Author Topic: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.  (Read 2500660 times)

Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13335 on: December 21, 2020, 10:41:12 AM »
 I'm a big fan of the "Creepy Santa" internet sites. What's put forward as the ultimate in children's benefactors is astonishing. Some look straight off Death Row, about a dozen murders apiece under their belts. The other night there was one Santa in particular who made me think of Belfast, and so my mind reeled back to the late sixties when, inspite of the fact that we could have been blown to kingdom come or shot at the drop of a hat, we were taken to Belfast to see Santa. Am I glad we were? That's a hard one, but yes, probably, for death quickly became an accepted fact in Belfast at one time whereas robberies shocked people to the core because they were a much rarer thing.
 
 "What? His house was BROKEN INTO!!!?   .ACTUALLY BROKEN INTO!!? What the…….? they'd even ripped the carpets up to take the lot-down to the floorboards? WELL! The cheeky articles! What's the world coming to!! It's as well the milkman interrupted it all when he did for at least they still have their AX-MINISTER. Was the hire purchase of it done and dusted?"
 
Anyway, we went on one of those buses I hated, like mobile gas-chambers. Chain-smokers hammered buses back then with sadistic pleasure. They eyed you as if to say: I DARE you to complain. They just didn't have the decency to do it outside and spare people the stench and cloud of smoke to wade through once you hit York Street and wanted to get off, the cheeky Quants. I wouldn't mind betting that some people smoked twenty-five fags from the Grove Baths to the Co-op. Those buses were hell. I don't think so many paramilitary personages burnt them out as reported. It will have likely have been disgruntled passengers sick of choking on Capstan Full strength and having to hang coats out in the air for 3 days after travelling on one. It was satisfactory once the smell of your own chip-pan returned.
 
Let's get down to the nitty-gritty. The Santa in question on the internet who reminded me of Belfast looked like he'd been in a drunken brawl. No, don't get me wrong he'd a pleasant enough face and his red suit wasn't in tatters. And neither did his cotton-wool beard look trailed through a hedge backwards. It was the black eye that gave him away. Now, you don't want to start thinking that some parent horrified by him landed one on him in the middle of the grotto, or some ten stone kid didn't like what they got and bounced him, so it must have been a tavern fight that caused it. After all, drink and Xmas go together since time immemorial in any part of the world that has taken it on as a custom. I saw only recently on tv that in America during prohibition, that country became the biggest importers of cocktail shakers in the world. I can imagine that cocktail shakers in Belfast were laughed at. When I worked in Shorts the warhead of a missile was turned into a punch-bowl at Xmas, approximately an hour before aul lads were cornering young girls telling them, sometimes poetically, this was their last chance to "sample premiership." Aul dolls had an even more organised and direct approach pulling young lads into broom cupboards they'd cleared previously for the occasion.
 
However, we'll avoid dirt and go back to the sixties even though dirt goes with Xmas equally as much as drink. Take the tale of a virgin birth for instance.
 
Back to the late 60s. When we went round Belfast I used to see Santas everywhere and it dawned on me that they all couldn't be the real one. So which one was real? and in days before I understood the intricacies of retail, why were fake Santas actually allowed? I'd see one and I'd ask, "Is that the real Santa?" My ma would look him up and down. If he looked stoshus the answer was "no." And this is the thing: most of them in Belfast either looked or smelled drunk, and sometimes you saw the bottle to one side of the big chair hidden away in a box of those miniature polystyrene foam snakes (sometimes a box of them would've been better than the present). Sometimes he was better at concealing it and arranged it creatively amongst the presents with only the tiny lid poking up and revealing a present so puny that kids wouldn't  dream of seizing it when the all-important moment came as per the offer to delve. I can't imagine what would've happened if some shrewd kid aged about 10 and already a hardened drinker spied it and demanded it for Xmas, for you know what Belfast was like:
 
"If our Sammy wants that bottle of Q.C. who the f… are you to say he can't have it?" Then it's touch and go in the grotto and the manager comes in all flustered to calm it all down. He too gets a black eye and so do half a dozen peelers who come along to put an end to the fray. But they all go away on good terms, wishing each other Merry Xmas, even though one of them decides that someone involved will get shot later on. It's the one who bit him on the already swollen out bit south of the spine.
 
