| It was sunny in much of Northern Ireland yesterday after a wet Thursday, while England continued to have rain - and indeed floods. The changeable weather has been good for potato growers here. The Daily Mail wrote of round-the-world cruise ship passengers stuck in Belfast that they were "questioning how their summer abroad turned into endless nights shivering through Northern Ireland's famously gray and rainy weather"! With the boat perhaps finally set to leave, our reporter Philip Bradfield has been talking to cruise customers. With regard to shorter journeys, those of commuters, the News Letter editor Rod McMurray has been timing the walk to Belfast's new central station, to see how central it is. Watch his video of the walk. And for yet another type of journey, those by car, petrol and diesel is at its lowest price for three years. In this essay the repentant former IRA bomber Shane Paul O'Doherty reflects on the IRA oath of allegiance and how that would have applied to Pat Finucane if he attended an IRA finance meeting. The businessman Roderick Downer lived and worked happily in the Republic for 40 years but rarely heard Gaelic spoken and is irked by Irish signage everywhere. Here is my own column on how the forcing of Irish, a language which most nationalists don't understand at all, will only get worse. David Thompson and I will be at the Ulster Unionist Party conference today, with reports online and in Monday's paper. Enjoy your weekend, and your reading, Ben | 