The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Northern Ireland Assembly

First of all, apologies if you don't live in Northern Ireland, because you're not going to care about this in the slightest. However, over the past week, at least several people have asked me who they should vote for in the upcoming elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly, and it has become apparent that the reason for such a flurry of questioning is that most people (ie at least 2 of my acquaintances) don't actually know what the Northern Ireland Assembly is, or how it works.

Thankfully, WhyNotSmile is here, as ever, to help.

Secondly, i have no special insider information on any of this; I just read it on Wikipedia. So don't take it as Gospel.

1. What is the Northern Ireland Assembly?

The Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) is a group of people who've been elected (of which, more presently) by the rest of us to keep things running. So they keep an eye on things like schools, hospitals and, apparently, heating systems. There are some things they're not allowed to meddle in, because it's important for Westminster to have something to do, so, for instance, they can't suddenly make us use funny currency, or declare war on the Isle of Man. There's a whole list of things that they can't do ever, and then there's a list of things that they can't do yet, but might be allowed to do in the future if they demonstrate that they wouldn't make a pig's ear of it, and then they're allowed to do everything else, unless they do something that no one's thought of yet but that it seems unwise for them to meddle in, in which case that thing might be added to one of the first 2 lists.

So, the Assembly has 108 members, called MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly). It has recently been decided that we could live without some of these MLAs (in general; not specific ones), so the number is being cut down. But we'll come back to that. They all have debates about what they think they should do, and then the DUP override it with the Petition of Concern (which we'll also come back to), and every now and then they all have a Proper Fight and the whole thing collapses for a while while they go to a fancy hotel and figure out what to do next. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it means more Mark Devenport on my TV *swoon*.

Now, the things the Assembly is allowed to do are divided into Departments, like the Department of Education and the Department of Sports and Other Kinds of Fun (they keep changing these names; these are just examples). So, every department has to have someone in charge of it, and the people in charge of the departments are called the Executive. I shall explain later how they decide who gets to be in charge.

So the Executive are in charge of departments, and then they all have sub-committees (which I think are made up of some of the other MLAs, and maybe some Civil Servants and stuff; I dunno) to actually do stuff, and the Assembly debates what stuff they should do. Roughly.

2. How Does The Northern Ireland Assembly Work?

Now, before we start, it's important to establish that, when it comes to how the Northern Ireland Assembly "works", we need to somewhat broaden our definition of the word "works". In your average situation, when we say that something "works", we imply that it functions, in a reasonably consistent manner, in order to achieve something useful. In this case, though, that's expecting a bit much. The Northern Ireland Assembly "works" in the same way that my 2-year-old "helps" when I'm doing the vacuuming: energy is expended, noise is made, and a lot of praise is accepted at the end, but if we're being honest, the whole thing would proceed much more efficiently if he could be plonked in front of the TV and remain uninvolved. However, also like my 2-year-old, there are large swathes of Northern Irish society who are much better when kept where we can see them, and putting them in the Assembly is (marginally) cheaper than putting them in prison (there being, of course, an uncommon proportion of our Elected Representatives who have tried both).

So, what happens is this: we have elections. Northern Ireland is split into 18 constituencies (soon to be cut to 17, though I'm unclear who we're ditching). A constituency is an area, like, East Belfast (yeo), Fermanagh and South Tyrone, or South Down. Each constituency has, until now, been allowed to choose 6 MLAs, but this is being cut to 5, to save money or something. So this will give us 85 MLAs instead of 108. Each party can choose some candidates to stand for election in each area, and random individuals can put themselves forward too. Then they all spend a fortune putting posters up all over the place, because it is well known that people often think "Oh, I was going to vote for Candidate X with all those great policies they're putting forward, but now that I've seen an actual photo of Candidate Y I will vote for him instead". I suppose that's what happens when you have candidates who look as responsible, efficient and majestic as Jim Allister and Edwin Poots.

Then we all vote, or at least 12% of us vote (in some cases, several times each), and the winners are announced. Now, it is worth considering the method of voting which is used, because this is one of the key bits that no one seems to understand. The Assembly Elections use a system called the Single Transferrable Vote. I plan to explain this in more detail in a future post, but for now it can be summarised thus: you vote by putting numbers instead of an X. So you can vote for lots of people, in order of preference, and if your first choice doesn't get in, then your second choice counts instead.

This is important in Northern Ireland, where vast numbers of people base their view almost entirely on who they don't want to win. Traditionally, one would spot a new, forward-thinking, progressive party, and one would think "I would like to vote for them, but then that's one less vote for Us Lot, so it's basically a vote for Them Lot, so I shall not vote for this new, forward-thinking, progressive party, but instead I shall vote for Us Lot, just to be safe". Under the Single Transferrable Vote system, one can take a punt, as it were, on smaller parties (I don't mean literally take a punt, before someone tries to sail up the Lagan on Naomi Long), and then put the big parties towards the end, so that if the smaller party candidate doesn't win, then your vote gets passed on to the Us Lot party of your choice.

Then someone, somewhere, does some complicated maths, and figures out which 5 people have won in each area. Those 5 people become MLAs.

Next, we have to form the Executive. Now, there are 3 "groups" of parties in Northern Ireland. There's "Them", there's "Us" and there's the "Wishy Washies" (each MLA declares which group they're in). The biggest party in the group with the biggest number of MLAs gets to nominate the First Minister. This is considered Brilliant, although it's never been entirely clear to me what the First Minister does. Having said that, I'm not sure what the Prime Minister does either, but I'm fairly sure it's broadly similar. The biggest party in the group with the second biggest number of MLAs gets to nominate the Deputy First Minister, who does roughly the same as the First Minister.

Then we need to put someone in charge of each department. I'm not entirely clear how this works. First, I think each party has to decide whether it wants to be in the Executive (so a party could, in theory, get loads more votes than everyone else, but decide they don't want any actual responsibility, and therefore not go into the Executive; this puts them in Opposition). Then, of all the ones that want to play, they get allowed to choose some Departments, in proportion to how many MLAs they got.

So, let's say that there are 3 parties who have agreed to go into the Executive. Party A has 25 MLAs, Party B has 15 MLAs, and Party C has 10 MLAs. So 50 in all. Then, let's say there are 8 departments. Party A has half the MLAs, so they get 4 departments. Party B has 15/50 MLAs, so that's 3/10, which is about 1/4, so they get 2 departments. Then C get a fifth, so that's one department. Then there's another formula to figure out how to split up the spare department. I'm not sure how they decide who gets which department; maybe it's like picking teams in school, where you take it in turns to choose. I dunno.

What I DO know is that no one is allowed the Department of Justice unless they're one of the middle ground parties, because it's obvious to everyone that Us Lot and Them Lot wouldn't trust each other with a bucket of water, let alone actual justice. Probably with good reason, let's face it.

Now, the one aspect of all this that we haven't discussed is the Petition of Concern, which was designed to stop Them Lot ganging up on Us Lot, but seems to have morphed into a way of big parties stopping anyone else from doing anything at all that they don't like. The key here is that if a party can get 30 MLAs, they can use the Petition of Concern all over the place to stop anything they just don't like the look of. Other parties have proposed changing the PoC so that this can't happen, but obviously the proposal was blocked by the people who are Quite Happy with how things are, thank you very much.

There's also the Speaker, but I have literally no clue what they do; I think they're essentially a glorified referee, but don't quote me on that.

So, to summarise: you're voting for the people who'll run the place, and it's all designed to be very representative, so basically you should vote for whoever you want and not vote for whoever you don't want, and it'll all be more or less fine.