Well, last year or the one before I was restored to a picture of the Santa we'd been to see. There was me and this cousin who had a face "like basket of chips" as the olde saying goes. Not that I looked much better. I'm a wistful figure with sad eyes and hair like Wurzel Gummidge. In fact I looked worse than her. It would all be so sad except that I love most memories of the past, warts an' all. What else have we got but our own lives in full technicolour grimness - as well as the half-decent moments.
 
 But anyway there we are. We are nothings. Nobodys. Imperfect kids looking for a moment of sparkle in a war-torn city governed by stupid religions and stupid men who get houses and sinecures for reading to people out of a book of fairy stories. No. Nobody was going to mistake us for Shirley Temple. Whereas this Co-op Santa's awesome. Definitely moonlighting from a job on the quay biting heads off live sharks that might swim into Dufferin Docks. I love him. You never saw anyone less suitable if you'd trailed round the jails and picked out the scariest inmate. He probably demanded the job, with menace, to fund his dedicated drinking career, and no-one had the nerve to tell him he was more suitable for a position as bouncer at the Bakers'. There he is, sort of bent down between us with his arm round each one, beard slightly out of kilter with a mouth like a torn pocket. What a star!
 
She's got the bigger present for she was the type to rummage in the box with an instinct to immediately lay a hand on the most enormous one in it. Now I know appearances can be deceptive but the smell of drink isn't, and this is what gave Santa away. He was King of ten thousand of nights of serious alcohol and smelled like he had a grim determination to see out ten thousands more. His eyes are so glazed over he must have had a skinful in him by 11 in the morning, courtesy of the Bakers' lenient opening hours from 6 A.M.. Give him his dues, he's presiding fairly well but you can catch that it's an effort for him. He looks like the minute we'd let go of the pose and withdraw our waists from his grip he'd fly headlong into the Xmas tree.
 
When we got back to base the presents were opened. My cousin didn't like what she got and tried to coerce me to give her the crayons and colouring book. I deflected the blows, for I was sticking to what I was given. Besides there was a Santa to colour in and I now knew how to execute him in crayons for I'd just been in the company of the real one. Because she couldn't get her way she resorted to another tactic previously used for this type of occasion and threw up all over the hearth. It was years later when her mother tried to settle the score by poisoning me with paraffin put deliberately into a cider bottle. But sure I'm here to tell the tale. Aye!  Those were the days.
 
 
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Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13336 on: December 22, 2020, 11:59:38 AM »
 The gaps in 1977 at the Xmas table bothered me, for gone were my grand-parents. Within weeks of one another in late summer 1977. Xmases in Belfast were never quite the same for me after that. As kids, irked by the delay, we hustled them away from the dinner table so as we could open presents. It was a generational thing, one being young and eager, the other old, resigned and understanding of something I'm seeking knowledge of now – now that I am moving headlong into the very same generation with a fastidious approach to not being younger than I am like some "1690s" you might see. I learned later in life that it's an information-based universe and that many things are understandable once a few things are dove-tailed. But I have also learned that information potentially comes from every source, and that a keen watch has to be maintained at all times. Forgotten, disregarded corners of this earth or the scruffy pages of an old magazine can impart it. So can a piece of paper floating on the wind. As they say: the more unusual the happening, the more information it imparts. I get it, yes I do. If all that is too cryptic, well, I mention it merely for those who might feel the same. Nothing else.
 
 I wish I could speak to my grandparents now for they were always the type to impart solid information. Authentic information. Information which didn't paint them as saints or do-gooders or movers and shakers, but that which painted them as fallible human beings who had made discoveries in the throes of experiences good and bad. High quality information, in fact. I love talking to people if anyone will give me the time of day and always hope that a frank exchange will serve them as well as it usually serves me.
 
At Xmas we played Monopoly never really understanding the mortgage rules. I'd a very creative cousin who made it more interesting. He made up tunes to all the Chance and Community Chest Cards, ad lib, but recalled the tunes for repeat cards. It was highly entertaining. He might have been taking advantage and pilfering out of the bank as we laughed, for he always won. He even had a tune for the squares on the board which when you landed on them instructed to take either a "Chance" or a "Community Chest" card. The "Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail, Do not Pass Go, Do not collect two hundred pounds" was about the only card he baulked at. He was more into "snappy" cards for his tunes: "You inherit a hundred;" "Pay a ten pound fine of take a Chance." "Go back to the Old Kent Road" was one of my personal favourites for he drew out the word "road" longer than the other words with an unexpected note. I'd never want to see the Old Kent Road for I peopled and furnished it out of my imagination with him singing the tune as he traipsed over the cobbles. It was the same with the Electric Company and the Waterworks, and that dive of a place on the Antrim Road didn't impose. It makes me shudder to think of it now. The Antrim Road had a coldness which the Shore Road didn't possess,  though there were certainly some interesting places on it.
 
