The Siege.

 It's the twelfth of July in Northern Ireland. I'm trapped in my house. The streets are running sticky with Buckfast, the skies are black with smoke. You can smell burning. It's a hot muggy day, but you can't open the windows for the whiff of charred tyres. I can't hear the bands here, but I can hear the neighbor across the road, who has been pruning his hedge with a chainsaw for the last two hours. Meanwhile, Susan, who was working last night - looking after the sick and the vulnerable - is trying to sleep over the cunt's noise. He's alright - he's got noise reduction headphones on. He probably hasn't got a clue. This is the same bloke who shines his halogen security light right into our living room. I should say something. But I haven't said anything. It's a quarter to four and Susan still isn't up. That's not usually a good sign. 

I was feeling low yesterday. Kelly's death day always flattens me, but it was unusually acute this year. I don't know why. It doesn't go away. You find ways of working round it, and you become very adept at dodging out of its way. But it sits there, immovable. And, in fact, it pops up in various ways that you have little control over and can't predict. It's just miserable luck that she died the day before the Twelfth, the day that the town closes down, when everyone goes away. The day before the littering and the pissing, the military bombast and the sheer threat of it all. The day the shut ins are truly shut in. The day the bullies have their way. And the day I really feel like I live in a foreign, alien country. It adds to the mood, the oppressiveness, the feeling that you're hemmed in on all sides. Like the prick with his searchlight and his grating noise. The noise he has protected himself from. 

A man died building a bonfire this year. He fell off it. It was a small one, too - only fifty feet. The Craigyhill bonfire, nearby, was a 203 feet monster, a world record. After the accident, they were apparently going to stop building it, until the dead man's sister and mother came to them and told them he would have wanted them to finish it. Now, that is how you do PR. 

203 feet of flame in a small Northern Irish town. It's taller than the Birmingham International Airport Control Tower by five feet. The news showed footage of nearby houses being boarded up, the windows protected from melting. A fat ugly man confirmed that everyone in the area was 100% behind the world beating funeral pyre. I'm sure. As the paint blistered on their windowsills. And I'm equally certain that if just one person had  complained, they would have nodded and respectfully dismantled the "boney", and that person would have suffered no reprisals whatsoever. Luckily, it never came to that. 

They still have pictures of people they, Loyalists, don't like, on the fires. Usually political figures, and quite often women. They don't seem to be that keen on women. The deputy leader of Sinn Fein was described as "a slut". The fires are still adorned with the letters "K.A.T." which stands for "Kill All Taigs". A "Taig" is, of course, a Catholic. This is presented as a laugh. High spirits. As though it were puckish satire rather than, say, hate speech. Anywhere else in the world this would be illegal. Here it's a holiday. Why would anyone think it was anything more than top quality banter, in a country where sectarian factions have been murdering each other for fifty years? Lighten up. Like a bonfire, yeeow.   

He's stopped his aural assault now. In any case, Susan is up now and slept through it. So I was merely projecting my anxiety on her behalf. I'm anxious. 

I've been attempting to bury my mother's ashes. A few months ago I e-mailed a priest in Cavan, to arrange it. We agreed a date and he asked me to e-mail him three weeks before the agreed date, and we could work out the arrangements. Which seemed fair enough, so I did just that. It was last Wednesday. No reply. I e-mailed again on the Friday. No reply. I e-mailed again on Monday. No reply. I tracked down a telephone number for him and was going to ring him today, but this morning I received an e-mail from someone from the Cavan diocese called Rosaleen, asking for a contact number. I replied immediately and - no one rang me. I sent another e-mail to Rosaleen asking her to send me a contact number, as I was keen to finalize the arrangements quickly. No reply. 

She's got until noon tomorrow. Then I start ringing. I don't want to be an uptight Englishman, but they're forcing my hand. My family are traveling over here for the service, and I don't even know what form the service is going to take or what time it's on. It's been months. I need closure. 

And I think I need to move. I've been here a long time.