THE first thing I noticed when I arrived in Northern Ireland for a fleeting visit last weekend was the fact there were no England flags fluttering from car windows.

This was not what I expected. When we heard a huge cheer from a nearby pub as we left a restaurant minutes before the end of the England/France game, we assumed England must have scored again. But no. Then another cheer.

"They're all supporting France in there, " said a stunned friend who rushed into another pub to catch the final score. "Something strange has happened. This place has changed."

We were in a famously Protestant seaside town on the North Antrim coast near the Giant's Causeway, somewhere we had always come to as children. Then, the kerb stones were painted red, white and blue. Union Jacks flew from telegraph poles. Portraits of the Queen looked down on you in shops, pubs and hotels. In nightclubs and discos, God Save the Queen would be played at the end of the evening and God help anyone who didn't stand up and sing every word.

This was the last place I expected to hear everyone cheering on the French, even singing the French national anthem. My sons, at home in North Yorkshire, where they have draped England flags from their bedrooms and over our front gate, were disgusted to hear people were walking along the streets chanting triumphantly in French.

But I had to tell them it wasn't a bad thing. Hardline Protestants here, traditionally so desperate to cling onto their Britishness while disassociating themselves from their old enemy and neighbours, the Southern Irish, have lost much of their own cultural identity along the way.

As descendents of British Protestant settlers, they became a strange sort of pseudo-English hybrid, ill-atease in the island of Ireland, yet cast adrift from their governing country over the water.

Perhaps the new anti-English sentiment I saw this weekend is a result of Protestant mistrust and anger over the British Government's role in the faltering peace process, as many accuse Blair of betraying them by pandering to Republican demands.

But I prefer to think it reveals a new-found confidence in Northern Ireland itself. People here are no longer hanging onto England's coat tails. They are in the process of reshaping their own identity.

Just like football fans in Scotland or Wales, they are happy to indulge in a spot of healthy rivalry and banter with their big-headed neighbours after all the pre-match chest beating.

After all, as I told my boys, this is only a game. And Beckham and his boys can at least take comfort from the fact they succeeded at something - for around 90 minutes most people in this divided province actually appeared to support the same side.

ON Saturday, about 18 of us, celebrating my sister's 40th birthday, went on an eight-mile hike, taking in the staggeringly beautiful scenery of the North Antrim coast.

It was a great day, catching up with old friends and meeting many new, but marred by those few carrying mobile phones who were constantly reading and sending texts. They barely took in the view and didn't get the chance to have much of a conversation with the real people alongside them. "You must learn to text, " my sisters keep telling me. "We could all keep in touch so much more easily." No thanx.