Malone House, Belfast

My sister in law Adell recommended we have tea at the Barnett Restaurant in Malone House.  So that’s what we did. A lovely dining hall in a great mansion that likely once was a private residence with vast fields about.  The house itself was very elegant with high ceilings and swirling staircase.  Large meals were served at lunch and dinner the white table cloth Barnett dining room.  We arrived too early for ‘tea’ but had soup with delicious egg salad white bread sandwiches. Laura and I both were reminded of our mothers and how much they’d like this place.

The Troubles, Belfast, Ireland

We’d heard of the Troubles recently at the U2 concert in Vancouver before coming to Ireland.  Here in Belfast we’d see the actual sites the concert murals came from.
There’d been conflict in Ireland between British and Irish forever.  The Norman Invasion occurred in the late 12th century. The Plantations occurred in the 15th and 16th century when English and Scottish Protestant settlers came and displaced the pre-plantation Catholic Landowners.  There was the Protestant Ascendancy and the Catholic Emancipation after that. Irish Protestants fought Irish Catholics and sometimes Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics got together to fight England.
The Home Rule Act was written 1914 then suspended by WWI. 1916 was the Easter Rising by Irish Republicans.  Then in 1922 the Irish War of Independence and Anglo Irish Treaty resulted.  Michael Collins, the great Liam Neelson movie we saw and Shadow of a Gunman, the play we saw at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin were about these times.  Ireland became the Irish Free State in 1937 with the six northern counties of Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.  Sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland has continued with Nationalists (mainly Catholic) and Unionists (mainly Proestant) at odds.  This conflict erupted into the Troubles in the 1960’s until an uneasy peace thirty years later.
In the early 70’s when I was living with my first wife, Baiba, in London, England I was repeatedly evacuated from the Associated Television offices across from Harrod’s where I worked because of bomb threats.  Baiba came home once with her beautiful face cut by flying gas when the building across from where she worked had been bombed and her building’s windows blown out.
The Provisional Independent Republican Army (IRA) felt bombs (and terror) would financially cost England so much that they’d wash their hands of Ireland. The Royal Ulster Defence League defended itself against them.  These two ‘gangs’ were the armies.  Meanwhile a  diplomatic mainstream wanted to arrive at some compromise or solution without further bloodshed. Some three thousand Irish were killed during these times. Desmond showed us an area where all the houses had been devastated .
Apparently the Unionists had had power in Northern Ireland for 50 years and the Irish Catholic working classes in the north rebelled at their poor conditions. It was something of a ‘civil rights’ conflict in the late 60’s before the violence exploded. In 1968 a peaceful civil rights march in Derry had turned violent.  This was followed by the Battle of the Bogside and the Northern Ireland Riots of 1969.  To restore order, British troops were deployed. The worst occurred 1972 with Blood Sunday when Paratroopers opened fire on civil rights protestors in Derry, killing 13 unarmed civilians.  This was the beginning of what was to be called the Troubles.
We’d taken a famous West Belfast Black Taxi Tour with Desmond as our guide  to view the famous murals of Shankill and Falls area.  We saw a wall that went on for miles.  “I was surprised when I heard from German tourists that the Berlin Wall had only lasted 23 years whereas our Belfast Wall has been up for over 40.” said Desmond.  The wall was massive too, barbwire with locking gates and curfews.  The police still rode about in armoured cars.
Direct Rule of Northern Ireland with a British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the Briish Cabinet carried on from 1972 to 1999.The IRA and Ulster Defence Regiment continued at odds. 1986 the Anglo Irish Agreement (something of a truce) was signed.  The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement 1999) gave Unionists and Nationalists power sharing in limited areas of government.  This continues till today with decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, policing reforms and removal of British Army bases. The IRA announced the end of it’s armed conflict 2005.  2011 Ireland closed it’s embassy at the Vatican.
The murals showed that the Irish Catholics interestingly tended to side with Palestine while the Protestants sided with Israel giving a global reach to these local events.
Today the walls and barbwire and armed police cars and shrines are all reminiscent of earlier conflicts, yet I confess I was thankful to be in a taxi with a local informed guide. It didn’t seem like a particularly safe place to wander about on foot.  Laura and I were thankful for the Black Taxi Tour.
The Crumlin Road Gaol  that had housed both protestants and catholic criminals has become a tourist site and the old courthouse is falling down.
Desmond let us write on the wall with felt pens.  Apparently Bill Clinton did the same when he was here. Laura and I wrote prayers for peace.  Laura is Catholic and I’m Protestant.
We learned that if Catholics and Irish couldn’t live together here.  They moved to other parts of Belfast where love clearly means more than war.

