the townland of the cow

I love Ballymoney. It is sort of my closest town – well, joint closest along with Coleraine and Portrush. It is as typical North Antrim as you can get. It is as different from the big towns as you can get. I had forgotten just how good it is to sit in this colourful leafy North Antrim settlement on a sunny day and consider the meaning of life. I went to school in Ballymoney, back then I hated it and took every opportunity possible to jump over the wall and drive somewhere else. Perhaps that explains my A-level results (cross blog pollination – nice!)

But I am older now, the sleepiness of the place appeals to me – I smile at the leisurely pace even the bees go about their work. When I smile the people dandering along the road beside me smile. We smile at each other. I wonder how long it will last.

Ballymoney town centre is a single street of family owned independent shops that have been there forever. The fashion shops have the same window displays they had when I was driving past them to avoid a double period of English Literature. The word fashion seems to be lost on them. You can literally count the number of chain stores on one hand; and even they tend not to be the big name ones. There are no Marks and Spencer, no WH Smith (not even an Eason’s), no McDonalds, KFC or Starbucks. It’s the kind of place that, were it even to have a chain store Burger joint, would have a Wimpy. We have all we need in our Cassell’s and our Walker’s and our Wilson McMichael’s and our McLaughlin’s and our Tweed’s and our Gault’s and our Young's Newsagent and our Ann’s hot bread shop and, of course, our Brown Jug. And I wonder how long it will last.

Ballymoney is a small town that thrives on its smalltowndom. It’s not quite somewhere everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came; but its near enough. I can’t imagine how big-town Ballymoney would work. It’s not likely to have a gay pride march any time soon and I’m not sure our local hood’s/neds/chavs are capable of turning to organised crime. The fact is that Ballymoney doesn’t need to be a big town; if you want a chain store Coleraine is less than 10 miles away, if you want a theme park Portrush is a short bus ride away, if you want a university education without leaving home you have UUC, if you want a stroll by the ocean you can’t get much better than Portstewart, if you want sectarian interface problems Dunloy is a few short miles away. Ballymoney is the small town that doesn’t need to grow up. Yet I wonder how long it will last.

People move there to escape bigtowndom and with every person that moves there Ballymoney gets bigger, gets one consumer closer to being able to support a Starbucks. It will happen; the single modern coffee shop in the town is constantly full (hence the fact that I am outside.) It can’t last much longer.

That, however, is exactly what I said last year, and the year before that, and the years when I was at school and thought of it as a positive thing. It hasn’t happened yet and so I’ll smile at the passers-by for a little while longer.