I trust this helps.

What I Want For Christmas, By the mother of a 1-year-old

So it's the festive season again, and Facebook is again going nuts over whether we're allowed or not allowed to say Merry Christmas. Here's a clue: we are. I've never seen a convincing example of anyone, ever, being told they weren't allowed to wish someone a Merry Christmas (apart from, like, in the middle of June, because Sod Off), or of anyone actually being offended by being wished a Merry Christmas when they don't actually celebrate it. But why let the facts get in the way of a good Facebook share, eh? Also, if you have, like, Themmuns in your workplace, is it really the end of the world to wish them Happy Holidays instead? You know, I used to do some work with a Jewish guy; this one time I even told him to have a happy Hanukkah. We all appear to still be here. Makes you think.

Anyway, people keep asking me what I want for Christmas, and I have to say that once you have a child, things change, although not in the ways you might think. I mean, some mothers will say "All I want for Christmas is to see my child's face lighting up with the magic of the day". Those people can feck right off for a start, along with the "All I want is for my friends to be happy" brigade.

Most of the things I want are unobtainable, of course. Baby Smile to sleep through the night, for instance. A nice warm jumper that a) I like and B) doesn't cost the earth. My house to be about 2 feet wider so that the bedroom has room for the cot and therefore Baby Smile might actually sleep in it and not all over our bed. A extra hand, lol. But there's no point in dwelling on what one cannot have, naturally.

There also exists a long list of things I do not want:

* Anything that occupies actual space in my house. Ain't no room for THAT at the inn, let me tell you. This inn is all full right up with plastic toys in various shades of lurid. If we could turn all that plastic back into oil, we'd have enough resources to provoke an international conflict and blame it on Themmuns.

* Anything involving effort, like a spa day. I saw these advertised "For Mum For Christmas". Please, no. A spa day, like. If I'm using up a full day's worth of babysitting, I want to use my time to nap, read and color in, not go to the effort of getting dressed in proper clothes and then driving across town so I can lie naked on a bed sniffing a candle that's infused with the scent of some forest I'm not in, while someone rubs hot stones all over me. And it doesn't help if you offer to babysit, by the way, because let's face it, I don't trust you with my one and only child. If you want to try babysitting, go find someone with 4 kids; they'll hand them out like Smarties if it means they get a quiet half hour.

So, here are some things I'd like:

* A retractable clothes line. I've actually asked my mother in law for this, so here's hoping.
* A nap.
* To not be invited out to all manner of Christmas Events. Trust me, it's extremely unlikely that I'll find any of these preferable to an evening on the sofa. I can cope with Christmas Day if I get a good rest in the run-up, but all else is hassle.
* To make a gingerbread house which doesn't fall apart before being eaten. I've bought all the bits for this; just need to Google how to do the icing. Gingerbread houses are not hard to make (if you buy them flat-packed from IKEA), and they make you feel all Pinterest Mom.
* Some way of cutting my baby's nails that doesn't involve me having to either sneak up on him in his sleep (thus making him scared to go to sleep, and my life getting immeasurably worse) or trying to do it while he's awake and stabbing myself in the face while I try not to cut him.
* Self-ironing clothes which can also be tumble dried and which don't look like plastic. It's almost 2016, science. Get your act together.
* A couple more small wet bags for nappies. I meant to ask for these and forgot. Preferably ones with elephants or foxes or owls.
* A bar of chocolate the size of my head.
* After Eights. I fricken love After Eights.

That is all. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

How To Solve a Very Specific Computer Problem

It's too early to say "I'm back" to blogging, but, y'know, "Hi. How've you been?". I'm thinking of writing a series of posts about Pregnancy, Childbirth and Baby Management, and then making them into a book so I can make loads of money. But I probably won't get round to it.

In the meantime, a Thing went wrong with my tablet (Google Nexus 10), and i tried all the Things the internet suggested, and none of them fixed it, and then I fixed it myself, so I thought I'd throw my method out there in case it helps the grand pool of knowledge created by humankind.

So, the problem was thus: tablet charger broke. Tablet ran out of power. Ordered new charger. Waited. Charger arrived. Charged tablet. Turned tablet on. Tablet won't stay connected to WiFi for more than 20 seconds.

At some point in this process, the tablet upgraded to Android Lollipop. I think it was after charging it up, and before the WiFi disconnecting thing.

So I Google it (in increasingly irritating 20 second bursts), and I find that this is a Known Issue with Android Lollipop, and I think " Well, good, then, there'll be a solution ". But I can't find a solution; I can only find " suggestions ". I decide to try them, in the following order:

1. Switch tablet off and back on - nothing
2. Switch modem off and on - have to wait for Mr Smile to go to work before I can try this, so he doesn't think I broke the internet. Still doesn't help.
3. Switch router off and on - I'm not sure how this is different from switching the modem off and on, so I skip it. Come to think of it, I don't really know that that was the modem I switched off in step 2. Anyway, we're no further on.
4. Get the tablet to forget the network and then reenter it. This step doesn't work because my tablet is a freaking encyclopaedia of networks, apparently, and it doesn't have the " forget" option anywhere.
5. Try switching it off and on again.
6. Connect to the modem directly by entering the IP address, and change the channel the network is broadcasting on. This is almost guaranteed to end in disaster, but thankfully the tablet won't connect to anything.
7. Update all your apps to the most recent version. I'd love to do this, but I have 37 pending updates and can only update in 20 second bursts. I struggle on gamely through the first 3, and give up.
8. Fiddle with the WiFi settings. This sounds suspiciously vague, but I'm willing to try anything by this point, so I toggle things on and off at random. I come across something that tells me to press the WPS button on the modem, and I do it anyway because Sod It All.
9. Rewind your operating system to KitKat, but back up your data first. This involves a process so complex that I can't even be bothered sitting through the 300 20 second bursts that it'll take to read about it, so I give up.

So the internet is Out Of Ideas, but I am not. Here's what I did next, which fixed it:
1. Went to my sister's house. Realised my tablet was happily connected to her network. Started downloading updates.
2. Got interrupted by my nephew wanting to play the animal game on my tablet, so stopped downloading updates.
3. Went home. WiFi disconnecting immediately, and I realise I only let about 4 updates actually download. And they're stuff like the Asda app, which are hardly likely to be causing the issue.
4. Became despondent.
5. But realised that the problem seems to be only with my home network.
6. Concocted plan to get a neighbour's password.
7. Opened WiFi settings and looked at the network again. Decided to type in the wrong password, in a bid to anger it. It whined that it couldn't save the network settings because the password was wrong.
8. And then the WiFi stopped disconnecting.

You're welcome.

Still blogging

A few people have asked me recently "still blogging?" and I'm like "well, yes, but not, like, actively of anything".

I realised I forgot to announce the arrival of Baby Smile back in August, but yes, he's here now and extremely nice. I keep doing weird things since he's been born, like being almost in tears at the thought of entering a baby in a "Most Beautiful Baby" contest, because imagine if you did that and then your baby didn't win. One day I cried because he kicked his sock out of the pram and lost it, and then the following week I was walking along the same road and found it.

Anyway, I'm vaguely working on the WhyNotSmile Guides to Pregnancy and to Baby Care. They're going to be fabulous.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The World Cup

After the raging success of the WhyNotSmile Guide To The Elections (which went what I call "viral", receiving upwards of 19 hits), it has been requested that I produce a Guide to the World Cup, which is a football thing that starts today. So here goes.

