Highlights of a long weekend in England

Last Friday, Norn Girl and I took to the sky, final destination, Yorkshire. This was the first time I'd been over to visit since my Stag Do and the first time we'd seen most folks there since the day after the wedding. Here are the highlights of our little trip:

Making a snow Bunny in a bush.

Discovering the recently revealed refurbishment at Belfast City Airport though the new bigger bar was about the only plus.

An anticlockwise random tour of some of Lancashire's and Yorkshire's train stations – rolling from Manchester to Sheffield, Sheffield to Wakefield, Wakefield to Leeds and Leeds to Manchester.

Petting the kittehs even though they were well on their way to killing my wife due to her allergies.

Taking in another Leeds game at Elland Road in League One as Leeds took on Brighton and Hove Albion on Saturday.

Watching some of the curling and getting my dad and Norn Girl glued to it even though my dad stayed up past midnight for the first time in years only to see the USA beat the UK after playing the most negative tactics in a game of curling I've ever seen. Thankfully the men's team brought back the pride as they beat the USA the next day. Also watching the Ski cross... what a sport!

Waking up to a winter wonderland and watching Kelly the cat try to negotiate it.

Making a punk snowman on my sisters car bonnet because she left us waiting on her getting ready just that little too long. That long in fact that we had time to make our snowy friend with his Mohawk.

Being in the audience for another gripping instalment of Hans the German & Evil Naked Man. A 2 ½ year saga direct from the imagination of a now 9 year old.

Being hit in the forehead with paper aeroplanes and sending them on return journey's back to the cranium's of their senders.

Noming some home-made Chocolate Biscuit pudding.

Trying bubble tea for the first time - Yorkshire style with a hint of Ireland thrown in for good measure – A mixture of Yorkshire tea, condensed milk, Tapioca and sugar.

A ride on the Manchester Big Wheel.

Flying home with a lovely sunset. A sunset which even turned the clouds to the east of us looking back over a snowy County Down, a nice hint of pinky red. If only the windows of the plane had been a little clearer.

Northern Ireland and the Winter Olympics

The 2010 Winter Olympics being held in and around Vancouver are in full swing, the skaters are gliding around the ice, the skiers zipping over the snow and the other sports people doing their thing  in the search of a shiny medal. Its a fine sight, the speed, the balance, the skill and the colour of it all. So although I've never tried many of the sports, I really enjoy watching it. Thankfully the sense of occasion provides a reason for broadcasters to beam to us the footage of these cold sports. Sports that don't regularly compete for our attention the rest of the time. Well at least sports that don't get much airtime here in Northern Ireland. After all, we only have one public skating ice rink and one dry ski slope. So whilst many countries look on with eager anticipation, is there likely to be much local interest in the winter games from the folks in Northern Ireland sat in front of our TVs, radios and computers?

Well I think I can safely say that there isn't the sort of enthusiasm we're likely to see in the summer Olympics in 2 years time when London 2012 kicks off. The time difference of -8 hours between the Canadian West Coast and NI in these games, means if you were wanting to watch many of the events live then it would require being awake in the early hours of the morning. Most of the footage I've seen so far has been highlights. Good highlights though, the opening ceremony was amazing and amongst others I was engrossed by the footage on TV of the Nordic Combined's cross country event, where in final section it resulted in a nail biting sprint finish. Still, the inconvenience with the time difference isn't a good start and to add to it, a lot of the sports from the Winter Olympics don't appear to have much of a following in Northern Ireland. I say that based on the fact that a lot of the sports or activities do not have many or any facilities in place here for people to take part, especially at a competitive level. For instance, take the ice/snow based sports in Northern Ireland with the largest public followings. Without doing a survey, I'm taking for granted that these would be Skiing and Ice Hockey (sorry I know, a lot of assumptions but I can't find any data).

With Skiing, we have no real ski slopes and unlike mainland UK there isn't an indoor ski slope, the closest to the real thing in NI is the dry slope at Craigavon Golf and Ski Centre.  There are a few shops that sell ski and snowboarding equipment throughout NI but the majority who use these shops will put their expensive equipment to use on holidays abroad. It's just not a very accessible sport for those of us who don't have such disposable income. However there does seem to be enough interest to keep specialist shops afloat.

With Ice Hockey, we have a UK Elite League Ice Hockey team – The Belfast Giants. They are quite well supported, according to the Belfast Telegraph as many as 4000 go to some Giants games - a few thousand people have certainly seemed to be at the games I've been lucky enough to make it to. Unfortunately though the Odyssey arena doesn't keep the ice out there for public skating because its a multi-purpose arena. So access to skate, let alone the equipment and availability to learn the competitive sport are limited to one venue, the Dundonald Ice Bowl.

