Sochalisum

My friend Lesley lives in Belfast these days and she was telling me she had to get up early on Friday morning to do a 12 hour shift followed by a 6 hour shift. You can imagine she wasn't looking forward to it. Anyway she was grumping around and switched the TV on and guess what the first thing she saw was? Yep, me jumping up and down and apparently with the biggest most genuine smile she's ever seen - she was right, it was totally genuine and I was very happy. Anyway it cheered her up and she was telling everyone "that's my friend Anne".

Trouble was, there was no-one else there but that's nothing new for Lesley, she's quite happy to talk to herself from time to time. Certainly happier talking to herself than some of the new friends she's acquired since arriving in Belfast. She went on a protest against George Bush when he visited a couple of months back and made the grave error of giving her number to some "socialists" she met there. They've not stopped phoning since and it's driving her mad. Apparently they call up and say "we're going to watch a video about the miners' strike in nineteen canteen, do you fancy coming?"! Lesley is genuinely quite shocked and almost offended that they think she'd spend her Saturday night doing that. I laughed as she was telling me this particularly as she described them as lovely people but "you know the type, all grungy, not very streetwise and STILL like Nirvana"! As I say I laughed and kept to myself the fact that the best party I ever had was in January when a big group of us watched by election coverage from 1988 and 1989! But that's different ... isn't it?