Football
We need to begin by understanding the concept of football. Essentially, football is a sport which involves 2 teams battling it out to see who can get a ball into a net the most often. To make it twice as easy, they have a net at each end of the 'pitch', but they also allow you to keep one of your team members in the net at all times, to try to stop the ball from going in.

Things get more advanced than this, of course. For instance, if you kick someone else and they fall down, then they get to have a special attempt at kicking the back into the net, called a penalty. Sometimes you're allowed to line up all your players between them and the net, to try to block the ball, but this doesn't always happen, and I'm not sure why. Also, at the end of the allotted time, if both teams have got the back into the net the same number of times, then they get to do a penalty shoot-out, and then Germany win. I'm not sure why this happens either.

Then there is the offside rule, which I'm not supposed to be able to understand because I'm a girl. In reality, of course, I understand many things which are much more complex than the offside rule, like the rules of social engagement, which appear to pass many footballers by; the reason I don't understand the offside rule is that I just don't give a fiddler's fart.

In addition to the two teams, there is also a chap called the 'referee' who runs about and tries to make them stick to the rules. Fans have lots of chants about referees, many of whom appear to be "bankers".  I assume this is why football is often played on bank holidays.

The Teams
Now, for the World Cup, there is a team from every country who want to send one, but of course they can't all play each other in a fortnight because there are, like, 200* countries who have football teams, so if they were all going to play a sort of knockout tournament where the winner of each match progresses to the next round, then there would have to be 8 rounds, but the first one would have, like, 100 matches going on, and in total you would have 255 matches, and the wallchart would just be too big for the wall.

* I don't know. I made that up.

And even worse, if you had to insist that each team played every other team, then there would be, like, 200! matches happening, where 200! means "200 factorial", and not just 200 said with a gasp, and since 200! is too big for my calculator to even work it out, we would basically be watching football forever.

So instead they have matches ahead of time to see who is good enough to qualify for the finals, and teams like Northern Ireland fluke their way through every now and then, but mostly it's teams who are actually good, and also England. I think they let England play every time because they invented football or something.

It's always important to establish who's actually still in the thing if you want to sound competent in work when the topic comes up; I once spent a fortnight supporting Republic of Ireland before being taken to one side and told they hadn't qualified that time. In some workplaces, of course, they'd just have given me Ireland in the office sweepstake (of which more later) and been done with it.

So if someone asks you which team you're supporting, you want to say the name of a country; preferably one that's good at football, or England.

The 2014 World Cup
Now, each time they have the thing (which is every 4 years), they have it in a different place. This is decided by some manner of corruption or something, rather than by my preferred method of keeping it like Eurovision, where the place that won last time gets to host it this time round. Anyway, this year it's in Brazil, and if you fancy going over to it you should probably take a paintbrush and be ready to give them hand with painting the lines on, for it is widely believed that things Aren't Quite Ready Yet. Next time round it's in Qatar, which is a real place and is too hot to play football in.

World Cup Traditions
Now, regardless of whether you like football or not, you can still get into the spirit of things by involving yourself in one of the many time-honoured traditions which have sprung up around it. These include:

• Sticker albums: produced by Panini, these are like scrapbooks, but with spaces for stickers with footballers on them. You can often get the album for free, and then spend approximately £3800 on stickers, in a futile bid to collect them all. The stickers come in little packets, and the idea is that you swap them with your friends in school until everybody has all of them; naturally, the people who make the stickers ensure that a chosen few are really rare, and these become valuable currency in playgrounds across the country. It used to be that sticker albums were the preserve of the pre-teen boy, but now with EBay and everything, access to stickers for "swapsies" is wider, thus restoring the dream to adults as well. Note to adult males: women do not generally consider this to be impressive behaviour.
• The Office Sweepstake: this happens in every office in the land when the World Cup is on.  Basically, you get a list of all the teams who are playing, and then throw them in a box (except usually you can't find a box, so someone cups their hands and you put them in there), and then you allocate everyone in the office a team or a number of teams. Everyone pays a pound and whoever's team wins gets to keep all the money at the end.  More advanced systems involve 'seeding' the teams, or having first, second and third prizes, but this really makes no difference, because there's always one person in the office who always wins, every. freaking. time. (yes, Alex, I'm looking at you). Obviously a challenge is presented if you have more people in your office than there are teams playing, but this can be resolved by sub-dividing the office into more manageable groups.
• Wallcharts: a staple of every World Cup, ever, the Wallchart usually comes free with The Mirror about a fortnight before it all kicks off. Even I have been known to end up with a World Cup wallchart, and take great delight in filling it all in.  The essential components are: lots of pictures of flags; some enlightening commentary on each of the teams; and the actual Chart bit.  The Chart bit lists the various 'pools', and the scheduled matches, and there's a little space for you to write in the score for each match. Then when it all progresses to the quarter finals and so on, you get to write in the matches and the winners and stuff.  For some reason, it's all completely glorious fun.
• Anthems: every time, some trendy band are asked to write a World Cup anthem for everyone to sing when they cheer on England to their certain victory.  It's usually crap, so then some band that no one has heard of comes out with something much better and unofficial, and everyone sings that instead. The vital ingredients are references to: 1966 (the last time England won), the hurt which has engulfed the nation ever since, curry, beer and a lot of cheering because this will be Our Year.

So the World Cup kicks off tonight, and you can now prepare yourself for every conversation you will have between now and July 13th.  I trust this helps.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Upcoming Elections

Now, we have elections coming up here in Belfast on 22nd May, and a number of people* have asked for guidance on how the process works, who to vote for, and so on. So it is as a Public Service that I hereby present The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Upcoming Elections.

* 1 person, plus my husband, who didn't actually ask but got told anyway

How The Process Works
Now, there are various types of election, and they require voting in different ways. This can be confusing for the amateur voter, but is easily resolved by reading the instructions at the top of the voting form, or by asking the person who hands you the form to start with. There are generally 2 methods:

1. The one where you put an X beside one person's name
This is quite simple, so long as you're careful not to accidentally write your name or draw a smiley face or something in any of the other boxes or on the rest of the page. 30 seconds of self-control and you're grand.

2. The one where you put all the people in order of how much you like them
This is Voting For The More Advanced Citizen. You put a 1 beside the person you like the most. Then you put a 2 beside the person you like the next most, and so on, until you get to all the people you don't like at all, at which point you stop. It's a bit like in school when you got to be team captain and choose who you wanted in order of how much you wanted them, except that this time you can stop when you get down to the riff-raff, and not be stuck with the likes of me on your team, all over-enthusiasm and skill-less-ness. It also means I get to sit on the sidelines and read my book, rather than accidentally ending up elected to something, so everyone's happy.

What You're Voting For
The next question must be: what are we voting for? What are these people going to do? There are essentially 5 possibilities here:

1. Local Councils
These are the people who collect the bins and get rid of dog poo. For this you want your basic Responsible Type, who can sit through a meeting without stabbing annoying people in the face, and who understands how dumps work and that sort of thing. These are Details People. If they call at your door looking for votes, you should quiz them on things like what can go in the recycling bins, and where to catch the bus into town on a Saturday.

2. The Northern Ireland Assembly
This is Where It All Happens, or so the occupants like to think. This lot decide how we spend all the money that we get from England, and whether The Gays can get married or not, so it's Quite The Place. Mostly, of course, the DUP and Sinn Fein spend the time shouting at each other, so for this you want someone who's not too easily wound up by twits. It's probably going to be a choice between a series of people who think they're quite important, and then one or two who might actually Make Stuff Happen; contrary to historical practice, it might be worth trying to identify one of the latter, and giving them a shot at it.

