I'm off to Belfast tomorrow for 3 days of fun with the family, culminating in a Wiggles concert on Friday. WHAT! you've never heard of The Wiggles! Are you mad?The Wiggles are the biggest children's live entertainment phenomenon on the planet and have now outstripped Kylie Minogue as the biggest grossing entertainers in Australia.
So what exactly do they do. Well they sing and dance and tell stories and such like, all aimed at a pretty young audience, maybe 5 and under or something like that. When you first see them on TV your immediate reaction might be "what the hell is this?" or "who are these weirdos?" because they are not your usual TV types. Nonetheless they grow on you, or wear you down. One or the other.
So, that happens on Friday.
I've been to Belfast just once before with the good wife. It was a memorable 3 days for all the wrong reasons. We went on the train and the journey there was very pleasant.
On the day we arrived we were about 5 minutes from witnessing first-hand a guy being stabbed to death in a McDonalds restaurant. We should have been in there but for some reason decided to hold off for a little while and then when we got there the police were rolling out the incident tape around the building.
On day 2 we went to go shopping but had to delay that too as an Orange order march was taking place right in front of the main shopping precinct and there was heightened tension and lots of security forces in the square. Hmmm.On day 3 (of 3) we were heading home on the train only to be stopped in some godforsaken station and told there was a bomb threat and we would have to get off the train. They took us by vintage bus (not the "isn't it amazing the way they have renovated this beautiful old machine" type, more the "Holy crap.. they are not going to make us travel in this death-trap are they?" type of vehicle) to another station and we boarded another train.
It was like two journeys in one. One journey was travelling physically between Belfast and Dublin, the other was travelling back in time to pre-war times. The replacement train was old, cold, rattling and had no light or heat inside. Beside us was a deaf couple sitting in the dark trying to communicate using sign language for about an hour. Imagine that.
So, fingers crossed for a much more normal trip this time, and for plenty of wiggling.
Go on, try it. You know you want to!
Full update after I get back.
3 comments:
I'm going to have nightmares about that group photo!
Have a wonderful - and safe! - journey! I promise I won't be so neurotic on my blog when you get back. :-)
I hope for your sake you're accompanying a child.
OK - so just got back to Dublin this evening and need to organise to get the pictures off the camera so I'll put a better update on the blog tomorrow.
So delighted to see your comments about the Wiggles. They do take some getting used to, so apologies to m. for the nightmares. They will pass.
Scubes. you should have seen it. There was 2000 people there, and about 1500 of them was under the age of 6 by my reckoning. It was hilarious. I had my 2 boys with me, and my wife of course. Secretly she really wanted to go herself and was only using the boys as her cover story..
Al.. yes, marching season starts really soon and I'll share with you my own first-hand experience of that whole side of belfast tomorrow. Interesting indeed. and now that you mention it, he does indeed look like a former colleague.
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