"Yes, " I replied "but living in the Republic of Ireland it's not as useful to me as it would be to a UK resident."

"Yes I suppose Ireland is like another country really."

"It is another country, " I said "Well I like to think of you as part of us because you're so close by, " she said in a cuddly way, "even though I suppose you do have different utilities servers there, gas and electricity, etc."

"Yes, and a different government. And a different monetary system."

"Oh yes, hmmm. I think we might have a sister paper there anyway."

Many English people seem to be divided into two camps when it comes to Ireland. Those who remember actors speaking for Gerry Adams on the BBC and think the whole of Ireland is one big car bomb waiting to go off in their face and those (of whom there are a frighteningly large amount) who don't even realise it's a different country.

When, seven years ago, I told my colleagues in London that I was moving to Dublin they reacted as if I were moving to Wales, only with terrorists.

"Isn't that a bit out of the way? Like living in the country?"

"Aren't you frightened of getting blown to smithereens? I'd much rather stay here." Said someone who had been evacuated from Canary Wharf during the IRA bombing in 1996.

During that time I worked at a radio station on a political debate programme. Whenever Northern Ireland came up for discussion callers would ring up and ask what Northern Ireland had to do with them and why we were discussing it. One lady said she would be a very happy listener "when they finally decide to just chop Northern Ireland off the British Isles and float it into the sea".

When I hear the fallout over the recent elections in the North being debated on radio and television here and, of course, more so in the North, it seems odd that just a few miles across the sea there are a ton of people whose history - and even present - is tied in with this issue and who don't even realise they, or their taxes, have anything to do with it.

But then, on this St Patrick's holiday weekend what's really being done to celebrate a truly Irish identity? An American-style parade marching past English-owned banks and shops? Binge-drinking in the park afterwards to match any English lager lout?

Or a Sunday lunchtime discussion about the effect on property prices (the number-one obsession we share with the English) of the Fine Gael proposals for stamp duty? Amanda Brown