For each paragraph, choose the most suitable heading from the list which follows. There is one extra heading you do not need to use.

LIVING WITH THE TROUBLES IN BELFAST

A. Boys riot out of boredom.

B. Successful children are disliked.

C. No communication between Catholics and Protestants.

D. Belfast has many different problems.

E. People get used to the violence.

F. Nothing for little children to do.

G. Need to keep children off the streets.

H. The troubles affect studies.

1.

For over twenty years Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland, was divided, torn by riots, blasted by car bombs, patrolled by armoured cars. A whole generation has grown up in the city knowing nothing else but what the Irish call “the troubles”. The place suffers not only from violence, but from poverty, low expectations, lack of incentive, lack of a future.

2.

Violet Strain lives in the Protestant Shankill area. She has five children, aged from 3 to 10. Her hus-band has been unemployed for four years. She says: “There’s no playgrounds. What do children do round here? They run wild. The wee ones, I’m terrified to let them out with that road down there. In the holidays all the schools are shut, even the play schools for the tiny ones. Even the Sunday school shuts down. Mostly the children go throwing stones. It’s the only sport they have.”

3.

A Protestant lad, aged 15, explained: “A lot of the time there’s nothing to do. You’re confined. You don’t go anywhere. This is one place to go and that’s it. You get about half way up the Shankill Road and there’s Catholics. If you go in there, you could end up with a terrible beating. In the long summer days, there is nothing to do. You get bored. If all your mates join, then you feel left out. Last summer we had a riot almost every day, whenever you felt like it. We’d go down the Shankill and start throwing. There’s been that many riots you forget them. When you go away from Belfast, you feel free.”

4.

Michelle Mcnally is 16 years old and lives in the hard-line Catholic New Lodge area. She has lived in the same cramped terrace house all her life. Her father is unemployed and her mother is a cook at a local school. Armoured cars with soldiers regularly patrol the street. She is waiting for her examination results. She says: “The Irish Troubles were one of the options on our history syllabus, but our teachers wouldn’t let us take it because they thought we’d lose marks for being biased. So we did the Arab-Israeli conflict instead. I loved it. I’m really into that. I’m more for the Palestinians: I think it’s so like here.

5.

“Most round here don’t do exams, they all leave school and joy-ride. There’s two in our street go to a grammar school. A lot don’t talk to me, they think I’m a snob because I go to grammar school. No one round here really takes an interest in school. Even in primary school they would fight with their teacher. I got pushed out in front of a car last term - he didn’t even know me - there were these fellow, about 14 years old, messing about. The back wheel ran over my leg. They said in hospital I was lucky. Had it been the front wheel, my leg would have been amputated.

6.

“Usually girls are safer, less likely to get beaten up. I can’t stand anyone getting beaten up and all. It really hurts me, seeing it. There was shooting last night. I was sitting in bed and a bottle came over. We all stayed in. If no one came out they couldn’t fight with anyone, There were two petrol bombs - it wasn’t even a month ago, so it was -the police didn’t do anything about it. Everybody just goes on. It doesn’t annoy us, the only thing that frightens us is that they’d actually come in and burn us out, but it’s just a part of life.

7.

“There’s nothing, absolutely nothing to do. If there were discos or youth clubs I think it would help - it would stop them hanging about on street corners. In the park across the way there’s fights every night between the kids. There’s a line that divides the park into Catholic and Protestant areas. It’s so funny - a park, you wouldn’t believe it. People know where not to go. It’s just funny, you know.”