3. Westminster
This is the person who gets to fly to London and claim duck houses from the taxpayers. Now, generally this will end up being the same person who's been doing it for the last 50 years (or, if they have recently retired, their son), but I urge you all to follow the example of East Belfast from last time around and vote for someone who'll actually Do Stuff, and not just fanny about naming leisure centres after themselves. But, of course, it's up to you.

4. Europe
Every now and then we get to send people to Europe. I'm not entirely sure what they do; I think it's mostly about organising fishing. Anyway, for this one we want to send someone nice, rather than someone who's going to make us look like we couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery without first separating the brewery into 'themuns' and 'usuns', drawing flags all over the place and then parading past each other singing about how we beat you 3000 years ago so NAH! Seriously, nobody in Europe cares. Let's try and not look like idiots in front of Angela Merkel.

5. Some sort of referendum
From time to time you'll get an election paper where the options are just 'yes' and 'no' instead of being people's names. This is a referendum, and you just have to say what you think is the right answer to the question. It's sort of like a survey, but there's no prize draw for completing it.

So we see that it is important to establish what the election is all about and what sort of person we require before we move on to the next step.

Who To Vote For
Now we come to the more important question: who to vote for. There are a series of steps involved in this decision.

1. If you have the option of voting for Naomi Long, always vote for Naomi Long.
She has personally promised Mr Smile that she will reduce tax on crisps when she becomes Prime Minister. And also, she's not a twit, which is Quite New for Northern Irish politics. She organises debates in parliament and has not yet named anything in the constituency after herself. I'm thinking of getting her to cut the ribbon on my new living room once the decorating is done.

2. If you do not have the option of voting for Naomi Long, try moving house, preferably to East Belfast.
I appreciate that this is not an option for everyone: some of you, for instance, will have to stay in the likes of Fermanagh to milk the cows and so on. But it's worth a shot if you're able to try it.

3. If you have moved to East Belfast and still do not have the option of voting for Naomi Long, it may be that it's Not That Type Of Election.
You should probably have had the foresight to look into this before you went to all the effort of moving house, but East Belfast is nice and we're glad you're here anyway. Please familiarise yourself with the recycling regulations.

If you do end up unable to vote for Naomi Long, then you may have to decide for yourself. At this point, it is useful to know a bit about the various parties.

The Unionists
These will generally have a name containing the letter 'U', and a logo with a British flag on it. The exceptions to this are the New Kid on the Block, NI21, because they're trying to be all cool and stuff, and UKIP, who have a 'U', but not in the Northern Irish sense (and are only Unionist in the technical sense, not in true Northern Irish fashion). We can summarise the Unionists as follows:

Ulster Unionists
Bonkers level: moderate
Key facts: led by Mike who used to read the news, the UUP is the party of choice for those who want to keep Sinn Fein out, but think the DUP are a bit mental. All in favour of the traditional bastions of life, such as parades and flags, but think it's a bit undignified to come out on the streets about it.

Democratic Unionists
Bonkers level: high
Key facts: the DUP have many years of experience of getting very odd people into highly unsuitable jobs. Like the health minister who thinks The Gays are all contaminated and won't let them give blood in case they spread Gay to the rest of us. Or the one who kicked up a big fuss because he wanted creationist displays alongside the Finn McCool displays at the Giant's Causeway. They're all terribly, terribly earnest, of course, but if you met any of them in the back of a pub (which you wouldn't), you'd feel inclined to back away slowly and in as heterosexual a way as you could manage.

Traditional Unionist Voice
Bonkers level: off the scale
Key facts: formed by people who left the DUP because it was too wishy-washy, these guys mean business. They rarely achieve it, due to all being completely mental.

NI21
Bonkers level: unclear, but initially not, apparently, too bad
Key facts: formed not that long ago, they haven't really got themselves together yet. You probably still have time to sign up as their Euro candidate. Policies appear to depend on what will get them lots of votes, and I don't think even they have high expectations of winning much. Still, they all seem quite nice.

PUP
Bit scary.

Sort-of Unionists

UKIP
Bonkers level: they're either very very bonkers or extremely cunning. Quite possibly both
Key facts: you can cost them money by sending stuff to their Freepost address, but only up to Large Letter size. You can also not vote for them, and you can improve things further by voting for someone else instead.

NI Conservatives
Bonkers level: no idea
Key facts: no idea. They all look very earnest on their posters though, and are clearly wearing their best suits.

The Nationalists
Generally these have logos featuring lots of green (although so do the Greens and Conservatives). There are two kinds:

Sinn Fein
Bonkers level: more scary than bonkers
Key facts: they are very keen to stress that violence is not the way forward. Any more.

SDLP
Bonkers level: not at all bonkers in any way. Also not very interesting.
Key facts: they still exist.

The Others
There are a few parties out there who are not really all that fussed about The Border, and prefer to concentrate on things like the economy and making it easier to cycle. They are:

Alliance
Bonkers level: not generally bonkers at all, though I'd say David Ford could liven up a party if you filled him with whiskey
Key facts: people argue that they can't vote Alliance because they sit on the fence too much, without recognising that the fence is fine; it can give you a commanding view of the surrounding area, and you can maybe sort out the economy and healthcare and stuff while you're up there, instead of arsing about on the ground yapping about parades. Also, flegs.

The Greens
Bonkers level: highly variable
Key facts: the sort of people you meet in the pub, with fabulous big ideas that are completely implausible but also brilliant. If they actually got put in charge, the place would be in pieces by lunchtime, but you definitely want a few of them about to keep everything grounded.

Independents
Bonkers level: suspect
Key facts: I'm always suspicious of people who don't belong to a party but stand for election. It's like people who are self-employed; you sort of assume they're lazy and don't like being told what to do.

So those are your options, and it is important to choose wisely. I trust this helps.

The Sam Thompson Bridge: WhyNotSmile Investigates

So they opened a whole new bridge in Belfast, and, since I would basically go to the opening of an envelope, you can imagine my excitement. Even better, this bridge is part of a scheme to connect my house to The Dock Café*, thus joining up my two favourite places and enabling me to cycle between them with ease.

* This may not be the actual aim of the scheme

So naturally, I had to be there. I got off to a shaky start when crossing the road over to the bridge, as I was joined on the crossing by a lady with a microphone headset thing, and a lady wearing the sort of coat you wear if you're about to open a bridge, and I figured they were probably Something To Do With It, until the lady in the coat said "Is this the bridge?", and then I thought maybe this was just the sort of event you're supposed to wear a posh coat to. Particularly as this was roughly the view we had at this point:

Yes, love, this is the bridge.

Anyway, I got to the start of the bridge and was generally in the way, because I had my bike and it was quite a tight squeeze, but on the other hand I didn't want to chain it up because then I might Miss All The Fun. Some local dignitaries arrived, plus the First Minister and Minister for Local Development (I think that's what he is; anyway, I later heard him say nasty things about the Lord Mayor, so I don't like him, because that's just not a Nice Thing To Do). So they all got sent onto the bridge, and then the rest of us were ushered forwards. All the other cyclists pushed their bikes, but I cycled because then I got to be the first person to cycle across it, and it's not like there's much else in my life I can boast about.

We stopped in the middle for Speeches And A Poem, and then they declared the bridge open, and the fire brigade from the airport squirted a big jet of water across the river, which was exciting but also a bit "Ha ha we can make a bridge too".

Then we got given wristbands, so they could keep count, and I asked for an extra one for my unborn child* and got one, and then my wristband had a red spot which meant I had won a prize, so I got quite excited. At some point I also got given some keyrings. So we carried on to the far side of the bridge, where lots of people had gathered to come across from the other direction, and I annoyed quite a few of them by ramming them with my bike. Anyway, the atmosphere was very jolly, so I just kept smiling and walking.

