Summer Sunshine

Chapter 1 - Divis Street

Mo Anam Cara

This short phrase isn't perfect Irish, but it builds on the idea of an Anam Cara, a "soul friend" and roughly translates as "My Soul Mate" or "My Soul Friend". The ancient Celts believed in a soul that radiated about the body. When two individuals formed a deep bond, their souls would mingle and each person could be said to have found their Anam cara, or "soul friend".

-My Irish Jeweler

Diana Kelly's POV

My name is Diana Frances Kelly and yes, I was named after the late Diana, Princess of Wales. I was born in 1998 on the day the Good Friday Agreement was signed. My ma is a Thai woman who was adopted by a Northern Irish couple and her name is Lalisa Angela O'Connor. She works as a hotel receptionist in the "most bombed hotel in Northern Ireland" or simply known as the Europa Hotel. My da is an Irish Catholic who identifies as a Loyalist. So much that he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary and stayed on right until its dissolution. Then he ended up working in Stormont as a civil servant.

Despite being raised by a peeler in East Belfast and eventually at The Waterside in Derry~Londonderry, I'm no sectarian woman and I owe it to growing up in a Northern Ireland where cross community interactions were becoming more acceptable. I grew up watching Give My Head Peace on BBC Northern Ireland although by the time I started watching it, Billy was already dating Dympna. They say Billy and Emer's "love beyond the barricades" was iconic when it first came out on Northern Irish television but I've got to say that Billy and Dympna were iconic even though by the time they became a couple in the show, cross community interactions were becoming more acceptable in Northern Ireland.

Growing up, I wanted a love like Billy and Dympna. They conquered it all despite Billy being a Protestant peeler and Dympna being a Catholic Sinn Fein MLA. I mean they've been married for about sixteen years as of Series 16. I've met Catholics throughout my lifetime and some of them have become my muckers but I have yet to find The One among them. 

Guess you could say that when it came to shows on the telly, Give My Head Peace is my first love. Eventually, I also became a fan of Derry Girls (not gonna lie, I was very proud to see my hometown depicted in a famous TV show), Doctor Who and This Time With Alan Partridge. 

I left Northern Ireland when I was eighteen after winning a place at the University of East Anglia in Norwich for a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television Production. You see, it's my dream to become the next Doctor Who showrunner, or maybe to become one of the showrunners for Give My Head Peace.

I've lived in Norwich for two years after I had graduated, working as a production staff for BBC Look East. It was fine and all until one day, I finally decided that maybe it was time for me to revisit my dream of becoming a showrunner. I was thinking of applying into the Doctor Who production team, only that I had been turned down for "not being experienced enough". Around that time, Give My Head Peace was doing a stage tour so I thought that was the perfect time for me to try getting into the show's production team (I'm not gonna complain if my work starts with the stage shows).

My family lived in Derry but for me to be able to land a job as a production staff for Give My Head Peace, I needed to be in Belfast. So, I decided to book myself tickets to one of the Give My Head Peace live shows in the Grand Opera House and managed to score tickets for March 29th. Sweet!

While waiting for that day to come, I decided to pass the time fixing up the portfolio which I'll be showing off to Tim McGarry if I manage to meet him after the show on the 29th. The portfolio had everything from my production work while I was part of my secondary school's theatre guild all the way to my production work in BBC Look East. As I was putting together my portfolio, I hoped that Tim would be impressed with my skills and I'd be able to do work for the next season of his sitcom.