Shattered dawn over Belfast.

The sun rose on Belfast this morning just as I was getting out of bed. The sky had the look of a pile of ashes in a fireplace for a while and then came to life with a few streaks of apricot light bouncing off the clouds. In a very short space of time the sky had been wiped clean of clouds and sat above the city like a cold but resplendent cover, painful to look at.

Only a soft murmur rose up from the city to reach these southern suburbs until 06.35 precisely, the time when every morning in life, heavy snow and Icelandic ash clouds permitting, the first plane roars rudely into the air from the city airport to spoil the idyll then alters course for England.