(* Yes. For those of you who haven't heard, Baby Smile is due to make an appearance in September. I would post a scan photo, but, while my child is undoubtedly exceptionally talented in many ways, those ways do not include "Looking any different from any other baby in an ultrasound scan". Feel free to imagine any baby scan photo you've ever had to fake-smile at, and that's basically close enough.)

Next step was to track down The Former Housemate Formerly Known As Dozavtra, which I did by standing completely still until she phoned me to see where I was, and then came to find me. So we crossed back over the bridge because she hadn't crossed it yet, and then back over to get back to her starting point, and then we claimed my prize, which was tickets to a play. I was one wristband away from winning an iPod Shuffle, but still.

Then Former Housemate Formerly etc went off to go back to her car, and I cycled back across the bridge, panicking slightly because they were closing it off to let a fun run through, and much as the park that the bridge goes to is very nice, I didn't really want to be trapped in it forever, or even for as long as the fun run was going to take.

So all in all, it was very pleasant and we had a nice time, and I recommend going to see the bridge if you're in the area.

On Why I Need Christ During Christmas

So the Atheists are back, and they have a new billboard (because all the best-spirited debate happens when billboards get involved) in Times Square. It's animated (because why should Jesus have all the tacky adverts?); it starts off by saying "Who needs Christ during Christmas?", and then there's a bit of CGI whizziness and it changes to "Nobody needs Christ during Xmas".

Now, first of all, I appreciate that there are plenty of atheists out there who are facepalming at this; the ones who mocked the atheist bus campaign, and who hide under cushions when Richard Dawkins goes off on one again. And secondly, if they have the money and want to buy screentime, who am I to stop them?

But mainly I want to discuss their key point, that nobody needs Christ at Christmas. Firstly, this is a stupid argument to make, because, as any student of logic will tell you, you can't prove that something doesn't exist, whether that something is God, or a blue elephant, or "a person who needs Christ at Christmas"*. I'm being pedantic here, but a certain brand of atheist would go nuts if this was the other way around, so I'm not going to feel bad about it.

* It's a bit more complex than this, but still.

But secondly, and this is my main point today, I'm going to disagree with them, put my hands up, and say "I do. I need Christ this Christmas". I can't prove it to you, or use logic to persuade you, because I don't have a logical, rational argument (mainly because my life insists on being illogical and irrational). And I know that for some, only the logical and rational will suffice, but for me, I need there to be something else.

I need Christ because Christmas fills me with dread. At the darkest, coldest, most difficult time of the year, I'm expected to be merry and bright; I'm expected to go to parties; when all I want is the safety of bed and quiet and warm, I have to organise, plan, attend, pretend to enjoy, and I need Christ because I need to hear "You're enough, as you are. You're loved and accepted on the bad, grumpy, teary days as much as you are on the happy, excited, joyful days. You don't need to do more or be more. You're enough, and you're loved".

I need Christ because I often don't like myself; I hear criticism where none is meant; I hear sarcasm and anger when I need gentle words and compassion; and every time the fear rises and the anxiety comes and I need Christ because, Oh God, I don't want to cut again, but I need to let the feelings out and I need to hear the still, small voice saying "I know. I understand", and I need to let the tears run hot without judgement.

I need Christ because I don't always love my husband as well as I could; because love is not a feeling, but a series of choices, and a lot of the time I need help to make the right one.

I need Christ because I've made mistakes this year. I've hurt, I've lied, I've let down, I've judged, I've condemned. My best efforts have missed the mark. I need Christ because I need to hear "You're forgiven. You will always be forgiven. And you will overcome."

I need Christ because I've been lied to, I've been let down, I've been betrayed and abandoned, and I need to hear "I am with you always".

I need Christ because my friends have been beaten, abused, raped, cheated, widowed; they've had miscarriages and cancer and depression; they've been hurt and belittled and seen their dreams ripped up and their stories trampled. I need Christ because I need to be able to say "There is healing; there is hope; there is peace and joy and love for those who cannot even dare to imagine it".

I need Christ because my friends have cheated, lied, stolen; they've had affairs, fought, and gossiped, and I need Christ because I need to be able to say "There is redemption and restoration, and there is forgiveness and there is reconciliation, and sin is never the most powerful thing".

I need Christ because all the willpower in the world can't make me less afraid or more patient or give me any hope of transformation. As Robbie Williams sang, "You can't manufacture a miracle", and yet, a miracle is exactly what I need to hope for, in my life, and in my friends' lives, and it would be nice to have a machine to churn out miracles on demand, but instead I can only hope and pray and hold on to the promises with the tiny grain of faith that keeps living when it should have died.

So I respect the atheists' opinion, but I respectfully exercise my right to disagree; I know that others will say they don't need Christ for any of this, but I can only say that I do, and why don't we all just get on with things that matter and not be twerps about it?

This Post Is A Bit Serious And Contains A Smattering Of Religion. I'm also not really sure why I'm telling you it, except that it's in my head and I want to get it out.

Well, over 2 people thought the "Here's-a-headline-and-I-wrote-a-better-article" thing was a good idea, so I'll be doing that forthwith.  In the meantime, I've been Thinking Thinks, and decided to share some of them, for no real reason except that sometimes Thinks make more sense when they're written down and you can have a good look at them.

Recently I was looking through old diaries and journals, and came upon some stuff from about 2000-2001, when I did a Thing called "Encounter" - a kind of discipleship / Sonship course, which involved about 20-25 Irish people and some Americans all meeting in a little village south of Dublin and Learning Stuff for a fortnight, before being sent to far-flung places like Galway to work with churches for a week (that was a whole other experience, which we'll save for a time when I have the emotional strength to dig it all up again).

Anyway, part of this was that you got stuck in a "discipleship group" with a few others, and you talked about your problems*.  So I was with 2 others, who we'll call Lorraine and Christine, since that's what they're actually called.  I like to describe the three of us as "The discipleship group from Hell", because, while we're all very nice people, in general, we all arrived on the Thing refusing to talk about ourselves or share experiences or generally do any of the things that make a discipleship group actually work and not just be really awkward.

*I'm not sure that that was really what we were meant to do, but it sounded more doom-laden when we put it that way, and we liked that.

I remember being asked things like "What are you struggling with at the moment?" and it wasn't just that I was being awkward (I mean, I WAS also being awkward, but even if I hadn't been, that wasn't even close to the main issue), it was more that I really honestly couldn't have told you what I struggled with, because I didn't like Thinking Of Such Things.  If you'd asked me whether I was happy with who I was, I'd immediately have laughed and said "no" (well, I might have said "yes", but that would have been to stop you asking any more awkward questions), but if you asked me for specifics, I'd have been at a total loss.

During that time, I was keeping a journal fairly regularly, and one of the Bible verses I wrote that week was "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from you and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26), and I remember feeling that I had a heart of stone because it didn't seem to really do "feelings" and stuff very well, so I prayed that God would soften it and put feelings in it and that, even though I had a notion that I might not like That Sort of Thing, but I figured I could always throw them back out if I had to.

