There ‘s been much talk in the press about the television series “The Fall” which is set in modern -day Belfast.It is now currently screening season two and has been acclaimed as a thoughtful adult drama, very -well acted and straddling a fine , if uneasy , line between voyeurism and psychopathic thriller. It is claustrophobically realistic, mostly filmed in small shadow-filled rooms which would remind anyone of their cramped student digs of long -ago. One reviewer’s quote stood out from the pack in relation to this drama. It was nothing to do with the obvious quality and charms of the two protagonists acted by the erotically comely Gillian Anderson and the handsomely buff Jamie Dornan . Two , almost too attractively conceived sides of a very similar tarnished coin in constant friction .
The phrase that sparked my interest had nothing at all to do with these actors or the quality or otherwise of the production , but was something that might give the Northern Ireland tourist board some sleepless nights to add to their already many tossings and turnings in the wake of the misguided flag protests and similar civic disruptions that have blighted their tidy copybooks. .The anxiety served up behind the closed and multiple- locked doors of the frightened , stalked and shaking viewers would be nothing compared to the phrase used in the commentary…..
“…..they are still in the UK’s most intimidating city, Belfast”……
I don’t personally live in Belfast. I did live and work in it briefly in 1971 and 1972, which by all accounts were the most violent years of the euphemistically named “The Troubles” .There’s even been a film made to great artistic acclaim about that year of 1971 in Belfast…called simply ” ’71”. I believe it is currently on show at a theatre near you, but I’ll probably wait for the DVD release, myself. In that period there was much random terror and death on a daily basis but people mostly got on with their lives for the most part, narrowly missing death by luck and casual happenstance. Bombs were exploded and people were casually shot in the streets, but life went on as usual in the shops and offices.
I personally remember standing at a bus stop at Dundonald House , near Stormont and having the terrorising experience of almost being hustled into a car full of dubious characters.At the time that kind of thing was a recurring blasphemy. It was how people were slashed , tortured ,”disappeared” or dumped at the whims of psychopaths. It was a time when people were casually and randomly killed for reasons no more complicated than ordinary bigotry or hatred. You could lose your life as easily as you could get a good kicking outside the wrong bar.
That’s not the Belfast of today , I hope. I visit it on a fairly regular basis and it seems ,to all intents, to be a small , modern accessible city not unlike many other similar cities in the rest of Ireland and the UK. With the “Troubles” consigned to history we are left with some unfinished Post Traumatic Stress among the citizenry alright , but I’m not sure we are living and visiting the most intimidating city in the UK.
I think the Tourist Board may have some work to do….
Saw “71” at a cinema last week – well worth a viewing. manages to symbolically encompass the entire 30 odd years of the troubles. very violent of course
is Belfast the most intimidating city in the UK?
it probably is for people who have never known it any way well –
it probably isn’t for those who were brought up there or who lived there as students or workers because they learnt which areas they could safely live in or transit The mental safety maps live on as do reactions, reflexes and awareness of potential danger!!
since both groups are probably alert to, and on guard with, whoever they get into casual conversation with, Belfast is certainly not the most relaxing city
Hi Ben ..I’ve been busy, but you’ll know that already. Cities……well I also lived in Leeds, Manchester and London for periods of time and visit Liverpool regularly several times a year..I’m in belfast regularly too.i was there on Sunday , for example. I dare say there are areas in each of those cities mentioned that would not be conductive to long-term health….not unlike areas of Belfast or Dublin. Longsight or Mosside in Manchester are areas where you would have needed to watch yourself in , even forty years ago . Of course , when we visit cities there is a tendency to stay quite central .anyway. That’s where most of the action is , isn’t it?I’ve written apiece about Belfast last Sunday so maybe you’ll get a chance to read that too. ,sometime soon.
As you imply Mighty Perk, there are junkies and criminals to trip over in any city if you care to go looking for them.
Methinks, Harry, that Belfast was being confused with Dublin in that reviewer’s mind, not unlike that American TV dude’s recent confusion over feelings like Ireland and ideas like the UK.
Far be it from one to criticise that confusion in the reviewer’s mind for it is Perkie’s unhappy lot to report (a) that O’Connell Street on Liffeyside is indubitably not the least intimating street he has had to saunter down in his time; and (b) Dublin still can’t make its mind up whether it’s in Ireland or the UK.
Whatever about the UK, O’Connell Street is Kip Central. Even the bandalero boyos of Isis would think twice about beng enticed to give it a whirl. This public thoroughfare has now been abandoned to the Methodone Private Members’ Club whose house, like that of Madness, is ‘in the middle of the street’.
Also known as The Nutty Boys, these slurry-mouthed Sir Bob wannabes give daily and nocturnal street performances of Syringe Theatre, with a special Matinee show on Saturday. So called, because their chief script writer is J. Millington Syringe, author of ‘Playgirl of the Eastern World’. This heroine is always dressed in baggy trousers and is usually known as Pegeen, like.