I wonder why no-one ever thought to do a Belfast Monopoly Board? Maybe somebody has, buying the city hall for two hundred quid and pulling down all the houses on the Shore Road as took their fancy. The Tip Head could be on it as the Mayfair equivalent, for if you stuck a hotel on it and engaged a bent insurance agent you could be soon quids-in. Collecting triple its value about week after opening night if the planets were in line for a rush of methane and half dozen kids out to wreak havoc with a box of Bengal matches. I wonder why it's never been done. Out to the four ethers the idea goes for some eccentric millionaire to market it!
 
 
 
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Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13337 on: December 22, 2020, 12:51:09 PM »
The gaps in 1977 at the Xmas table bothered me, for gone were my grand-parents. Within weeks of one another in late summer 1977. Xmases in Belfast were never quite the same for me after that. As kids, irked by the delay, we hustled them away from the dinner table so as we could open presents. It was a generational thing, one being young and eager, the other old, resigned and understanding of something I'm seeking knowledge of now – now that I am moving headlong into the very same generation with a fastidious approach to not being younger than I am like some "1690s" you might see. I learned later in life that it's an information-based universe and that many things are understandable once a few things are dove-tailed. But I have also learned that information potentially comes from every source, and that a keen watch has to be maintained at all times. Forgotten, disregarded corners of this earth or the scruffy pages of an old magazine can impart it. So can a piece of paper floating on the wind. As they say: the more unusual the happening, the more information it imparts. I get it, yes I do. If all that is too cryptic, well, I mention it merely for those who might feel the same. Nothing else.
 
 I wish I could speak to my grandparents now for they were always the type to impart solid information. Authentic information. Information which didn't paint them as saints or do-gooders or movers and shakers, but that which painted them as fallible human beings who had made discoveries in the throes of experiences good and bad. High quality information, in fact. I love talking to people if anyone will give me the time of day and always hope that a frank exchange will serve them as well as it usually serves me.
 
At Xmas we played Monopoly never really understanding the mortgage rules. I'd a very creative cousin who made it more interesting. He made up tunes to all the Chance and Community Chest Cards, ad lib, but recalled the tunes for repeat cards. It was highly entertaining. He might have been taking advantage and pilfering out of the bank as we laughed, for he always won. He even had a tune for the squares on the board which when you landed on them instructed to take either a "Chance" or a "Community Chest" card. The "Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail, Do not Pass Go, Do not collect two hundred pounds" was about the only card he baulked at. He was more into "snappy" cards for his tunes: "You inherit a hundred;" "Pay a ten pound fine or take a Chance." "Go back to the Old Kent Road" was one of my personal favourites for he drew out the word "road" longer than the other words with an unexpected note. I'd never want to see the Old Kent Road for I peopled and furnished it out of my imagination with him singing the tune as he traipsed over the cobbles. It was the same with the Electric Company and the Waterworks, and that dive of a place on the Antrim Road didn't impose. It makes me shudder to think of it now. The Antrim Road had a coldness which the Shore Road didn't possess,  though there were certainly some interesting places on it.
 
I wonder why no-one ever thought to do a Belfast Monopoly Board? Maybe somebody has, buying the city hall for two hundred quid and pulling down all the houses on the Shore Road as took their fancy. The Tip Head could be on it as the Mayfair equivalent, for if you stuck a hotel on it and engaged a bent insurance agent you could be soon quids-in. Collecting triple its value about week after opening night if the planets were in line for a rush of methane and half dozen kids out to wreak havoc with a box of Bengal matches. I wonder why it's never been done. Out to the four ethers the idea goes for some eccentric millionaire to market it!

