SNIPPET: Derry's Phil COULTER has achieve international fame as a singer and songwriter. When he was growing up in Derry, per "Irish America" magazine, if you came over the bridge from the waterside to the cityside, turned left up Abercorn road there was a big building at the end of the bridge called the Henderson Shirt Factory. Although his own mum did not work there, most guys' mums would have worked at the shirt factory, or their sisters or their aunts. Most of his classmates at St. Columb's College had someone who worked there. (Famous graduates included the likes of John HUME, Brian FRIEL, Seamus HEANEY and Seamus DEANE during a ten-year period). A horn at the factory went off at ten to eight to let the girls working there know they should be getting in, and another horn would sound at eight o'clock when they were supposed to start work. This is the "shirt factory" he refers to in his haunting "The Town I Loved So Well," that he wrote a handful of years ago. Phil said that Derry people have a great sense of Derryness, a great sense of pride in their town, and that the good people of Northern Ireland as a whole are very special, having a great resilience that has allowed them to live through some very dark hours. His own parents taught him tolerance and he knew and played with the children of decent, ordinary God-fearing people of all faiths. His song came out of comparing the Derry that he grew up in and the Derry he saw emerging at that time, and writing it helped him come to terms with the trauma all around him that was only one part of the story of Northern Ireland: "In my memory, I will always see The town that I have loved so well. Where our school played ball by the gas-yard wall, And we laughed through the smoke and the smell. Going home in the rain, running up the dark lane, past the Jail and down behind the fountain. Those were happy days, in so many, many ways. In the town I loved so well. In the early morning the shirt factory horn Called women from the Creggan, the Moor and the Bog While the men on the dole played a mother's role Fed the children, and then walked the dog. And when times got tough, there was just about enough And they saw it through without complaining; For deep inside was a burning pride In the town I loved so well. There was music there in the Derry air Like a language that we all could understand; I remember the day that I earned my first pay When I played in a small pick-up band. There I spent my youth, and to tell you the truth I was sad to leave it all behind me; for I'd learned about life, and I'd found a wife In the town I loved so well. But when I've returned, how my eyes have burned To see how a town could be brought to its knees; By the armoured cars and the bombed-out bars And the gas that hangs onto every breeze. Now the army's installed by that old gas yard wall And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher With their tanks and guns, oh my God, what have they done To the town I loved so well. Now the music's gone but they carry on For their spirit's been bruised, never broken. They will not forget, but their hearts are set On tomorrow and PEACE one again For what's done is done, and what's won is won; And what's lost is lost and gone forever. I can only pray for a bright, new day In the town I loved so well."