 

Belfast City Hall, Ireland

It’s a must see in the guide books.  Smack dab in the centre of the city. A beautiful building. We wandered in and followed the signs to the exhibits.  This was in the cafe where we learned the Belfast had been a centre of industry for a very long time. It had produced planes since the War and was a great ship building centre that had built Ocean liners including the Titannic.  As well it was a place where linen was made en mass.  I loved that the first chocolate as we consider it in modern times was developed here. Milk of Magnesia comes from here. Portable defibrillators. Quantum Theorem Physics.  James Bond’s Autogyro!!! Lord Kelvin of temperature fame was from here. The first air craft ejection seat was developed here.  Aerated water for drinking came from here. The list goes on and on.
We lucked out as a tour was beginning and welcomed.  The building is a working place with security concerns so you can only go through it as part of a tour. Our tour guide was incredible.  Thanks to him we learned that Van Morrison been honoured with the rarely bestowed freedom of the city.  The murals were explained. There was even a picture of the man who had argued for more lifeboats on the Titanic and been over ridden by others opinions.  There was a copy of the Ulster Covenant. A half million people had signed a document asking that Ireland remain part of the British Empire.  The Original Charter have been given by King James I in 1613.  Some million or more loyal protestants live in Northern Ireland now.
We noticed that Northern Ireland was distinct from the south when we found that Euro wasn’t the exchange but rather Stirling Pounds. Thank God for ATM machines.
I thought of my grandfather from here as I was sitting in the Lord Mayor of Belfast’s chair.  I don’t he’d have thought a grandson of his would one day be doing this when he was emigrating to Canada with my grandmother.

James Bond’s plane!!!

Driving on the wrong side of the road, Belfast

It was a steep learning curve driving the rented Citroen from the airport to City Hall.
Thankfully the gas pedal, brakes and clutch seemed to come naturally. Not the gear shift.  That took a little getting use to.Driving on the left side of the road was a whole other matter.  I’d watched a video about a man who made a counterintuitive bicycle, then set about unlearning all he’d learned about riding normal bicycles.  At times I felt like that.  Laura beside me was chanting ‘keep to the left. keep to the left.’  The round about was a challenge then the right turn was impossible. I was in the town proper by then and in a right turning lane. Yet there was three lanes with three cars facing me.  Only later did we learn that they parked on either side of the road and the centre lane was taken by whoever got there first.I was fairly shook up by then.
Now I was in the centre of the town, in a bus only lane.    The buses are double decker here so appear immense compared to the tiny Citroen. There was one ahead of me and one behind me and people were walking to and thro across the street not at all expecting to see a little Citroen bearing down on them.  It’s quite amazing how fast the Northern Irish reflexes are.
I saw a space in front of City Hall which looked magnificent,t mind you, and pulled over.  Parallel parking was a whole other matter.  I was stopped and it took a bit to bring myself to start the car again and bring us half a car width over to the curb so that I didn’t continue to make buses go around me.
I got out.  I locked the doors .I walked away.  Laura hurried to join me.
“I just need to get directions,”  I said.  We were looking for Queens University where our Best Western Crescent Townhouse was.  I was shaking just slightly, not shaking really, maybe vibrating.  I’d been putting an immense amount of concentration into the complexity of coordination.  Laura is not a navigator.  She’s a very good passenger mind you.  Her ‘keep left’ chant had helped me immeasurably in that second round about. The one with the vicious cars gnashing and growling at me and the tiny Citroen.  A local guide pointed the direction of Queen’s University. I really do need a compass now.
Back in the car, I broke down. I didn’t care about the threat of roaming cellular costs.  I”m dependent on technology. I couldn’t read a map and clutch and keep to the left and look for street signs.  I turned my will and my life over to my iPhone’s GPS built in voice, plotted the location and pressed the ‘start’.  I gave the phone to Laura who then repeated the instructions.  We only went a mile or so past our destination, turned around and had one more go at it.  Things improved when we saw we were 900 meters, 500 meters and 300 meters from the critical right turn just beside the University, Lower Crescent Road.  Without technological assistance I’d not have known to stop here because the street signs are little hidden bits of writing up on the side of the buildings.  One is expected to see this while great lorries are bearing down on you and lines of cars are pushing up your ass.
We made the turn and then gloriously the machine said, “Your destination is on your left’ and with this huge cue we saw the Best Western sign.  “Home free!”  I shouted like a kid playing a game of hide and seek. There was actually parking too.
I almost ran inside to safety.  The Empire Suite was spectacular.  Huge and elegant.  Laura had the bathtub to die for.   She’d worked up quite a sweat in the passenger seat.    We were alive.  Only once had I ended up face to face with an oncoming car who seemed to take this as a common matter.  I ‘d swerved back into my proper lane. The left turn onto the road had got me.  Local drivers seem prepared for  this. It is a city so loved by and loving of tourists.  The worst that seems to occurs is they call you “Yankee!” And smile.