I am on my way to the shop, walking past the red brick wall of the Ormeau Bakery. It is a warm Saturday in June, and I am enjoying the sunshine. I may go for a longer walk along the Lagan later on – if it stays fine – but right now I need my morning tea, and there is no milk. Coming towards me on the pavement is a young man pushing a buggy with a small baby in it. The child is sleeping, its wee hat keeping the sun out of its eyes. The man looks tired, miserable; he has dark bags under his eyes, and his face is pale. Something is keeping him up at night. He is wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt. Printed on the shirt in large white letters is the question: Who’s the Daddy?
I have my four year old daughter with me, so rather than walk I take my car to the old Gasworks development, where I am going to renew my driving licence. It is drizzling, grey March weather. I drive into the car park at the back of the DVLA building. It is convenient, no yellow lines. As I line up the car in one of the bays, I notice a flash of red in the corner of my eye. There is a ferret-faced, unhealthy-looking man watching me park. He is in jeans, a thin waterproof jacket and a baseball cap. As I switch off the engine, he turns away and goes into the architect’s office next door. We hurry through the damp and into the agency. My business is concluded unexpectedly quickly and smoothly; we queue for around ten minutes and are out of the building within fifteen.
I help my daughter into the child seat in the back, drops of rain falling on my neck as I fumble with the clips. It is only when I go round to my side of the car that I see it. I have been clamped. I experience simultaneous dismay, guilt, fear, rage, powerlessness. The ugly yellow boot gives me two fingers: Fuck You. There is a notice which calmly informs me that I will have to pay £80 to be released. There is nothing to be done; I ring the number, explain where I am, and in a couple of minutes the men arrive. The first one to appear is a thug; he is tall, brawny, bearded, tattooed, wearing a black jacket and jeans. Arms folded, he takes up position within striking distance, and glares at me as if I have just spat on his boots. He wants me to start something. I instantly recognise the second man in his red waterproof.
He is ignorant from the outset, goading me. He explains to me that I must pay now or I don’t get released. I have no money on me and my cards are at home. It is not his problem; no payment, no car. And if I don’t get back before 5.30 he will keep the car overnight and the release fee will go up to £120. I ask why he clamped me, and why he didn’t warn me when he saw me parking there. It is not his job. The car park is reserved for clients of the architects. He points to a notice up on the wall. Can I not read? I hadn’t seen it. I am ripping, but remain outwardly calm. I fantasize clever remarks, retribution, summary justice, the guillotine. It is 4.45 and we need to get moving; I need the car for work tomorrow. I take the wee girl out of the car again, zip up her raincoat. I explain the situation to her as best I can, and we walk off up the Ormeau Road in the gathering gloom; it is raining harder now. She is soon tired and I carry her most of the way. When we reach home I find my wallet, and ring a cab. On the way back down the road the driver tells me a story about the clamper; he is infamous.
We get back to the car in time. I put my daughter back into her seat and ring the number again. The clamper returns and takes my payment, gives me a receipt. He is alone this time; obviously I pose no threat. I ask him about the incident the taxi driver had related to me, and the clamper laughs. He’s had the lot. Been threatened with screwdrivers, knives, told he was going to get his knees done, his house burned down. He loves his job, finds this stuff amusing. When the punters get violent, he just calls the peelers and they sort it out. He is impervious to threats and insults, unmoved by pleading or hard luck stories.
I try to imagine what will happen when he gets home tonight. Will he phone his ma for a chat, smoke a fag and watch the snooker, maybe dandle a baby on his knee, or go out with his mates and return home blocked to torture his wife? I have no idea. I cannot think of the possibility of his existence outside the Gasworks, and suddenly realise that we have been in another world, where humanity does not exist. It is monochrome. There is no god, no karma, no bad luck, only the cold steeliness of rules and procedures. His life is simple, unfettered by human complexities. Unclamped.
