I’ve put more than a

Symphonic delights

Today I met Ann O’Dwyer for lunch followed by the Ulster Orchestra’s lunchtime concert, which lasts less than an hour. Three pieces of between 10 and 20 minutes each. Just right for my constitution. Here’s a few cool things about the concerts: They are packed. They cost

Petrol

My biggest complaint about living here? When you get petrol, you can’t pay at the pump. You have to go into the store and wait in a queue to pay a cashier. I guess that’s their clever way to make you buy candy bars. Still and all, if

Get the job done

In November, I painted the downstairs hallway and one side of the upstairs hallway. I’d like to paint the other side of the upstairs hallway. This weekend I faced up to the implications of doing that. 1. clean the mouldings. 2. spackle and sand the mouldings and clean them

The Meaning of Work

I wrote recently of what a struggle it is for me to work by myself in a bedroom office every day (I’m supposed to work only three days but I can’t seem to get enough hours in on any one day, so I seem to work four or

10X9

Last night was the 10X9 storytelling event. The theme was Final Frontier and, as usual, it was fascinating to see all the directions people went in. Two told of the difficulty of getting pregnant. Incredibly intimate stories. One man, my favourite storyteller, started with: “70, 76. Those were our numbers.

LLE, LLM, LLR

In the summer of 2014, I applied to the U.K. Home Office for Limited Leave to Enter, which enabled me to live in the U.K. for 2.5 years on a spouse visa. I spent my first year at university, obtaining an LLM, a Master of Laws. And

Rev. Henry Montgomery

Today my choir sang at the installation of a new minister at First Presbyterian Church Dunmurry (Nonsubscribing). The minister, Rev. Linda Ballard, is a member of All Souls Nonsubscribing (my church) and she requested that we sing at the august ceremony, which involved many speeches and readings and prayers by

Dog days

Good news: car passed inspection. Bad news: Vet says Maysie, aka Maydog, aka Her Highness, aka Pumpkin Face has renal failure. I took her in with symptoms related to arthritis. The kidney issue showed up in a blood test. The discussion with the vet was confusing. There’s no end

Why I like my bike

I took the car in this morning for a pre-MOT inspection (MOT is the government’s annual once over to make sure your car is A-OK). Marshall gave me a lift home from the mechanic and I cycled back to get the car. As I was cycling, there were three

Grass is always greener

The first three days of the week I tried to get in a full day’s work for Preventable Surprises each day. I found this extraordinarily difficult. Forcing myself to sit in a room by myself for more than five hours a day is feeling a bit like torture. It’

Snowden

One of the things that make long flights bearable, given my inability to sleep sitting up, is the little TV screen that lets me watch whatever I want. I remember when it was a novelty that there was a single big screen at the front of the cabin and you