Unionist Encounter

Ok before i forget i dressed up as Van Halen's 'Hot for Teacher' and wore a badge saying I love Hutchinson (cause its kind of a joke cause i mentioned i thought my lecturer was handsome even though he's about 50 so ive been slagged about it ever since..) (Oh and the fact that i fancy Gerry Adams..) Speaking of which, i had quite a funny night tonight. I went to this British-Irish colloquium (is that how you spell it?) basically about the Northern Ireland peace process and how it can be used as a framework for other ethnic conflict policies to shape themselves on blaa blaa blaa. It was basically like 9 academics.. and me.. So the talk was quite interesting and at the end i just introduced myself to the kinda chair person who was beside me. Turns out he's going to be my lecturer next term for my 'Conflict and Consensus in 20c Ireland' so it was cool to meet him. He's pretty young actually, as most of the people who were there were. So i felt a bit weird cause they all new each other and there was little me, the only female, but i went for a drink with them in one of the staff pubs that actually says "no students" on the front(!), like back in the day in America when they used to say "we don't employ Irish". But anyway.. Ive never been so intellectually intimidated in my life! They all knew so bloody much and i felt about 6, but they were very nice and asked me lots of questions about my MSc. So it turns out that the lecturer, Michael Kerr, is a UUP member and was sort of one of those junior type people under David Trimble and is basically in with all the major Unionist players! The course should be quite interesting because its the first time its being taught by a unionist. It was so interesting talking to them and hearing all this behind the scenes stuff (like the fact that the unionist camp has many 'sodomites' within its ranks..) I also met a lecturer from Queen Mary's that used to teach in UCD back in the day (when i was actually 3..) , who im fairly sure was coming on to me, but thats another story. I also noticed during the talk that i think he was wearing longjohns, but anyway.. They were all quite attractive actually, for academics! So there you go.. that was my first experience of 'networking' within the academic world.. A rather humbling experience which reminded me how little i know about anything. A definite Delphi 'all i know is that i know nothing' moment! Right, you know its time to go to bed when some dodgy 80s c-list movie comes on on Channel4 so better get myself off to Bedfordshire..
Miaow x