If you are looking to rent an office building near Belfast City Centre and Queens University, you could do worse than this building.
The Old Library Building on Donegall Road. Excellent neighbours. Stratagem NI (friend of Slugger O’Toole) have their offices here. And so I believe does the Norn Iron Foundation (also known to Slugger). I often wonder if they have ever met.
On the other hand, maybe the space is available because one or both of these fine organisations is leaving.
Some street art from the train stop at City Hospital in Belfast.
Surely RBAI is not a reference to “Royal Belfast Academical Institution”, one of Belfast’s State Grammar Schools. Surely posh boys dont do this kinda thing.
If standards are slipping, then it is a poor outlook for the future unionist leadership.
Fifty years ago today…3rd September 1963, I was an 11 year old schoolboy. It was my first day at one of Belfast’ two Catholic Grammar Schools ( for boys of course).
It was cold and there was a steady drizzle.
There were over two hundred of us lined up. And in the rain…we stood there like prisoners of war in a WW2 movie while they called out our names and we were allocated to one of six classes …1A,1B,1C,1D,1E….and you guessed it…1F.
It was not random. My place in my class of thirty six was dependent on the first letter of my surname.
In other words…
If your name was
David Cameron…1A
John McCain…..1E
Barak Obama…..1F
John F Kennedy…1C
To be honest I never really understood it. Three Murphys in 1D, four Kennedys in 1C, three McGraths in 1E and so on…but I suppose it made administration easier.
We wore uniforms of course and in those days, we all wore short trousers, except maybe a handful of taller boys who had outgrown short trousers. The uniform was a curious mix of hand-knit clothing, hand downs from big brothers and a mine…I was probably from one of the poorest families …was precise and accurate in every detail and bought from the “proper” outlet.
Thats the curious thing about rich and middle class people. They know how to save….like knowing that a scarf and skull cap were optional extras. Poor people dont know that kinda thing.
Books…loads of books. The youngest kids carried the most books…Maths, English, Science, Art, History, Geography, French, Irish, Latin…
At the end of Second Year, Science or Art could be dropped. I dropped Science.
At the end of Third Year I dropped Art. And Latin.
And we did the Junior Exam.
Fourth Year….we were split into new classes. Twenty five boys maximum. Based on Science or the Arts….4LA, LB, LC, LD….4SA, SB, SC, SD.
A brutal and brutish environment. It was after all the 1960s. But 1967 ran right across it. The Summer of Love in San Francisco bizarrely stretched to Belfast. By this time, nobody wore short trousers. Our uniforms were discarded when we outgrew them and our hair grew longer.
Those who advocate Integrated Education miss the point completely.
In 1968…our fifth year class went to see the movie “A Man For All Seasons” at (unusually) The Grand Opera House. Our English teacher, a Christian Brother from County Kerry explained it all for us.
“At the end of the film, the English (sic) National Anthem will be played. I have no idea what it sounds like. Neither do you. I expect you all to act in the best traditions of this school”
Suffice to say that when the British Anthem started our school rushed for the foyer where our way was blocked by some British patriots. Blows were exchanged. I made my way to the foyer thru crawling under the seats.
We found the Kerry Christian Brother already there…waiting for us.
See thats the kinda craic we would miss out on under an “Integrated” system.
The catchment area for the school was not just West Belfast. We had kids from Short Strand, the Markets, posh Malone, parts of Antrim Road (although most Catholics from North Belfast chose the other Catholic school).
And we had kids from surrounding towns like Lisburn, Glengormey, Bangor, Portaferry, Moira and even Lurgan..
The character of the School changed when it moved from the older part of West Belfast to the outer reaches of West Belfast (1968).
A uniform was introduced again and they tried to domesticate us again.
The thing is that I woke up today realising that fifty years ago, I was standing in the rain in a Grammar School playground.
I wrote the first few paragraphs of this blog on a train to Belfast.
And coincidently I ran into another one of those thirty-six boys from my First Year Class.
Talked about old times and “the day that was in it”.
Interesting that those guys….what would be the odds for men of 61 and 62….would 25% have passed on?
I know that three died violently…statistically probably more but the only three that I know for sure were in that Fourth Year class of twenty five boys.
That seems high.
Two were IRA volunteers and the third was a victim of a sectarian assassination.
But heres the thing. September 1963 was six years before the Troubles started. There was no inkling of what was to come.
Today more kids started School. Probably not standing in a cold wet playground. Its all more sophisticated in 2013.
But in fifty years time those kids will look back on their lives.
As I have said before we are re-living the 1960s.
A period of Peace.
The man of 61 that I met today agrees with me. We fear for our grandchildren.
I celebrate the tweets of Belfast Mayor Mairtin O’Muilleoir. Historians will value these tweets as an insight into the minutae (no tweet too trivial) of being Mayor in a multi-cultural city like Belfast.
