Derry, second day

First off I want to share with you something that I did yesterday. This is the kind of spontaneous occurences that I love while traveling. I was looking for a new towel, mine having fallen off my backpack where it was hanging to dry out and disappeared, when I came across the local theatre. Last night just happened to be the opening night for a local production to Sweeney Todd, which just happens to be my favourite musical. Shame they never made a movie version. Nope. None exists. At all. I'm sure of it. So I bought a ticket, and for 7 pound 50 I think it was a good price too. And it was a pretty good adaptation by all standards, though considering the most recent one I saw to compare it to was the (non-existant) Tim Burton version, I may have been quite charitable. Anyway, this is a travel blog not a theatrical review blog, so I'll spare the 10 page analysis I could have otherwise given. But I will say that the actor playingg Pirelli was the first I've seen that's been able to pull off both the required Italian and Irish accents, though presumably the Irish one wasn't such a stretch...

City Walls

So today I saw the other side of Londonderry's history. I use the name Londonderry this time because, as you may have guessed, I did a tour and visited a museum covering the Loyalist/Protestant side of the story. Again, let me stress that at its core the conflicts in Ireland have never been about religion - they have been about politics and class. And while it may have sounded in my last post like the protestants all sat in their ivory towers wearing monacles and smoking pipes while throwing stones on the impoverished Catholics, this is also far from the truth. The local protestants had their share of troubles as well, particularly in 1688. At the time the Catholic William of Orange was contesting for the British crown against King James II. Londonderry was an important strategic point at the time, but was naturally held by protestant loyalists. William laid siege to the town for over 100 days - still the longest siege in English history. And not a nice one as the inhabitants of the city died in great numbers of disease and hunger, and foul meat from horses, rats and even dogs was the order of the day. Finally, however, the siege was lifted by the arrival of friendly ships bringing food and arms.
So the walls are incredibly important and iconic to the minority protestant portion of the city. Even though the politics were heavily weighted to suppress catholics and promote protestants, the protestants were still a minority. Particularly with the IRA's attacks in the 70s many protestants were driven from their home in Londonderry. It's clear at this time nobody was having a good time.