My first visit to Northern Ireland was a memorable one. A fairly junior (and totally useless) civil servant, I was dispatched to represent the Treasury at a seminar about something or other at Stormont. The other attendees were all permanent secretaries of Northern Ireland government departments.
When it came time to introduce myself, the country's most senior civil servants greeted me with mock hisses. My line manager later attributed this to the esteem in which the Treasury was held across the Irish Sea, rather than anything I'd done. Still, it's not an experience one forgets.
