I was in Belfast today. I am almost 60 years old. I lived in Belfast from 1952 to 1979. I have never lived more than 40 miles from my city. I have always worked there. Over the past two years, my visits to Belfast are less frequent. And it seems, each time I visit the City………there is something new. I am a stranger in my own city. The tourists who wander around the City are seeing things for the first time. So am I.

 Royal Avenue, Belfast.

I am not nostalgic for Belfast slums, like the one in which I spent the first seventeen years of my life. Nor am I nostalgic for bombed out buildings and the whiff of tear gas in the air in the 1970s.

But I recall living about 30 minutes walk from the City Centre and going there in with my paternal granny and my lovely Auntie Sheila every Thursday to Woolworths in the (circa 1956) and getting my pancake in the Maple Leaf Cafe in High Street.

And I recall going with my father (circa 1962) and listening to him telling me that the United Irishmen took their rebellios oaths in the alleyways off Ann Street, that Henry Joy McCracken their leader was hanged in Cornmarket and we would say a prayer in St Marys Catholic Church in Chapel Lane, a gift to the Catholics of Belfast from the Presbyterian Community in the 1780s and tea in the Continetal Cafe in Castle Street. And I recall going into Harrisons Record Store (circa 1971) in Castle Street and having coke and a hamburger with Teresa accross the street in Victors.

That’s how it is. Woolworths, the Maple Leaf, the Continental, Harrisons and Victors are all gone.

St Mary’s is still there.