This is a fun meme, and I’m doing it anyway even though I have only once myself filled in a UK census form and am unlikely ever to do so again.

March 2011 – living with and two kids (F and U, B having moved to permanent residential care in 2007) in Oud-Heverlee, Belgium; working for Independent Diplomat

March 2001 – living with and two kids (B and F, U not having been conceived yet) in Rhode-St-Genese, Belgium; working for the Centre for European Policy Studies, doing a lot of travelling round the Balkans. We moved to Oud-Heverlee later that year.

March 1991 – living at 49 Chesterton Road in Cambridge with five fellow students, doing my M Phil in medieval astrology, going out with (who had either just gone to South America for five months or was about to go). That was the year I was the election agent for the Cambridge City Council seat that I had fought and lost badly in the previous year. Later that year I moved back to Belfast to work on the project that became my PhD.

March 1981 – living in the house I grew up in in South Belfast with my parents and siblings. That was the year that they stopped the Northern Ireland census early, after the IRA shot and killed a census-taker. The hunger strikes were getting under way and my French teacher took a lot of time off because she kept getting arrested. (She’s now the Sinn Fein MEP for Northern Ireland.)

March 1971 – as in 1981, though my sister had not been born yet (she arrived in October). Apparently one of my first words was ‘allyagga’ for ‘helicopter’, because of the visible and audible military surveillance from above (our area was relatively quiet but we were not far from places that weren’t).

I’m going back to Belfast later today, doing stuff related to the coming elections and staying till Friday. Possibly available for socialising tomorrow evening, if anyone is interested.