Sorry about double post. Trying to do corrections.  :hi:
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Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13338 on: December 23, 2020, 10:59:32 AM »
 When things got really bad and you absolutely did take your life in your hands going into Belfast, cars stolen by the dozens to place bombs in and buildings blown up at a rate of no tomorrows, they brought in this scheme called "Park 'N' Ride." A most unfortunate title, and no doubt a few rum gringos will have tried to persuade others it was the dirt side of thing that was the prevailing message, and how about it?
But anyway the original idea was basically sound. You drove to this place somewhere (I can't remember exactly where) on the boundaries of York Road with York Street, veering onto waste-land (which there was plenty of) and a wee man in a hut recieved you and your vehicle behind a large metal-spiked, palisade-type fence. He booked you in and guarded yours, and others,' cars. What he would've done if half a dozen thugs had approached the hut and ordered him to let them in I don't know, for he looked every bit like someone who had to run around in the shower to get wet. Maybe he had a panic button to the peelers. Maybe he activated something else on the fly in the midst of seeming to negotiate with them, and some other device rounded them all up and chucked a net over them, for overhead cranes were everywhere due to the town being in a ruinous condition because of religions fighting one another and seeing fit to wreck all in their wake: life, limb, buildings, livelihoods etc.
 
One night I woke up thinking that's not right. A light sleeper, the sound of metal being softly dented assailed my dream of Bob Dylan who at the time was singing:
 
 "You'd be happy if you could BE!
If you belonged to me."
 
The percussion section was all wrong with this metallic sound intercepting so I woke, and holding my breath, strained to listen. Certain something was amiss, I took a precarious look out and what I saw amazed me. One gringo was tap, tap, tapping at a neighbour's car, and one was observing his progress standing very close. The watcher regularly, like some swivel-headed machine, kept in touch with persons at some distance who were blocking the street off either end. A series of well-learned gesticulations were sent in the darkness of night by the watcher. It was highly cunning. Odd, isn't it? People who get involved in religious wars learn how to do tick-tacking or tocking better than camel-coated men at the edge of Newmarket. Thinking about that, why not employ your skills doing  just that instead of being out nicking people's cars to blow up, wrecking all round  and possibly killing passers-by? How religious is that? It must be VERY religious. This fella was a dab hand at it. He was a master.
 
Anyway, it wasn't just me who heard the other fella denting the metal. As it happened, he was the weak link in the chain not being able to dent metal quietly, and in fact making a right fog-up of it. And so they failed as the peelers stormed in and spoiled their efforts- probably because the chippy was shut and they'd nothing better to do. They did quite well, and outnumbered the would-be villains by about 2 to 1.
 
As an add-on to this, my Ma  carried the incident on in what was a strange manner. As it  can be with odd, irregular happenings, there is indeed sometimes an unexpected and unfathomable sidelight. In this particular case, she took to speaking to the man after that- I mean the one whose car was nearly destined for that grand old town near Belfast: Smithereens – probably named after a river in the Middle East. He was years younger than her, and it was all, "Yes Mr. GETGOOD. No, Mr. GETGOOD." It was like he became some kind of deity himself. But the thing is that this wasn't his name at all, and where she got that from nobody's any the wiser to this very day. McConnell, Boyd, Green it may have been, but GETGOOD? Most unsusual. And what message lurked within this very weird "error?" Well it makes me think anyway. Who needed to get GOOD? It wasn't his fault that a parcel of weirdos wanted to nick his car.
 
More to follow.  :hi:
 
 
 
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Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13339 on: December 26, 2020, 11:06:37 AM »
 After the wee man in the PARK ‘N’ RIDE hut signed you in, then you boarded a clean, single-decker bus for the rest of the journey. And so in a few minutes, provided someone out there in the vicinity of the town centre wasn’t bent on mayhem which at the source had allegiance to the paranormal as happened in the Middle East a long time ago, you were soon in town. It was a much neater, cleaner business and at last an option to avoid citybus’s more gruelling options.
 
