FOR THE FIRST time I can remember, I am writing this column with a tear in my eye. Read on for the reason…

The Belfast Festival at Queen’s is the cultural highlight of our tourism year, and I have always found space to promote it every October in all the publications I have worked for during the past five decades. My commitment has been due largely to the fact that I was one of the pioneers of the Festival, having been involved in the satirical comedy that was a sell-out show devised for Festival ’63, which was Michael Emmerson’s first festival worthy of the name.

It was also the first time I had ever performed my own material in public, and I still suffer from sweaty stage fright even thinking about those smoke-filled nights in the Basement of the Whitla Hall.

The revue was the collaborative effort of a handful of fun-loving QUB writers, actors and musicians; it was called ‘Beyond the Fridge – the Cool Revue’ and was patently and unapologetically inspired by ‘Beyond the Fringe’ the ground-breaking Oxbridge undergraduate show which launched the TV Satire Boom of the 1960s. Indeed, local BBC headhunted some of us – notably Phil Coulter, Stewart Parker, Bill Morrison and particularly Ian Hill – to participate in Ulster’s first satirical series, the unimaginatively entitled ‘The Sixty-Four Group’ (screened in 1964, believe it or not). Ian and I were also selected to represent Queen’s on ‘University Challenge’.

Those programmes cemented my relationship with Ian, a dentistry undergraduate who was also the outstanding student journalist and writer of my time at Queen’s. By then Ian and I were ‘best friends’ thanks mainly to our shared love of student journalism (we both edited GOWN and other publications long forgotten). We also adored good movies, literature, the visual arts, female company – and great pubs. Many an hour we spent over the years (until we both caught ourselves on) in the Club Bar, the Botanic, Blake’s of the Hollow, the Ann Boal Inn -- and Davy Byrne’s during rugby internationals. Not once in all the trips we made to Dublin, in his wickedly uncomfortable wee sports car, did we ever succeed in obtaining a ticket to Lansdowne Road, being happy to watch the match on some famous pub’s monochrome TV. In later years, when he was PR Director of NITB and I was Editor of the News Letter, we could get tickets for almost anything, but by then The Troubles were upon us, and the challenges of our tough jobs did not leave much time for frivolity. We both made an exception for events during the Belfast Festival at Queen’s. Through our jobs, we gave maximum support to the Festivals organised by Michael Barnes and Robert Agnew.

Later, as a fine freelance journalist specialising in the arts, his selfless commitment -- attending up to five events a day for national and international media -- made him the doyen of the critics who covered the Festival, which had become one of the greatest draws in these islands, for artistes and audiences alike. Every year, after he had delivered the typescript of yet another best-selling book to his publishers for the Christmas market, Ian and I would meet up with our Festival Programmes in hand to plan our plays, concerts, exhibitions and gigs with a view to attending as many as possible together. He would help me unravel the mysteries of some avant-garde theatrical productions; in return, I would prompt him when to shout Yeah! during a bebop sax solo in the old Guinness Spot. You can see now why I have a heavy heart as I write this. Many of you will already know that Ian Julian Hill died shockingly suddenly a few weeks ago; a tribute to his excellence as a tourism journalist appeared in the last issue of Travel News. So, I will never again sit with him at a gig, sharing a laugh or a pearl of his wisdom (“No play should be more than 90 minutes long”).

I had intended in this October Trew’s Travels, to recommend as usual, some personal highlights of this month’s Festival. Alas, as soon as I picked up the programme, I just couldn’t do it. I was overcome with the sadness that I have somehow managed to supress since the sunny day we laid him to rest in the Hill Family grave at Down Cathedral overlooking Downpatrick and Spa, where I was born.

He will be trewly missed…

Glories of the garden by the masters of colour

THE FINEST art exhibition I have ever seen. That’s the bold assertion I make about ‘Impressionist Gardens’, the blockbuster show of masterpieces hosted by National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh until October 17.

It’s rare that I can recommend shows that I have enjoyed during the Edinburgh Festival, simply because they are over by the end of August when all the performers go back to Australia (apologies for weak joke). There’s nothing more frustrating than to be told about a ‘must-see’ when it becomes a ‘can’t-see’. However, this is one exhibition that is still on offer to those of you who can get to Edinburgh, my favourite citybreak destination, by the middle of this month. You will enjoy an exhibition that still makes me tingle when I pick up the superb catalogue that accompanies it.

All the fathers of impressionism are there – Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Manet – plus their greatest successors, such as Cézanne, Bonnard, Klimt, Gaugin and my own personal favourite, Vincent van Gogh who is represented by two canvases, both brilliant. I was thrilled to see our own home-grown master impressionist, Belfast-born Sir John Lavery, represented by a serene canvas entitled ‘My Garden in Morocco’.

Back in January of this year, I previewed here in Trew’s Travels what I forecast would be the international tourism highlights of 2010. I wrote that it was a brilliant idea to combine two great global passions – gardens and Impressionist paintings – and that the Edinburgh show would be a sure-fire success. Why on earth had it never been done before?

I went at opening time on a Monday morning to avoid the crowds;by lunchtime it was packed and when I left at teatime after spending a record-breaking five hours and ten minutes (not counting coffee and ‘comfort’ breaks), the galleries were full of happy art-lovers.

If you can’t see it in Edinburgh, I should tell you that this superb collection of 97 masterworks will be shown at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid from November 6, 2010 until February 14, 2011. I may even take My One Trew Love to see it again on its last day, as the highlight of a surprise St Valentine’s Citybreak in the Spanish capital, so please don’t tell her…