The thing is, I'm not an especially good person.  This is not me-bashing.  I'm not an especially bad person either.  I'm just a regular person, and I have good points and bad points.  But I've always loved an excuse.  Like, when I read stuff about how I should love other people, I liked to be able to say "Ah, yes, but that command is for people who can do stuff like that.  Not for me.  I just exist to facilitate everyone else doing that."  In the great mosaic of life, where everyone adds their own little bit of colour, I liked to think of myself as the grouting.  I'm there, I show up, you can see me if you look, things wouldn't go well without me, but I don't actually add anything much.  I liked to think that stuff that happened in the past meant that I had a sort of free pass to skip bits of the Bible.  I didn't have the capacity to love other people, I told myself, so therefore I was exempt.  I didn't have a ton of people in my life who loved me or did stuff for me, so it was ok to not love people all that much.

Don't get me wrong; I was all for compassion and goodness and kindness and things like that happening, and if I was able to do the dishes afterwards then I could feel ok about myself, but I didn't like to think that I could actually DO anything to make myself more compassionate or loving or generous or whatever, because then I'd have to actually DO something involving feelings.

I liked to be liked, though.  We all do, I think.  I liked to be nice to people, and to help out where I could, and to listen to problems and be all sympathetic about them.  And I was aware that sometimes sympathy wasn't the best course of action, but if I tried to suggest that perhaps plotting to kill the person who'd annoyed you wasn't the best course of action*, then you might not like me, so I'd go back to sympathy.

* Dear Police, this never actually happened

But then stuff started to change.  Our little group started the fortnight by spending our hour (or whatever it was) of discipleship group time studying the daisies and making jokes to break the tension, and ended it by actually talking about stuff.  Like, not major stuff.  But stuff.  At some point someone even cried a little. Then we went to Galway and we all came back exhausted and ill, and suddenly all the feelings inside me exploded all over the place one night.  The leader of the Thing was summonsed, and I sobbed on her shoulder for about half an hour, howling out the most random sentences known to mankind before or since, and she very patiently held me tight and then pointed out that maybe I was a self-centered, people-pleasing ball of anger and confusion who used excuses to stop having to move on or let God work* and suddenly I realised that maybe that was true, and maybe I couldn't just excuse it away, and maybe it might be ok to deal with it.

* I think she said it nicer than that, though.  But I wouldn't swear to it.

So suddenly the heart of stone started to crack a little, and let stuff happen.  Not much stuff, and not very fast, but I could stop blaming myself and my past and my fundamentally flawed personality for not being able to say hello to a new person who'd just come into the room, and I'd start going over to chat.  Awkwardly, of course.  It is a merciful thing that I don't remember my early attempts at being a Normal Sociable Person.  But I started to discover that people weren't really looking at me and thinking "Why is this girl with the weird facial expressions and weird voice who looks all weird having a weird conversation with me?", but really they were thinking "Does she think I'm weird? At least she's talking to me so I don't have to stand here like a weird freak on my own.", because really, I'm not the centre of everyone else's universe, and that's probably ok.

And then after a little while I could open myself up to being generous and taking little risks like giving people stuff and risking that they might give me something back and then I'd be stuck in some sort of viscious cycle of gift-giving, or else I'd look bad for not saying Thank You loudly enough, or else they wouldn't like what I gave them or they'd just think it was weird.  And I started to stop giving things just to make people like me, and started giving them just because I thought they might make the other person happy.  And I stopped really noticing whether the things I did for people made them like me or not, and I just went on doing things because there was joy in it.

And after a while that got to be ok, and, to cut a long story short, I started to open myself up to the idea that maybe I could try to love people properly, and focus on them instead of on myself, but in an encouraging way and not in a comparing myself to them way.  And maybe I could be honest and say "I know you want to kill that person, but maybe you shouldn't" and maybe they'd reject me and not talk to me again, but maybe that wasn't the end of the world, and maybe it was even better than just encouraging them to kill the person so I didn't look like a party pooper.  And maybe I could let them love me too, and I could be vulnerable sometimes, and accept help and allow other people to give it and not have to immediately make it up to them, and not be obssessed with what it would make them think of me.

And after another while, I realised that it was actually ok to obey what God said and to love other people, because it's not about me anyway, and if I screw it up, I have a couple of friends who were in that discipleship staring at daisies who have seen the bad and the good and who love me anyway, and then I thought that maybe that's a bit like what God is like, only he's even better, and then I started to get more friends like that, and then I think maybe I started to be that kind of friend for other people sometimes too.  And it turned out that other people actually thought that being secure in Christ as a child of God was more important than being good and right all the time, and that I could drop the pretence and not have to be perfect, and actually that was much better and safer and more exciting than always trying to be good and right and then having to run away and hide and never speak to people again when I messed up or gave in to temptation or couldn't be bothered or decided to have fun doing things my way.

So I'm thinking that somewhere along the way, quite a lot of what was stony and scared has been replaced with flesh and confidence, and even though that sometimes means that I care too much and probably annoy the feck out of people (especially the people who just want to block things out and stare at daisies), and even though there are still a lot of stony bits that I probably don't even know about, and a lot of the good bits are messed up in some ways, and there could be a lot more good bits and a lot less bad bits, I think I find much more joy and freedom in being this way, and overall, I think I would recommend it.

On Winter

The ole winter blues have arrived early this year. Whether it's that it's a lot colder outside, or because I've had a stressful few months with one thing and another (though, surprisingly, not with being married, which has so far been, y'know, ok), or a combination of things, the urge to hibernate has kicked in, and we're not even into December (ah, Christmas stress!).

So I've decided that this year, I'll try to go easy on myself. I'm not going to force myself to go to everything I'm invited to. I'll take the breaks where they're offered. I'll be gentle with myself as much as I can. And if all else fails, I'll try to focus on keeping breathing, and putting one foot in front of the other, and enjoying the little things that bring me happy.

We'll see how it goes.

A New Idea I've Been Thinking About

So I've had this new idea, and it stems from the fact that I keep seeing articles with really interesting titles which are not anywhere near as interesting when I actually click on them.  So I'm thinking of writing blog posts which contain what I wanted the articles to say.

This may or may not be interesting.  We'll see.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 10: 1 Photo

Sorry.  Forgot all about this.  Here's me on my first bike, as previously mentioned:

The bike was called "Pritter", apparently.  I think I was trying to say "Critter", although where I got that from, I'm not sure.  Probably an encyclopedia or something.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 9: 2 Songs

Right, this is getting hard, because I'm not that into music. Or at least, not songs. So here goes, 2 songs plucked randomly from my head:

1. Amazing Grace - nice words, nice tune, dead meaningful. This reminds me of when I were a lass at school, and went to Scripture Union, and sometimes the teachers would get us kids to chose the songs and introduce them, and basically every time we said "Now we're going to sing X, and... Just really think about the words".

2. At My Most Beautiful (REM) - this is my and Mr Smile's 'our song', not really for any romantic reasons, but we both liked it, so one day we were trying to decide what our song would be, and we went through some options and then went 'feck it, that REM one will do' and that was that. They do a nice version with sleigh bells.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 8: 3 Films

To be honest, I don't really like films that much.  They're ok.  I've probably seen, like, 3 of them in my life.  So:

1. Shrek
I loved Shrek.  A back-to-front fairy tale where the ugly people win and there's a talking donkey.  Total win.

2. Toy Story
All my childhood dreams personified.  Also total win.

3. The Shawshank Redemption
Because it has allowed me to act like I watch grown-up films from time to time, and it was good, even though it wasn't a cartoon.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 7: 4 Books

Sorry for the delay in transmission. Been busy and all. But I'm back now, and they seriously expect me to narrow it down to four books? FOUR?! Are you freaking kidding me?

So, here we go:

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In my primary school, we had a library. We were never allowed to go into the library, but it was there, at the end of the corridor, opposite the P7 classroom. It had glass panels in the door, so I could see in and peek at all the goodness I was missing, and I can remember spying the Encyclopaedia Britannica (possibly the children's edition) sitting there on one of the shelves, all in alphabetical order and matching.

