Elizabeth Day

I kind of explore overgrown rhododendron bushes and streams and rivers.

And I just go and find a quiet spot to read books.

And we had a donkey and four sheep and a cat.

And so it was very rural and outdoorsy and adventurous.

And then in the city, to get to school, we would always go through a military checkpoint with an armoured vehicle and soldiers with AK-47s.

And it was sort of a strange disconnect.

I...

Bits of it were quite scary.

I remember every marching season.

So I'm sure your listeners will know this, but there are some very contentious dates in the Irish calendar and people still take to the streets to march.

There were a lot of Orange Order marches and you'd see kind of men in balaclavas often on the TV news.

And when I thought of monsters under my bed, it was terrorists and

And I remember vividly sort of shopping centres being empty because of bomb scares.

And when I went to my secondary school in Belfast, I would get the bus back at weekends.

I was a weekly boarder there.

And the bus station was behind the Europa Hotel, which became known as the most bombed hotel in Europe, famously.

Yes.

And I remember once vividly a bomb had gone off on the Friday night and I was going home on the Saturday and I walked past the Europa Hotel and every single window was shattered.

And I was walking past this like these mangled skeletons of cars to get the bus home to this rural idyll.

So it was a strange experience, but I didn't question it until years later.