William Ennis 
Two people meet in the centre of Belfast. The venue is a bookshop café. They hug. It’s a long, savoured hug because they haven’t had a chance to catch up properly in ages. She’s rarely in Northern Ireland now and when she is naturally, she spends her time in Derry with her beautiful wife, Sara. The two chums finally release and scrape two chairs into position. One friend, Lyra, is a renowned author. The other, William, not so much. “Sara …
I like the idea of the conversation. I’ve always found conversations very useful. Arguments are too heated, always driven by aggression, and even debates always seem poised in an uncomfortable, adversarial way. But the conversation is good. A conversation is calm and much more likely to be geared toward understanding. It was mid-morning in a nice bar in Northumberland Road, Dublin. My friend was across the road in Dublin and Wicklow’s Orange Hall. I’d been in there earlier and absolutely loved it, as any Loyalist anorak …
