A little bit of Beál Feirste , that's what you require.

It's not news that Belfast is cool. I'm in the big city- the biggest on this island I've been to. It's younger than a lot of North European cities, and there is a lot of evidence of fun. Even on a Monday. I like it.

It is a drizzly day and I drop off bag and go for a Guiness and Irish stew in a pub, with my embroidery. I used my headtorch cos of the Irish-pub-mood lighting. I'm feeling the intrepid/ridiculous combo. It suits me. I am in shorts and fewer layers than most. It's only October- what are they going to do in January?? Straight to the lovely Crúca Crafts round the corner. It's fairly new, and run by a gorgeous couple Alia and Dáithí. But really the utterly adorable bosses are doggies Bron and Beag. It's a really joyous place to start, going northwest from the city centre. I got some beautiful wool dyed locally by The Spinning Webb, but it was hard to choose because choice was plentiful.

The Patchwork Goose was about a mile north west. Shelves and shelves of colours, tools, notions. I always look for Knitting Nancies. It's good to bring different faces to workshops. The lovely Tara was sure she had some and spent ages looking, but alas it was not to be.  I got some super chunky yarn that I've used before to make mermaid tails in crocodile stitch. People come in and Tara gives very good advice, it's what wool shops are all about.

Onwards to the Secret Stash. I can't keep this a secret. Darling Nikki, (when she said her name, I just knew it was a double k) is helping two people working at projects. Delicious selection, I saw some hand dyed bright yellow and can't sed anything else. Too excited. I am wearing my bright yellow mac, and maybe it chose the yarn for me. As usual, I wish I had more time to stay and sit down and knit. Am very weary and head back into the city.

Although this is on the edge of the centre, where there is a bit less weight, I'm certainly in a republicanish area- flags, pub signs.. The massive replica of Lourdes is also a big clue. I have some food at the Kurdish restaurant, which is deeeelish. There are a lot of Kurdish barbers around here. I wondered about it. In north London, Turkish doesn't have connotations of imperialism; maybe it does here? This is, after all, the British Empire. How we describe ourselves when far away, and for whose ears...Turkish? Kurdish? Assyrian? Yazidi? Maybe even a relatively new term that some people identify with- Rojavan? Do we say British/ English/Scots/Welsh? Does it ever change depending on who we speak to? I tend to say Londoner, but I would say Atlantean... 

Maybe this will not be part of the British Empire much longer. What does the future hold? It's bigger than German reunification. A new second city, with its own international profile and connections. The inclusion (or not?) of a very significant demographic minority. Maybe the Republic will be changed more than the Six Counties will be? 

If you looked at the map, without any knowledge of history, you'd think, well this is a group of islands with coastlines that no one in their right mind would try and embroider. They look like an island country, but a visible border has been drawn. It makes no sense. If tbose two biggest islands really want to be separate, there's a perfectly natural border there in the sea. The big island looks greedy. And there is a body of evidence to support that judgement. However, the sea connects as much as divides. It doesn't make sense geographically or culturally, or even historically to have a border between Ulster and the West of Scotland. The Scots were settlers from Ireland, bringing old Irish which evolved into Gaelic. They didn't come into uninhabited lands and there are bound to have been Pictish speakers who experienced this is as a colonial invasion. 

I've spent time with, and researched Breton nationalists. I've heard debates about tactics, and how best to throw off the yoke of Paris.  . Bran Ruz is an amazing graphic novel, bilingual French and Breton. The main ancient story is the Ville d'Ys, the pinnacle of (an assumed Celtic) civilisation, which is about to be flooded and lost forever. But it also includes another ancient legend about the origins of this utopia. They came as invaders and cut out the tongues of the local woman to stamp out the older languages. Breton speakers have been oppressed, they were beaten for speaking the language at school, in living memory. Their nationalism is not supremacism, but it could become so, and maybe has been so. We're every human, it's all in us.

None of the borders make sense. We blend and move; humans are liquid- if it's too cold, we freeze and if it's desert or mountains we dry out, but otherwise we flow. For me, this is the (hopefully Anarchic) Atlantic Archipelago. We Atlanteans have sky blue passports, which glow in the dark.

I start listening to Kneecap- that I've purposeful avoided till I got to Béal Feirste. I like them a lot. Their spitting in Irish is electric, and I want to learn the language. It would be very wrong to see them from the UK as prolonging sectarian division, as I have heard suggested. That's not what I hear. Of course they are Republicans, but the targets of their anger are most definitely not working class Protestant background men who also get called 'lowlife scum'. It makes me really sad to hear 'that's what they say about me'. It's akin to Roll Deep's 'Respect Us'. How can it be right that some young men everywhere feel this classist gaze of disapproval/rejection? Kneecap are looking up- not across- with anger, as we all should be really. And they are about freedom, and self determination...at a personal level nore than a political one. The context they grew up in, all the horror of the Troubles. It's almost as if there has been some kind of Divide and Rule business afoot for quite a long time. From the British establishment? Who would have thought?

I go for a wander and find Urban Fresh. I thought, ooh Whole Foods? No. This is run by a consortium of unscrupulous dentists. I might as well have walked into a craic house. I get some delicious sweets and fall asleep...