So even with the most popular snow and ice based sports, it would seem there is only a small minority in Northern Ireland who would, at least publicly, show an active interest.

We can look at this from a different angle though: For although the interest seems limited, if we go solely by the fact that these sports have some following here and we take into account that it only snows in Northern Ireland for an average of a few days a year and facilities are few and far between, with access to some of the sports not even available at all in this country, then it might seem to be a good indication that there might be latent interest. Northern Ireland might not be the best location for watching or taking part in snow and ice sport events but I would anticipate that many will be at least curious to watch the best of the best compete in many of the winter sports on offer in Canada this month. It will be interesting to see the viewing figures if and when they are released.

For anyone who does watch, Northern Ireland competes with Scotland, Wales and England as part of team GB but many here will likely be following the fortunes of both the GB and Irish teams and the individuals from those teams taking part. There is however one representative you may want to keep an eye out for if you are hoping for a chance to express some Cool Runnings-like pride towards a local representative performing on the world scale.

Jenna McCorkell, a figure skater from Coleraine, would appear to be Northern Ireland's sole competitor within team GB. She is due to skate on February the 23rd and 25th. I'm not an expert or to be really honest, all that interested in figure skating, but I reckon I'll give it a watch to see how she gets on. Good luck Jenna!

I hope this part makes sense, but I'm also not usually one for partaking in patriotic events or celebrating national pride, but when it comes to sports, the political, cultural and to some degree, monetary issues associated with national divides are somewhat diminished (the same way cup competitions with one off games can throw up surprises). I believe that locality or place of birth is something that will always be able to be used as a means to differentiate sides in sporting competition, even when nation states hopefully go the way of the dodo in favour of what I hope (perhaps naively) might one day become some pleasant form of a united planet. If you follow a sports team you'll probably know what I mean - we support our sides during the game, we have a single purpose, but win or lose, at least for the majority, we're united by the enjoyment of the sport. It's constructive rather than destructive. So a big good luck also to the whole of the Ireland and GB teams.

Personally, for those sports that our local nations are competing in, I'm really looking forward to the Bobsleigh and oddly the Curling (that I really got into at the last Winter Olympics). For those sports without a local Country to cheer on, I'm really looking forward to the Ice Hockey, so ermm “lets go Canada, lets go!”.

An abstract of abstraction. Dedicated to Sean Scully

After a recent trip to the Ulster Museum and a baffling face-to-face meeting with what appeared to be some simplistic large scale doodling, I thought I would give creating some abstract art a try. An attempt to see if there is more to the world of rather basic looking non-representational abstraction art (or whatever else you want to call it).

I immediately hit a problem. If I try to splatter some binary paint about in a manner that takes abstraction to a level used by Sean Scully, I would surely be taking and reducing ideas out of context and turning them into something simple like a block of colour. That is almost like creating a one off personal code of expression, the key to which is known only to myself. Therefore its unlikely to be very inclusive to a wider audience. Sadly, I wasn't helped much when I tried to dig deeper.

To help me describe what I found, I think this is most helpful, a YouTube video interview entitled: Sean Scully Reveals the Power of Abstract Art, where in response to the question, "Why did you choose abstraction?" Scully states:

 "Well it's quite simple really, I think if a representational painter wants to show the things in the picture, and with an abstract painting what in a sense you are trying to do is make everything happen at once". 

Besides making very little sense, this hinted to me, that whilst representational paintings mean something and are provided within an understandable context, non-representational abstract paintings likely mean nothing - much like the very words regularly branded about trying to describe them. This is because they can obviously mean whatever you want it to mean - it has little to no context.

He also goes on to mention an Abstract painting "should be, could be, possibly, a moment of revelation". Alas, if this is what this form of art is about, I've hit the spot because I had a revelation creating mine, and that revelation is that to me, its all a lot of water vapour. Maybe I'm not clever enough on the 'required level' to understand, but going by my logic, this form of art is nothing more than declaring simple and easily producible works as being a stimulus to provide a means to reflect. The whole existence of this art would therefore seem to be similar to the reason that I enjoy staring up at the clouds in the sky and day dreaming. Except its use seems confined to people who like to restrict their reflections to basic patterns and in confined spaces. Each to their own I suppose.  I'll not go on about it any longer.

With all this in mind, I decided to mess around, for about an hour in total, using Microsoft Paint to create something in a 'blocks and stripes' style, a style somewhat similar to Sean Scully's but with a hint of representational art thrown in. Feel free to reflect on them a while...

Mulder and Scully - the Cow Abduction

Skully

Skulduggery

2 Man Scully