 I’m not aware of black taxis on the Shore Road in the early 70s run by those illustrious men of certain organisations connected to religions, but later on I used them. I’d include “women” of organisations had I ever seen any, or been aware of them throttling taxis up and down the road. But I never saw aul nor young dolls doing that, and when we were invited to learn to make petrol-bombs by an envoy sent into Graymount  School  for recruitment purposes, we were given to understand that if we joined these organisations it would be a low-key thing of maybe serving tea after riots and polishing up milk-bottles before they were filled, lit and chucked. The world back then was “ill-divid,” for women’s roles were reductionist sort of do’s, but I personally wasn’t keen on killing people and wrecking all round me so in this regard it didn’t matter to me. But here’s a thing: as walls are well-known to have ears, the teachers must’ve been in the know that someone was in there trying to drum up a band of criminals’ skivvies, but there was no caning for that. That was ok because it connected to religion - presumably. But well dare you go down the one-way system the wrong way! You were beaten for that all right! A most peculiar set of affairs. It gives me the shudders thinking of the anger in teachers’ eyes if you forgot your foggin’ hymn book, and the sadistic pleasure of knocking 7 bells out of you for the infringement. But recruiting people for paramilitary activities? Yes, no problem! No bother! That was grand.
 
However, later on in life I got a taxi of the black variety every day to Carrick when I worked there. Standing in the wind on the Shore Road you’d have got into nearly anything to complete your journey, for at certain times of the year and whims of the tide it could be sewage-farm putrid. Our Road was wrecked by others’ rubbish. By the way, I’m a bit worried about saying “black” taxi such is the highly strange world we now live in.
 
 Do you know it occurs to me that all words will be banned soon. We might end up that all we’re allowed to say is LOL. That’ll be fine and dandy until the LOL Tribe of Central America suddenly becomes naked because of more deforestation, their primeval realities exposed to a gaping public. Someone “liberal and caring” then says we can’t say LOL in vain because it’s insulting to them, and that’s that. The very last expression is gone. Talk is over. Fight for the use of language! and fight to make people see that any insult is only in their head, not yours!
 
 Anyway, this taxi was 5 pence cheaper than the buses and the fella who owned it was great chat and possessed human qualities in so far as he was willing to engage in the frankest of discussions about life, hopes and the things he saw along the wayside as he ground his way to Carrick (rather than “drove”) for the sound inside that taxi was worse than the buses. In fact, on a sort of audible pro rata base, had that taxi been enlarged to the size of a bus it would have sounded like a plane taking off. It would’ve given those buses a run for their money in the noise stakes. It was difficult to hear the fella, but  nevertheless we cheerfully yelled at one another sat side-by-side on the front seat as the Tram Depot and The Tel Star fell back into the distance and the openness of Whiteabbey Village ahead. I never liked the place, though, for there was something heavy and forbidding with the big, gray swollen sea and a hidden part of the village like a sly entity waiting in the wings to leap out for some nefarious purpose.
 
Years later I got to know several people at the heart of the village. But I never did get to understand how and why it all worked. Why they allowed an ice-cream parlour in such a tiny place is beyond me. I don’t mean this in a judgemental way. Back then Carrick, the much bigger place a few miles down the road, allowed nothing new in. Carrick took duck-all new. It fought any change like blazes. It ignored the need for it. It resisted it when it couldn’t ignore it. It fought with stony silences and maybe a bit more. It just fought the need for change off the premises. Was it something lingering from the Normans? Something in the air that swirled and repeated, swirled and repeated established when these Frenchies got going and set the tone? I’ll not bother mentioning to you a current issue which makes me dovetail. You’ve brains in your heads.  . Yet tiny Whiteabbey took an enormous ice-cream parlour! These things make me think no end.
 
The Jordie back then was a good old place to go at night, and funnily enough religion never came into it as people mixed fairly well. There was a fella in there who did magic tricks and card tricks very well. We always wanted to sit at the table with him and his pals for they were absolutely focussed on the magic tricks, and not others.
 
  Yes, the taxi-driver!: He was an honest sort of broker, and his hopes to place a swimming pool in the back-garden of a local house caused him to be up and down that road like Billy-o from 6 in the morning to late at night. I think it bored him rigid though, I really do. Man and machine were drearily, noisily one. He had to shout and he had to keep his foot really pressed on the accelerator to keep the thing going at a maximum of 25 m.p.h. I reckon it was a limiting experience for a person of his intelligence. Re. the swimming pool: he never did get one built, but he amply made up for it with other embellishments and it caused a fight with the woman opposite who didn’t like it because she wasn’t able to compete. She ran out of space. You know how it is: prong a pink flamingo into your lawn and anything could happen.
 
