
Early this morning we had a horrendous thunderstorm. It started about one o’clock and went on for well over an hour.
Of course this woke us all up and Dibley was shaking as usual.
The thunder was so powerful that the windows were shaking and you could feel the whole house vibrating.
Lying awake counting the seconds between lightening and thunder Brought back to mind the 1970s and 1980s in Belfast when we had bombs going off on a regular basis.
The houses would shake and based on the extent of the vibrations we would speculate as to where the bomb might be.
Some friends had extensive damage done to their homes when businesses and government buildings were targeted close to them.
We lost a few windows on several occasions but the closest we came to injury was when we lived in central Belfast.
Our home was in a troubled area called Roden Street that divided two deeply sectarian roads.
At one end of the street was a police station that was targeted on a regular basis.
One Friday night when I was about eleven I was in the bath for the weekly deep cleaning session.
My Dad must have won a bit of money on the horses because we had just had tiles put up around the bath.
Well you can guess what happened when the Police Station was bombed. Nearly every tile fell of the wall into the bath beside me but I didn’t get a single scratch.
We moved to the suburbs soon afterwards where we weren’t immune from bombs but were more distant from primary targets.
Those days of bombs are long gone. Northern Ireland has returned to being a beautiful peaceful place where we may hear the odd blast now and then but thankfully it is just thunder.
Blessing # 73 – The relief of the storm that has passed
So sad and frightening. I am sorry you had to live through that but it was possibly instrumental in making you strong.
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Annette growing up in the midst of this strife was certainly something that had a major impact on my life. It put all future events into perspective making it clear that most are not life threatening. 🤗🤗🤗
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What a positive perspective!
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Memories indeed.
I remember going to the
Drew Memorial church on
the Grosvenor Road (sadly no
longer there) in the early seventies , on a Saturday night to play
badminton with my pal from
school, Stephen McIntyre .
The times were bad, but
surprisingly the memories
are good.
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I remember Stephen so well Harris especially his birthday parties where we played postman’s knock!!!! So true that we have all such good memories of the 1970s bet the music of the time helped a lot!!!
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