I'm not sure why we weren't allowed in the library, incidentally; each classroom had its own little library, so possibly the big library was just where they stored duplicate copies of those books, or maybe they kept different ones in there and then swapped them round to update the class libraries from time to time. I don't know.

But I remember thinking the encyclopaedias looked brilliant, from what I could see of them, and I longed for the day when I would be allowed to spend time in the library, undisturbed, and start reading from A right through to Z. All I needed was one break time when I could go in there and get started, instead of having to go outside and talk to other children, and play their weird games and stuff.

Finally, in P7, I had my chance: the rest of the class went on a school trip for a week without me. Nowadays I'd have been either sent to join P6 for the week, or referred to a child psychiatrist to establish why I had absolute hysterics when they tried to ship me off to an activity centre to have fun with my friends for a week (and in fairness, it mightn't have been a bad idea for someone to have at least made enquiries about that), but in those less enlightened times, I was sent to spend the week on my own in the library, completely unsupervised, to do a project on water.

Utter bliss. I didn't manage to read much of the encyclopaedias, but damn it, I tried, and to this day I cannot look at the Encyclopaedia Britannica without remembering the sheer joy of having the whole primary school library all to myself.

2. From Fear To Freedom, by Rose Marie Millar
A book I was recommended when I was about 22, which changed my entire outlook on life. I finally began to believe that I wasn't just a weird, hopeless failure with no hope of improvement, but that I was a child of God, a sinner saved by grace, and with all the power of Christ available to me to bring restoration and radical change. So that was good.

3. Treasures Of The Snow, by Patricia St John
Another book from childhood, this was probably the first novel I really loved. It's about a little girl (Annette) growing up in the mountains, who swears revenge on a boy who has hurt her little brother. Through a series of events that I don't quite remember, she ends up learning about forgiveness and grace. There's quite a lot of stuff in this, for a children's book, and I loved it.

4. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
I haven't actually read this one in full yet (I'm currently about 20% in), but Mr Smile lent it to me one time before he was even Boyfriend Smile, and I felt all special because he doesn't lend books to many people in case they break them. I never even gave it back to him; I just kept it for, like, 3 years, and then decided it was half mine because we got married.

Next time: 3 films

So, to summarize today's hair...

Had to get a new driving licence photo taken today. So here's now today went...

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 6: Five Foods

Ok, five foods.  I have a love-hate relationship with food; I appreciate that it's essential for survival, but it's the first thing I cut out if I'm in any way stressed or upset.  I have all manner of rules around when and where I can eat; for instance, I don't like eating anywhere apart from my own house or my parents' house.  I can cope with a church lunch or something like that, but otherwise, I'm not a big one for eating out.

So, anyway, 5 foods... here goes:

1. Chocolate
I love chocolate.  Any kind, really, but I consider things like Fruit & Nut to be slightly sacrilegious - who needs any of the contents of the chocolate wrapper to be used up with things like raisins?  My favourite chocolate is Dairy Milk, but really anything by Cadbury's will do.

I eat way more chocolate than I should, even though I'm trying to cut back a bit for the sake of my mental state.  This is not helped by the fact that I have a metabolism which can cope with an entire big bar of Dairy Milk (the ones that are sometimes on offer for £1 in Tesco) eaten in one sitting, without putting on any weight at all.

2. Roast beef
Roast beef will always mean Sunday lunch at Mum's.  My mum does the finest roast beef in the land, and I haven't had it for ages.  Mr Smile doesn't like beef, so it's not something I'm ever really likely to cook at home; furthermore, Mama Smile won't cook it when he's there (my mother is (sensibly, in my opinion) one of those people who refuses to cook more than one thing for dinner - if you eat at Mama Smile's, you'll eat exactly the same as everyone else), so I think I'll have to go and stay there on my own or something in order to ever taste it again.

3. Tea
I love a cup of tea.

4. Weetabix
To me, Weetabix is the ultimate comfort food.  I can eat it any time, any place.  I would happily eat only Weetabix for the rest of my life.  When I was in primary school, I wouldn't eat at all outside of home, so for breakfast I would eat 6 Weetabix to keep me going for the day.

5. Anything made by my husband
One of my weird food issues is to do with cooking for other people, which I find hideously stressful.  And of course, once I get stressed, I can't eat.  So cooking anything for dinner is basically a no-go, and hence Mr Smile does all the cooking in our house (well, mostly... 4 nights a week he's at his mum's, and I have started making the odd meal sometimes). So I like food made by Mr Smile because it's, like, symbolic of something.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 5: Six Places

Ok, we're half way there with today's post.  More, if you consider that there were lots more things on day 1 than on day 10.  But narrowing it down isn't necessarily easier, so, you know...

Six places.

1. Ballywalter

Where I grew up, and where my parents and most of my family still live.  I loved growing up there, and I still love going back.  It's a fairly small village, but the coastline is lovely, the beach is fabulous, and on a summer's day there's nowhere better for kayaking in the bay.

2. Greystones

Another seaside village, this one south of Dublin.  I have lots of happy memories from Greystones, and it's a beautiful place.  For a couple of summers I spent a fortnight there, and those were wonderful weeks of playing frisbee, enjoying the local coffee shop, walking to Bray along the spectacular coast, and lying about with good, trusted friends and having big conversations.

3. The Dock Cafe

If you're friends with me on Facebook, you'll know that I'm forever in The Dock Cafe.  The Dock is an honesty box cafe - you just put in however much you think your food was worth.  It's an eclectic mix of furniture, with not-really-matching-but-very-comfy cushions and throws, random donated mugs, a cupboard full of board games, and a few bookcases.  There are guitars you can just pick up and play (if you know how), and there's usually some kind of book discussion, knitting group or random meeting happening.  The walls are covered in local artwork and Titanic memorabilia (it's in the Titanic Quarter).

Even better, it's at the other end of a nice cycle from my house into the City Centre.

4. Slovakia

Ah, Slovakia (apologies for the terrible picture, which is a photo of a photo sitting on my knee).  Having spent 3 summers teaching English here, I came to love the place.  Fabulous scenery, lovely people and terrible food.

One of my favourite bits was the night train, which always felt like you were taking your life in your hands, but also had an aura of Orient Express (a fairly faint odour, like).

5. Queen's University / School

Part of me thinks I was made for academia.  I loved school and I loved university.  I can go back to Queen's any time, and straight away feel like I'm home.  I loved going to university, being at university, and hanging around at university for years after I really should have left.  Good times.

6. Belfast

I love Belfast.  It's a wonderful city - lots of history, culture, sights, and changes.  Belfast is pretty small (you can get from any point to any other point in about an hour on foot), but there's loads of stuff packed in.  For a while we were all about the bombs and riots (although I can honestly say I've never heard a bomb go off, or seen a riot happen, despite having lived here for 17 years).  When I moved to Belfast at first, you didn't go out at night, partly for safety, and partly because there was nothing much to do.

But it's a city that's moving on, and now you can hardly move for culture nights and arts festivals and cycle lanes.

We still have the odd freak-out about flags and stuff, but still.  Nice place.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 1: Ten Secrets

So, over at Living Gently, she's doing this thing called The 10 Day You Challenge. So I'm doing it too, because REASONS. Here's how it works:

So Day 1 is 10 secrets, Day 2 is 9 loves, etc. I might not do it on 10 Consecutive Days, mind.  Or I might go nuts and do a couple in one day. SO SUE ME.

So, yes, 10 Secrets.

