Proms in the Park and making it home alive

Brilliant night at Proms in the Park, unfortunately overshadowed by the pointless rioting that is happening in Belfast tonight.

We were told during the concert that city bus services had been taken off the roads as a precaution. A helicopter was overhead throughout and we heard sirens and saw police landrovers going past. No-one let it spoil the evening though which was amazing, there was a fly past by the Red Arrows while the Ulster Orchestra played the Star Wars theme.

Afterwards, I didn't realise things were so bad until Poppy texted me and asked if I was ok cause she'd heard about trouble on the news. On the way to the car, we encountered a very drunk bloke who called us "orange bastards". He clearly had some magicial ability to tell people's religion simply by looking at their faces through a drunken haze.....was tempted to give him a torrent of abuse in German, but that would only have exacerbated things. We walked on and ignored him.

At the other side of the road was a group of "masked youths armed with baseball bats" as they would say on the news. Well, we just walked past them, they didn't say anything to us, but dad said they had been looking round, so when we got round the corner, we legged it to the car. They hadn't followed us thank goodness!! We tried to take a safe route home but found roads sealed off and police stopping people. The policeman told us a different route to go and he said that there was widespread rioting, shots were being fired, he thought a few people had been killed and that people were being pulled out of their cars.

Well I was pretty bloody scared by then. I had visions of me and dad being shot and and dragged out of the car and beaten and stuff. The route the policeman told us was safe and quiet so we got home okay. A few police landrovers went past my street but they were heading further up the road.

In all the time I've lived in Belfast (which is all my life, apart from when I was at uni), I've never seen trouble like tonight. It has to be said I've never seen trouble in fact, apart from on the news. It was very very scary!!! There were loads of police landrovers and huge watercanon trucks which I'd never seen before!!

I'm just very glad to be home and safe and more determined to leave this country!!! Am a bit worried about the couple of thousand people who were at Proms in the Park in Belfast tonight. How will they get home with no buses running, roads closed off and taxis getting hijacked and burned!!?? Dad and I were really lucky but I have a terrible feeling that other people won't be. On the news just now, it said the trouble is getting worse.

I'm drinking cider to calm myself down.

I'm ashamed of this country.