So Very Un-Irish

Up at 5am and off to East Midlands airport. So no chance of getting to express my thanks for L’s smash and grab raid on the Rocky Road. I'm off the Newry in Northern Ireland today with one of our salesmen to try and clinch a deal with a scrap metal company.

The meeting goes well but Northern Ireland itself is a big disappointment. The place is so, well, British, so very un-Irish. We don’t have a coffee in Ma Murphy’s Coffee House but Costa Coffee. My colleague shops in Tk Maxx in the Westfield Centre in Belfast. The roads are just like they are here. We could have been anywhere. The only thing that told you we were in Belfast were the souvenir sellers flogging pictures of the road blocks, peace barriers and burning cars of the past.

In fact we could be in Nottingham, where things are altogether uglier. Police there have found a man's body in a burning car near Wollaton Park. I jest with L that they probably wanted to dump it on the park but the council had already locked it and gone home. The car was a Mercedes SLK, so it looks like drugs. At least the police will be pleased he was stabbed and not shot. Don’t want those gun crime figures going up again.

I get home around 7.30pm and have two glasses of red wine with L. She tells me she’s been rumbled for stealing the Rocky Roads. The first words spoken to her as she walked into work this morning were 'Oh dear, no earrings then'. She managed to bluff her way out of it but she couldn't bring herself to tell them that she had brought them home in a clandestine deal with me. At least I finally get chance to show my appreciation.