8am
.Mairtin bids his 7,735 followers a cheery Maidin Maith
.Ever the optimist Mairtin has decided to say Hello to Autumn
.Mairtin, quotes Seamus Heaney and notes his Poet Laureate will be joining him to open a Book of Condolence.
.Mairtin retweets a pic of himself from a charity run to raise funds for local childrens hospice.
10am
.Mairtin tweets pic of Alliance Councillor Maire Hendron signing the Book of Condolence. (At this point Im not actually sure if his committment to a diverse Belfast extends to tweeting pics of SDLP Councillors signing the Book of Condolence).
.Mairtin is honoured to be joined by the Belfast Poet Laureate and one of his chaplains Rev Margaret Ferguson, who is I believe Methodist. Mairtin reflects the Citys diversity by having loadsa chaplains….eight.
.Mairtin is off to meet the pioneers of the Titanic Church and reflects that Belfast is “blessed with people of good heart”
.Mairtin retweets a Seamus Heaney quote from arty person Brian Spencer.
.Mairtin retweets an observation that he (Mairtin) has “wisdom”.
.Mairtin retweets a Catholic priest, who has observed Mairtin mentioned the Bible in a radio interview.
.Mairtin retweets an observation “do you ever sleep?”
11am
.Mayor retweets the thanks of the Hospice for which he and others raised funds.
Noon.
.Mairtin is in the Titanic Quarter with Chris Bennett (chaplain to Titanic Quarter)
.Mairtin tweets something I dont understand about the upcoming Belfast Festival at Queens.
.Mairtin notes…profoundly that the River Lagan meets the Sea.
.Mairtin retweets a series of tweets about the Book of Condolence.
Mairtin tweets that he is at DONG Energy, a major employer.
.Mairtin tweets a pic of Man From Dong getting Belfast Ambassador Award.
2pm
.Mairtin tweets a pic of an autographed copy of The Cure at Troy (Seamus Heaney)
4pm
.Mairtin tweets a video where he shares his Vision.
5pm
.Mairtin retweets a message in Irish pointing out a BBC Special on Seamus Heaney.
.Mairtin announces that he will be chairing the monthly Belfast Council meeting from 6pm. He will be off Twitter …thank God, I cant keep up.
10pm
.Mairtin tweets he is calling it a day.
.Mairtin tweets that Rev Margaret Ferguson read from the “poet David” at the Book of Condolence ceremony.
Fair play to Councillor Claire Hanna (SDLP) on her motion at Belfast City Hall tonight.
The City Council is now committed to working with Advice services to combat the menace of predatory “pay day” loan companies.
Just why the Government allows such loan sharks is a total disgrace.
It is a menace that affects the most vulnerable people in society.
Those puppets are not so cute as they look.
Support your local Credit Union!!
David Frost 74….hmmm.
I actually remember That Was The Week That Was. I suppose I was 11 years old. It was late night Saturday viewing and as I recall “open ended”.
Live TV certainly.
A stock company which included singers David Kernan, Milicent Martin…and actors, William Rushton, Lance Percival, Kenneth Cope, Roy Kinnear and others.
Certainly I was 11 years old, when Milicent sang that song about Kennedys assassination. On reflection that MADE TWTWTW more than Bernard Levin getting punched or frankie Howerd or the disapproval of the McMillan Government.
It was late night TV…adult…and yet the only time I can recall my father disaproving was a Kinnear- Martin acted sketch about Contraception.
And for the most part, I recall that a live show in front of a live audience, things can and DO go wrong. There was a certain look of fear in all the actors. Some sketches fell flat. No laughs. No applause.
Frost was the ringmaster….and really no more than a 24 year old posh Oxbridge graduate…a bit smarmy, even then.
Peter Cook claimed that the idea for a late night satire show was his.
Perhaps the most telling quote about Frost is from Peter Cook.
He claimed (truthfully) that he had saved David Frost from drowning….and that he would always regret it. Aparently this was a joke.
While TV satire and comedy went in one direction…Monty Python and The Goodies (on a show they gave frost a medal for Plagiarism)….Frost went in another direction. The TV Talk Show or the Frost Report.
Memorably for a Norn Iron perspective a Sunday night Frost Show was about the Civil Rights Movement and featured John Hume.
Thats the frustrating thing about David Frost. He was a satirist, a hard-hitting interviewer, a soft interviewer, a quasi anti-Establishment figure from the 1960s who became extremely Establishment …and mega rich.
And of course the sheer campness and awfulness of “Thru The Keyhole” featuring A-list celeb Frost and some B-list celebs on a panel, looking at the houses of C-list celebs.