I don't know if I have 10 secrets (not about me, anyways - if I was allowed to tell you other people's secrets, we would be having a field day about now). And some secrets aren't really going to work as blog fodder, because let's face it, I don't know you all that well, Internet, and also, Boundaries. And I'm too honest and not interesting enough to have much that I won't stick on Facebook.  But we'll keep it light and see how we go.

1. One time in primary school, one of the girls stole money from the tuck shop, and I told on her.  Another time, the rest of the class looked up the answers to a maths exercise in the answer book when the teacher went out to take a phone call, and I told on them too.  I was also so outraged that anyone would look up the answers rather than trying to work it out that I went home in a fit of indignant rage, according to my mother.  Despite all this, I was surprisingly popular, although mainly when people needed some maths homework done.

2. I sometimes wonder whether I'm on The Truman Show, and when I'm alone I do weird things to freak out the audience. Sometimes I'm on my own and I do weird things anyway though, without the Truman Show thing.

3. Sometimes I worry that I'll never again be as happy as I was when I was a student.

4. As I child, I had a major problem with telling the truth, namely, I didn't like doing it.  Part of this was a defense mechanism because I also had trust issues.  And anxiety.  And I probably didn't help myself by dobbing in the other members of the class when they tried to get Up To Something.

5. When I was about 6, I came up with a version of the multiverse theory while sitting on the toilet. I honestly don't think I had read about it anywhere before that point. I dismissed it as needing too much space, and never mentioned it to anyone.

6. When I was about 12, I decided I wanted to be left-handed, so I started practicing every evening for 20 minutes. I had a special notebook for it and everything.  The notebook is probably still in my parents' house.

7. I still think that anything with eyes is real.  Also that anything that has things that look like eyes is real.  Like my car, for instance, who has eyes in her headlights (her wing mirrors are her ears).  I'm honestly not sure how I'll cope when I have to get rid of my car, but I've a feeling I may be finding out fairly soon.  I still talk to my teddies and feel bad if they fall out of bed during the night.  Sometimes I get them to gang up on Mr Smile in an argument, so we can out-vote him.  Sometimes he accepts this as a valid argument.  Or he's too tired to argue.  Hard to say.

8. I'd love to be a really good violinist.  Or, failing that, really good at some musical instrument.  Or just have some basic musical ability.  I'd also like to have the confidence to sing in public, but I don't because one time someone told me I couldn't sing.  So if I sing in front of you, you should take it as a major sign of trust, and not make fun of me, otherwise I will consider you to have betrayed me slightly.

9. One time when I was at university, someone bribed me 5p to vote for them in the student election.  I took the 5p and voted for someone else.

10. I worry that I'm too sensitive and weird and off-the-wall for people to really like me.  I try to be funny to cover it up, but I worry that no one is really fooled.  Then I worry that I really shouldn't be this obsessed with what people think of me.  On the sensitive thing, by the way, there are a surprising number of things which I consider to be betrayals of the highest order.  We have already mentioned laughing at my singing.  Also:

• Generally laughing at me at all
• Acting like you don't believe something I'm saying when I know it's true
• Saying I'm untidy or messy, when in fact I've just been feeling down and not tidying up is one of the first signs of that
• Racism.  Because not everything is about me.

Tomorrow: 9 loves.

The 10 Day You Challenge. Day 4: Seven Wants

So, 7 things I want.  And I'm not going to write stupid stuff like 'World Peace', for the same reason that the 9 loves wasn't all 'Jesus'.

1. More time
Really, my life could use a few more hours in the day, or a couple more days in the week.  Given that I thrive when I have at least a couple of hours of silence each day, and then I have to sleep and eat and wash and crochet and knit and read and get dressed and do church stuff and do housework and read more and listen to music and talk to people and work and read and ride my bike and pray and meet friends and read and bake and cook and DO ALL THE THINGS every day, I could use more time.

Or possibly, I could do with slowing down a bit and not trying to do All The Things every day.

2. Restored relationships
I hate when people fall out, or shun each other, or argue endlessly, or stop speaking.  To me, disagreement, hurt, and betrayal are part of relationships, but they are balanced out by love, forgiveness, fun, joy, encouragement, hope, sharing, listening, being together and enjoying each other.

As a friend, you don't lose me easily.  I'm generally not bad at forgiving, and hanging in there, and not walking off in a huff if you upset me.  You could probably try to murder me, and I'd be like "So, what say we have a cup of tea and try to talk through why you might want me dead?".  So it upsets me when other people fall out, especially over stupid stuff, and I particularly hate being dragged into it.

So if you could all just get along, that'd be great.

3. To be able to travel again
I've always loved to travel.  I love seeing new cultures and places and hearing new languages and seeing things that are different.  But in the past few years I've not been able to do that, for Medical Reasons (namely, that if I go more than 20 miles from home, I get hysterical and need medical intervention).

Mr Smile has never been to Amsterdam, and I'd like to take him.  I'd love to see a cheap holiday to somewhere new and just book it.  I want my children to experience foreign cultures and learn that the world doesn't revolve around them and that their point of view is not the only one.

4. Children
I've always wanted children.  I used to think it'd be nice to have a whole football team of them, but now I've lowered my limit to maybe just a couple.  I love working with children, seeing how they look at the world, enjoying their weird random ideas and thoughts, and learning to trust and love and learn through their eyes.

5. Northern Ireland to sort itself out
Ok, this is maybe a bit too close to 'World Peace', but I'd really like Northern Ireland to stop fighting.  I love our country - the hills, the mountains, the fields, the rivers, the cities.  I love the people, the banter, the craic, the music, the culture. I love the way we do things and the way we welcome visitors.

I just think we need to stop fighting over stuff that might or might not have happened up to 300 years ago, which we're generally not that clued up on anyway.  We need to get over the 'my side is better than your side' thing, and the stupid flags and parades and naming play parks after terrorists, and murals and riots.  We need to stop throwing a hissy fit every time things don't go how we would like them to.

6. A reduced amount of stuff, but not of craft stuff
Recently I've become more and more attracted to the idea of minimalism, of not having more than you need, of clearing the clutter and releasing myself from the hold of stuff.  I'm kind of a hoarder (though I've improved a fair bit in the past few years), and I can always look at something and see how it might be useful some day.  The number of things I have filed away in case I ever need somewhere to plant stuff is becoming insane.

I've never been a big one for buying lots of stuff in any case.  My phone, car, tv etc are all pretty old (well, I now have a newer tv, which belongs to Mr Smile), and I'm happy with that.  I'm not constantly worried about what will happen if they get lost or damaged; nor do I have any interest in upgrading to the latest and best, because I'm quite content as long as they perform their intended function.  I try not to spend money unless I need to - not out of trying to save it all up, but simply because I'd rather be able to use my money for good stuff than to waste it on stuff that's just going to get chucked out in a few months or years.

I'd love to be able to be more generous; to give more stuff away.  When a friend needs cash in an emergency, I like to know I can help out.  I prefer stuff to be communal rather than private.  I like being able to lend stuff and borrow stuff, rather than having to own it, and then own a space to store it.

But I do like craft stuff, and I keep a ton of it on the basis that I might need it for a project some day.

7. To really enjoy food
I have a love-hate relationship with food.  I quite enjoy cooking, and I like to experiment, but I also have weird hang-ups with food which mean that sometimes I can't stand to be in the same room as it.  I'd love to be able to say "Yes, I'll go for dinner with you to try that new restaurant", without getting there and panicking because it's all food and food sometimes makes me cry.

So I'd love to be able to really enjoy the sight, smell and taste of food.