However, it seems to be a black spot in my mind as to taxis on the road in the early 70s. I can’t visualise them with the inner eye. I’m sure they were there along with the prefabs, but neither of these things reached my consciousness. I’d urge people to cast back and establish what it is they can’t remember, because the omissions seem to say a lot. Some kind of clue to our own limitations. But precisely what they say I’ve never got to the bottom of. I imagine, though, that if we are ever are able to pinpoint precisely why some features elude us, then the fault can be rectified and a whole other raft of memories may be uncovered. I know people who remember absolutely nothing of childhood. Nothing. Their foundations in life either seem weak or based on something so alien to me I’ve never got close to the merest hint of it. Maybe it was alien to them too, and hence the obliteration.
 
Take this fella I knew. His son-in-law was at him all the time asking him what he could remember of yore. Sadly it’s not really inside the limited scope of this thread (as it took place elsewhere) for part it involved a huge row with a neighbour during which the fiery son-in-law, though riddled with arthritis, grabbed an ornamental sword from over the chimney breast and poked it through the letterbox of the neighbour. He wanted him out to face the music and twisted the ornamental sword that way and this way to, at the very least, prong a cap, while simultaneously demanding satisfaction verbally. But nothing happened, and so the sword was withdrawn out of the letter box and he leapt away as best as he was able. In his anger he came up with PLAN B. And so a further attempt to get this man out of his house to get the row going in earnest caused a settee to go flying over the hedge, but at all times the adversary maintained a petrified silence. I know his wife helped him outside with it and had a hand in raising it to the level of the hedge along with someone who was visiting for the day. It’s nice to see unity in households. What a shame we can’t continue with this tale for the same man owned a one-armed bandit and operated it out of his front-room, but there it is. He wasn’t from the Shore Road, more’s the pity.
 
Anyway, the father-in-law of this swordsman son-in-law forever frustrated the son-in-law no end because the latter was into local history and had a very keen recall. He wanted to meet someone his age of the same mindset. Someone reasonably observant and interested, but the father-in-law refused to be a substitute for the human idyll the swordsman sought. He either refused to remember, or genuinely remembered nothing at all, and every time I met the son-in-law he complained to me about this, because back then I spoke of my interest in this type of thing connected to where I grew up – the road. I sympathised with the man because good information and/or a willing participant in the exchange of information is like rocking-horse guano. I know this is a bit hard to follow, but the problem with this tale is that son-in-law and father-in-law had the same first name and if I’d used them it would’ve made you even more confused. How do you think I feel writing it?
 
Well anyway we’re done with the father-in-law, mostly, so now we can refer to the son-in-law with the full honorific and call him Mr. Joe Pollard, and Joe said to me, “What do you make of it that Joe remembers fog all about round here?” I thought about it. I thought about his life – what I knew of it as told me by Joe the S. I. L. - and could only tell Joe that there was one clue as far as I could see. One solitary clue in the search for the correct conclusion: that the answer was associated with the fact that Joe the F.I.L. as a young married man with tiny children took against fresh-air and nailed up all the windows.
 
As you read this you might think, what the………… But it’s like this. When images are no longer available on forums, man cannot live by “lol” alone. And so memories have to be stimulated one way or another, and things discussed at a deeper level of being to see what might come forth as a true revelation. So you’ll have to put up with this lot of nonsense, because I’d like this thread to have a future, and if it must remain imageless, I know just the person to stretch it out.
 
Anyway, where was I? Oh aye: Park ‘N’ Ride.
 
 Finally my Ma decided we were going further afield than the man in the PARK 'N' RIDE hut. Then one night in the middle of the troubles - which were really the troubles of Middle Eastern people thousands of years ago when that lot failed to get to grips with paranormal life v. reality, and Northern Ireland and other places for some strange reason carried it on and sought to highlight it all by causing death and assorted mayhem, we went out in her car and the most bizarre near-miss took place. We were nearly shot by the peelers. ……..
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Whiteabbeyborn

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13340 on: December 26, 2020, 05:21:54 PM »


Those doctors were my father William, Billy and Uncle Bobby. Eileen was their receptionist as I recall!?