Of course, if Frost was really “anti-establishment” he would never have had a BBC career in the first place. BBC likes to hire people like Dara O’Briain, Hugh Dennis and Ian Hislop to say occasionally rude things…but basically they are absorbed into mainstream Establishment. Be consistently anti-establishment like Frankie Boyle and youre not on BBC.
Was the highlight of Frosts career really interviewing Richard Nixon about Watergate?
Or was it….being played by Michael Sheen…in a movie about that event?
Hard to really disentangle the professional broadcaster…was he the first TELEVISION broadcaster who had no connexion to Newspapers or Radio.
As the Usual Suspects at the Beeb clamour to sing his praises….why is it that I just didnt like him very much?
I think I have worked out how Mairtin O’Muilleoir is Mayor of Belfast and I am not Mayor of Belfast.
Its…Twitter.
He has 7,000 odd Followers and follows over 5,000.
I…a testament to my popularity …have just 52 followers.
The key is to be unremittingly NICE to people. At a pinch…I CAN be nice. Basically if I am nice to just one thousand people, I can cobble together a quota at the next Council Elections.
To be unremittingly nice to ordinary punters…I could probably do that.
But there are other key demographics out there. Journalists…Id have to be nice to that shower of miserable no-marks. How does Mairtin do that? I suppose it helps that he is a journalist. But I am a Blogger which is better than a Journalist.
Id also have to re-invent myself as a Renaissance Man. Start going to Art Exhibitions, Plays and all that Crap. Although it is probably better if I avoid calling it all Crap. Thats no way to get votes of Belfasts amazingly talented (so they say) painters, poets, photographers, writers, balloon blower uppers, three card trick, “can I have an Arts Council Grant please?” types.
I will develop my Man of the People persona.
There are two ways to do this.
One is to take up an activity such as Cycling or Jogging.
This immediately would make me a kindred spirit of all cyclists and joggers. As a hobby, Cycling has more street cred than Pigeon Racing. But the downside of Cycling and Jogging as “activities” is that they are far too “active”.
The alternative is Football. I dont have to pretend to like Manchester United or Celtic… And I could work on an interest in Cliftonville but actually giving à tinkers curse about Glentoran, Crusaders and Linfield is beyond my usually limitless Hypocrisy.
Of course…there has to be an element of “New Man” which means learning something about Ice Hockey so that I can go and watch the Belfast Giants.
I will tweet every restaurant I visit….95% of the time its McDonalds anyway. But I will be sure to name-check the staff.
What matters is that I get a quota to get me into City Hall and the Mayors Parlour.
The Campaign begins….NOW…or possibly later.
Last month I attended a lecture on “Religion, Conflict and Peace” given by Professor John Brewer of QUB at St Oliver Plunkett Church in West Belfast.
Eexcellent night but for me spoiled by some unchallenged comments from the Floor. It would have been easy for me to get angry about things that I heard…not least because a family member was a prison chaplain during the worst days of the Troubles. The most significant battles of the Conflict took place behind the barbed wire at Long Kesh.
In the nature of these things, quite a lot of Expertise and Experience is in the audience. Fifteen people made contributions but thru no fault of the Chair, too many contributions began with “I am an ex-combatant…I am an ex-prisoner….The Church did nothing for me…I am an athiest”.
Again its in the nature of these things…the protocol…that an audience member gets one question. It was too lively a Q&A for an audience member to be selected twice. But the presence of so many ex-combatants essentially making the same point unbalanced things. Was it co-ordinated? Well Sinn Fein are ALWAYS co-orinated. Was the Audience “packed”? I am not sure but I tend to think that it was.
Some observations.
To claim that the Church has done nothing for Irish nationalism-republicanism is a discussion that is best left to Captain Boyle and Joxer Daly (in Sean O’Caseys Juno and the Paycock) or maybe it just has echoes of “what did the Romans do for us?” From Monty Pythons Life of Brian to St Olivers, nobody seemed to notice that the church was named for an Irish bishop who was hanged, drawn and quartered in London in the late seventeenth century.
Indeed quite a lot of Irish News Death Notices of those “killed in action” invoke SAINT Oliver Plunkett alongside Mary, Queen of the Gael.
The ex-combatants have short memories.
I am blessed (cursed!) with a longer one.
Back in May 1973…the Council Elections …the first test of public opinion since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969 (I discount the 1970 British Election) were held. Fr Dennis Faul, a Catholic priest (NEVER a chaplain at Long Kesh by the way) called for a boycott of these elections as support for the internees.
I suported that call and did not vote. From being a hero of the Republican Movement in 1973, Fr Faul became the exact opposite in 1981. He is regarded by Republicans as undermining the Hunger Strike campaign.
A certain ingratitude perhaps.
Of course within days of the Council Elections, I was a member of SDLP canvassing in West Belfast for the upcoming Assembly Elections.