Local Gardai have called in sick with their BFF, the Blue Flu and it has now been declared a no-go area for squad cars, Black Marias, mounted cops and Paddy Wagons. Things are definitely not all right for Mor-i-ar-i-ty. In fact, if one is ill-advised enough to want to go from or to the Monuments O’Connell and Parnell, it is necessary to obtain a transit visa. At one’s own risk.
Even Perkie’s embarassing Uncle Arthur, aka ‘Incapability Warbeck’ would think long and h. before discussing fustian with his own shadow in the street while wearing his trademark yellow bib marked ‘Maor Uisce Beatha’. as he staggers from Dr. Quirkeys; Good Time Emporium diagobally across to Anne Somer’s Wholesale Shoppe of Girly Lingerie with it very own Boyzone Nook.
The peritpathetic Perkie spent a year within living memory in Mexico City, un ciudad which has rather carved out un nombre for itself as being el capital of Drugonia. Four seasons of unencumbered rambling round el centro known as El Zocalo at all hours of day and el noche did not prepare him however for the meanies at loose on the main drag of Hashtag sur Liffey. That there were balaclava-wearing policia standing with mounted machine guns on the backs of jeesp in constant patrol mode may indeed have had something to do with it. But, as Ray Price used to sing: Still.
The only thing to even remotely prepare him for the shock and awe of O’Connell Street was, si, senor, the Mexican Policia’s Museum of Serial Killers and a visit to the villa in Mexico 4 where Stalin’s villain of the piece, Trotsky was totalled with an ice pick in his skull and a toothpick in his mouth.
. But that was only trotting after the addled-headed addicts who have been awarded the Freedom of Dublin City’s main drug drag by a City Manager who refused permission to Garth Brooks to play the field of dreams. While the City Manager may well have been right on,, that still doesn’t make it seem right.
Perkie personally feels the rot all started wth the renaming of the street after the man who shot the Liberty Valance of his day, John D’Esterre. Unlike say Padraig Mac Piarais, Dan the Man has blood on his hands. Not many people know that, but then fings ain’t quite wot they used to be, ‘arry.
And O’Connell Street was called Sackville Street before 1924. In honour of Lionel Sackville, 1 st Duke of Dorset. Could do with reverting to its original name. Certainly it’s, erm, messy enough.
And of course, the street’s very own House of Fun is the G.P.O. When it was sacked in 1916 it was located then at the navel of the New Ireland underneath the one-eyed Horatio, aka Lord Nelson, as well known for his naval exploits as his column was for the one-eyed trouser snake, with some loss of seamen.
Well does it merit the title of House of Fun as a cursory glance as the curse-of-God Unionist Times will indicate. Which brings one to the second part of the equation: that Dublin doesn’t know its UK from its Ireland, or Erseland, indeed.
Take today’s Epistle from the Corkonian with Bottle, John A. Murphy (87), Professor Emeritus of Empire Studies. The letter from Leeside had a real humdinger of research to impart: that the only cupla focal/ couple of words in Irish in the Proclamatiion were ‘Poblacht na hEireann’.
This pearl of research, retrieved from d’oyster bed of d’Archives is surely worthy of another Honoray Doctorate.
(Actually, J.A.M., Perkie’s inner pedant would like to point out, dat’s three words, counting on one’s God-given abacus, one’s fingers, l to r, but then Profs of Hist, even Profs Emeritus in the Queen’s College by the Lee, are not paid tax-payer’s dough for being able to count, even counties. It is -allegedly – rumoured indeed that John A never actually learned to count past 26. Money for J.A.M., boy. And as for Himself and Herself, Elizabeth R (87), dere’s an old Leeside saying: dough there’s dough dere, dere’s love dere too, dough).
And then, the kicker from J.A.M.: ‘But then, English has always been the predominant language of Irish nationalism’.
Well, curry one’s yoghurt.
Today’s Epistle was directed f. and squarely at Conradh na Gaeilge for being ‘concerned about the lack of Irish in the official Ireland 2016 website. Its criticism would be more appropriately directed at the ghosts of the signatoriesof the 1916 Proclamation’.
What J.A.M. actually failed to mention, it being known to even the dogs in the sraid, that P.H. Pearse (as he signed himself on the toilet paper known as the Proclamation once again) cycled into the G.PO. on Easter Monday 1916 on his Irish made bike. This was a real loser’s bike, a regular Triumph of Failure, manufactured by the Pierce Irony Mongers of Wexford.
Indeed, Norn Irony. If P.H. Pearse had but known the tyres were the invention of wee John Dunlop, adopted Belfast mon and friend of the pneumatic Victoria, Regina, he would have walked. As a Boyd never flew on one wing.