Spudz

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13341 on: January 02, 2021, 01:19:36 PM »

I'm not from the Shore Road but lived nearby for a while and walked/travelled through it many a time as a kid.
There are many great stories and memories on this thread and I was wondering if anyone has compiled a book.
A number of years ago I had the great privilege of meeting a wonderful man called John Campbell who has, for a number of years, lived just off the Shore Road. John was originally from Sailortown and he worked at the dock.
He wrote many short stories and poems about Sailortown and has had several books of stories and poems printed.
This has helped keep that old area alive in the hearts and minds of many of those who lived there as well as many local scholars and historians.
There was a cultural and historical society formed in the area over 20 years ago and it is going stronger than ever now, bringing life and interest back to the old area.
Because of the interest, and concern for the Shore Road area on this thread, would it not be a good idea to form an interest group to capture as many memories as possible through photos, stories, poems and songs, I'm sure there are people out there who would/could step up and organise this. You don't need to have any special skills or talents, just passion and desire.
I would urge you to look at John Campbells books and to visit Friends of St Josephs Sailortown facebook to see what can be done by ordinary, everyday people.
Good Luck

arch

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13342 on: January 12, 2021, 09:07:11 PM »

Eileen was my mother.

balfor

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13343 on: January 18, 2021, 07:06:33 AM »
During the blitz on Easter weekend 1941 we lived at number 11 Whitewell Drive off the Serpentine Road. Does anyone recall Katie Keenans shop on the Shore Road next to the Parocial Hall opposite the bottom of Whitewell Road? Sawyers had the butcher shop on the opposite side of the Shore Rd. Balfor.

Belfast44

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13344 on: January 25, 2021, 05:30:26 AM »
Seen a few people mention them and thought I would update. Colin Calder and Clive Calder stayed in North Belfast. Unfortunately Clive passed away in 2018.

barry.lewis

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13345 on: January 29, 2021, 06:49:33 PM »
I am I said - YouTube
I hope you all like it, only a cover  :)
I used to live in 19 Fortwilliam Parade BT153LT,
I left in 71 ,
I miss Belfast
It's all gone very quick

Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13346 on: January 31, 2021, 01:51:25 PM »
For my old Shore Road pal, oh the days when we listened to this and got a letter from the great man himself. N.B. Don't listen if you think the peelers are whiter than white. You've been warned.  :hi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSOHkW_MnPc
How to deal intelligently with rising fuel bills: self-identify as a Martian and ask them to bill you at home.

henrycluney

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13347 on: February 01, 2021, 10:30:43 PM »
Well done Henry, if Arch reckons it's you then it has to be. What do we say to a rockstar? I say hallo you're as welcome as the butcher the baker, the Tip-head Hoker. Tell us where you practised with the band, and if in any wee hall round the road, being a fan of the most humble architecture I for one would like to hear about every alcove and what the acoustics did for your songs, etc.  :hi:

Just on again...St,Peters on the Antrim Road.Drove past it last week.Wee hall looks better these days!
Mon Norn Iron!!

Dargan

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13348 on: February 01, 2021, 11:52:21 PM »
Hiya Henry, is there any way you can put your autograph on here? (I promise you I'll not transfer it onto a cheque). It's just that I've been mentioning to pals on other forums you talking to me here and they're dead jealous. They say there's more holes in my story than a doss-house blanket, so I was just wondering if you could find a way of getting me proof? I think maybe you were romantically linked with a girl in my class (whose initials I'll drop into a subsequent post if you require them) but I can tell you this: your name was always mentioned by a couple of girls I schooled with, and if I remember correctly, your mother was the lovely lady in the Co-op in Graymount with the long dark curly hair and my memory's still sound enough.

Now for a bit of good old-fashioned name-dropping. I don't know if you remember them but I knew one of the "X-posers" from R'coole, knocked about with a band - a really good one- from the Antrim Road called "Tilt" who used to practise in the golf-course's hut. I'm sorry to have to do this for it's truly shameful, but I myself am on the fringes of the music industry in POLAND. Yes POLAND. That's a bit of a rum do for at 56 I can't get any photo's taken or my fans would fog off in their droves. I'd prefer not to go into detail here for they're a rough lot on this forum and if I were you I'd heed fog all that you might read elsewhere.   :hi:
How to deal intelligently with rising fuel bills: self-identify as a Martian and ask them to bill you at home.

henrycluney

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Re: Anyone from the shore road area of Belfast?.
« Reply #13349 on: February 02, 2021, 01:49:17 AM »
Visited Poland a few times last year...writing a book with a friend out there.Autograph eh?Not sure how to do that but I can always send you something if you like.Go on...gimme her initials!
Yes me mammy worked in the Co there for years...shop gone long ago now.
Mon Norn Iron!!


 

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