And as I have mentioned before in this Blog, I recall relatives of arrested Republicans calling on SDLP for help in tracing the RUC station to which these arrested people were taken.
Vividly I recall the Monday night…sitting in the back of Desmond Gillespies car with the mother of an arrested man. We went to Andytown RUC Station before he was located at Springfield Road.
And the mother of the man was grateful.
Well for ten days at least. Until she was picketing Dessie’s house in Gransha…cant recall the exact words on her placard but “SDLP Collaborators” would sum it up.
So dont look for Gratitude in that direction.
The Church? The Catholic Church? Did the Republicans and Sinn Fein never use the good offices of the institutional Church to broker anything for them. Frankly Sinn Fein have used them shamelessly….when it suited. As is their right.
I am from West Belfast.
I am OF West Belfast.
I have WALKED behind the coffins that the ex-combatants at St Olivers might have MARCHED behind.
Friends. Neighbours.
And I still do…old friends, old neighbours die of natural causes.
Dont ask me how many funerals?
Each time I count, I get a different answer.
And on all but one occasion, the funeral had Catholic Church involvement.
And I recall attending a few funerals where a Catholic chaplain escorted a IRA prisoner, released to attend a funeral.
How many of the ten dead hunger strikers received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church?
One? Ten?…Id go with “Ten”.
Ingratidude?
Now of course…ex-prisoners, ex- combatants are fully entitled to play “the old soldier” card. Theres a long and honourable tradition in all armies of quiet service followed by quiet retirement and occasional visits to the American Legion, the British Legion or the Felons Club in West Belfast. But theres a slightly less honourable tradition of old soldiers doing the whole “I dont wanna talk about it” before boring the arse off anyone who will listen.
Conflict Resolutionists SEEK to give the ex-combatants a voice. Thats reasonable. But these decently minded people need a filter….to distinguish between the Genuine and the Spoofer.
And….as maybe the two priests and one Presbyterian minister in the hall at St Oliver Plunketts could tell the Conflict Resolutionists….dont expect GRATITUDE. The going rate (according to the Bible) for Gratitude is One in Ten.
In a Slugger O’ Toole post “Mr Ulster” (is he by any chance a former General Secretary of the Alliance Party who now has an office in the same building as “agent for change” Quintin Oliver?)….talks about an event hosted by Alliance Party MLA, Chris Lyttle to honour Martin Luther King?
Now obviously there is no connexion between Martin Luther King and the Alliance Party. Dr King preached against Gerrymandering. The Alliance Party preaches in favour of it.
But this is Norn Iron. A Decade of Centenaries and Half Centenaries. The Truth is a bit inconvenient.
Anyway Chris Lyttle was not hosting the event in his capacity as an Alliance MLA. He was speaking as a former intern with the Washington-Ireland programme….which scoops up promising young university students from Irish universities and sends them to intern on Capitol Hill.
Now if I was a young student…Id welcome the chance to party in the Beltway….ooops what I actually mean is work with influential Senators and Congressmen and learn about the American system and transfer my skills into a political career back home in Ireland.
There are success stories.
Leo Varadkar…Fine Gael Minister in Irish Government. (Boooo)
Sharon Haughey….last years SDLP Mayor of Armagh (hooray!!)
Chris Lyttle….Alliance MLA in East Belfast (Jesus wept!).
And others still to make their mark PUBLICLY. But learning politics in the offices of Irish-friendly American politicians might just produce a blandness where professional staffers have more in common with fellow interns than rank and file members of the same political party.
The rise and rise of the political staffer….professionals recruited and promoted by internships with lobbying companies. Are they actually pawns of lobbyists, seeking to have “their” people in the back corridors at Stormont?
We watch this on “The Thick of It” and say it couldnt happen here.
I fear that it does.I am not at ease witn the MetroTextual world of political insiders.
But the event hosted by Chris Lyttle also mentions “Politics Plus” Thats a new one on me. The website says that they promote pofessional politics but the website is curiously short on information on the personel involved.
Even more curiously the contact address is Room 105 in Stormont Buildings.
So who are they?
What is the secret of Room 105?
Proud to announce that the first of the Sluggerite triumvirate to post about Seamus Heaney is Sheldon…the Sage of Ballinderry (but he calls in BallinLONDONderry). Our congratulations to him.
Cherished reminisinces from Dimpleby for his fellow Derryman will follow. I expect he must have interviewed him for the Beeb. Possibly Seamus Heaney was a Freemason (I doubt it) and much respected in the wider freemasonry of Poetry. Im hoping for the obligatory refence to the “UK” City of Culture and the poem for Mrs Windsors visit to Queens.
And cherished thoughts and perhaps poetry from Mick later on. And perhaps a rebuke for those of us claiming Seamus Heaney as one of our own. A Poet for all of us etc etc.
On the other hand Mick might be working on that James Kelly obituary.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 