Perhaps even out of the pages of Irish folklore. Another one of those tyresome ‘What ifs of hysteria’. But then P.H. Pearse was no Professor Emeritus of Procrastination once again either.
The Pierce piece of shoddy irony mongery may well have been fit for a wannabe Connemar Cowboy but it was not at all to be compared with the upstair model
Raleighs and Rudges which the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division mounted as they biked into the mud and blood and the guts of the Somme.
‘Elephants might well have been alright for that bounder, Hannibal but only the best of British bikes are good enough for my kikes’ their commander Lord Kitchener (for it was he, a long way from Ballylonford in Yerraland). And so the Sikhs from the foothills of the Himalays found themselves on High Nellies even as they pedalled into Ypres, waxing eloquently belligerent, while uttering their password du jour: ‘Let the Yerras from the Kingdowm of the Kyber pass !’.
A million of the turbaned warriors defended their, erm, homeland in France, and there are 70,000 graves still there to prove it. Oddly enough, there were no Kitchner- like waxed handlebar moustaches to be seen on these Oriental bikers as they furiously pedaled into the fray, only beards of the black and bushy variety.
Mind you, many of them did a U-turn and pedalled furiously in the opposite direction. Some of them, folklore has it, even fetched up as door to door peddlers of second hand Raleighs and Rudges back in Blighty. Oriental conscripts, you couldn’t be up to them.
Unlike those accidental Occidentals, the genuine donkey-jacketed Dublin fusiliers, who volunteered, fought and died, if not at the hands of Hans the Hun and his Howitzrs, then of the lethal Trench foot.
And with this poignant footnote so ends this war bulletin from the most intimiating city in the UK, Dubhlinn, which is leprechaun for Blackpool.
Not Blackpool, Cork, boy.
Thus, Harry, should you find yourself in the UK, anytime soon, perhaps best not to tarry too long on Dublin’s Sackville Street.
“Dublin doesn’t know its UK from its Ireland, or Erseland, indeed.”
HAHAHA!
Perkin, I must respectfully ask, do you wear one of those spinning bow-ties?
Harry
(Standby for needlessly long winded contribution)
Recently I watched a Norn Land based episode of Grand Designs. It was based in South/East of the COUNTY THAT WE DARE NOT SPEAK OF, somewhere near Maghera and Kilrea if my accent-o-meter hasn’t failed me.
It was fantastic. The building was staggering, the house owner was very inspiring and a welcome break from the normal Kentish type couples who are trying to escape from London or are going through a mid-life crisis..
Anyhoo, my brother said to me that people from outside of NI show off its attractive features better than those who live there and sure enough the episode was littered with shots of gorse and moss covered stones, things that most of us wouldn’t give a monkey’s about.
To the outsiders the landscape, stones, mosss, gorse etc were beautiful. To us they’re just ‘stuff’.
To them wee farm houses and cottages are something to adore, to us they’re something that can be used to get a planning permission for a replacement dwelling.
By a similar token I think it’s the same with fear and intimidation.
A lot of what we aren’t aware of is readily noticeable by outsiders.
My missus (outsider) can’t stand Belfast, she sees menace in nearly everything and that’s with me actively trying to avoid ‘flegginess’. (and by way of comparison she loves Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow).
Say for example if you were to walk down parts of Glasgow’s West End, by and large the reminders of Glasgow’s violent past are gone (apart from the odd nightcrawler staggering up from Dumbarton Road) but in Belfast it’s never too far away.
I think perhapsoutsiders are quite aware of this and wonder how quickly can things ‘go south’.
It’s a shame but I see why they might say that (aside from the melodrama).
I think our sense of normal is quite different from that of others.
Seriously, feels unsafe? Unsafe like Baltimore or Washington DC? In Belfast you can go walk downtown at midnight and nothing will happen to you, try that in a mid sized US city like Richmond and you will see what intimidating is.
True Virginia but I believe the statement was made in a UK context.
Belfast obviously doesn’t compare in terms of intimidating to many dangerous cities around the world but, in UK terms it certainly has a certain menace for some who are foreign to there.
Good to have you onboard , as usual Am Ghob .You’re in great company …the Mighty Perk’s spinning bowtie and all….. it’s got flashing lights too , y’know…I have to say that when i’m in Belfast i usually gravitate to one of the many great bars which now serve up a wonderful 21st century variety of the Devil’s Buttermilk, which i try and sample. I try to follow that up with a fine meal in the many and varied great restaurants and maybe take in a gig to finish the day.As you say , I too try to avoid the eegits who doubtless still inhabit the murky shadows . There’s always beauty and wonderment for those with eyes to see. That’s something i don’t take for granted.
That episode of grand designs was filmed in Slaughtneil which is situated in the hills above Maghera so your accent o meter was’nt far away !
Belfast is the least self-righteous city in the English speaking (Anglo/American) world, not perfect but damn well honest.