It is a beautiful, sunny Saturday in early June, and I am driving along the Ormeau past the old Post Office. On the other side of the road, outside the Bangla Bazar, are two Romanian men. They are probably in their forties, wearing tatty black trousers and mismatched shiny-elbowed suit jackets. The balding one with the Saddam Hussein moustache is my neighbour; he lives across the street from me, in a household of two families. The two men are passing an oversized bottle of white wine between them. It is nearly empty. My neighbour holds on to his bicycle with his left hand as he takes a good long swig from the bottle. His bike is old, the black paint giving way to patches of rust. There is a wicker basket attached to the front, suspended between the handlebars and the battered mudguard, and sticking out of it is a massive fish. Its dead black eyes glare accusingly at the living world around it. I don’t know what sort of fish it is, or what seas it came from. It is fat, oval shaped; the body must be at least two feet long. It is going to take some cooking.
I reach home before my neighbour, and after unloading and stowing the shopping I get myself a cold beer and lazily start to do a bit of work in the front garden. Some of the Romanians are out in the street: the two mothers sitting on the kerb chatting with a friend, and three small boys running about in the road. The youngest, who has only just learned to walk, has a rivulet of thick snot running down his upper lip. The women wear the same clothes: long skirt, t-shirt, and a headscarf over their long black hair. They have bulbous bellies and large breasts. Occasionally they shout at the kids, who ignore them and carry on mucking about in the road, until inevitably a car comes, and the toddler’s mother has to lift herself and pull him squealing onto the pavement. They are briefly corralled in the front garden with a ball to kick.
Two older children appear from within the house. They are girls aged, I reckon, twelve and fourteen. The younger one is friendly. She always says ‘hey’ with a disarming smile when I meet her in the street. She is wearing sandals with heels, silver trousers, and a pink t-shirt. The older girl is dressed like the mothers, and bulges in the same places. She has a pretty face, but does not smile like her companion. I know that her compressed lips conceal jutting rat teeth. As they walk towards the corner the younger girl suddenly races ahead, spinning with arms outstretched, in a dance of pure joyfulness. There is something in the air.
Not long afterwards, the father arrives on his bike. He dismounts easily at the garden gate and proudly lifts the fish for the appraisal of the women. He looks across the street at me and I give him the thumbs up. He beams at me, returns the gesture, then goes into the house with his catch. The bike is abandoned.
On Sunday it is fine again, and I am in the garden eating lunch. Over the road the party is in full flight: riotous gypsy music is pulsing out into the street in surges of trumpets and soaring fiddles. It sounds like they are having a great time, and I daydream about going over there with a bottle of wine and joining in. The big fish is being barbecued; it smells delicious. I can hear men shouting, whooping over the music; they must be giving it loads in there.
It is not long before the first casualty is brought out. The women form a line in the garden, between the front door and the gate. They stand silently, grim-faced, arms folded – an honour guard of disapproval – as two older men haul a shirtless young man out into the sunlight. He is suspended between them, his arms across their shoulders. He has less walking in him than a new-born foal, and his feet drag along the pavement as they take him to the entry and dump him there to sober up. They walk back to the house, laughing at the state of him. Five minutes later the process is repeated, and another youth is carried into the entry, his head lolling. I picture a mounting pile of bodies, like a war crime, but these are the only two. After less than an hour the party is over. The music stops, and the street returns to its normal rhythm.
Two days later both families are gathered outside the house. Nobody is smiling. A taxi pulls up and is loaded with plastic bags of clothes, a suitcase. The girl with the rodent teeth is brought out by her mother; her cheeks are wet with tears. She looks back at the crowd on the pavement, her red-rimmed eyes imploring. Her mother ushers her into the back of the taxi and it bounces off over the speed bump. The party is over.
It is a cold, clear morning, and you are inching your way along the Westlink in the company of hundreds of other bleary-eyed travellers. You are shut in by high grey walls. A van has broken down on the Clifton Street slip road, and shifting into third gear for a few precious yards feels like progress, success, release. At this hour your fellow sufferers are mostly commuters and parents on the school run. Your car is a capsule. Alone inside it you are warm and snug, insulated from the world outside by layers of metal and plastic, the familiar jangle of the radio. Everything is set up for your personal comfort and pleasure: the rake of the steering wheel, the height of the seat, the temperature of the aircon. In lines of traffic stopped in queues at slip roads and junctions there is a shared perception of personal space that has nothing to do with safe distances. Everyone is separate. You are only a matter of inches from the person in the next lane, yet you are worlds apart. You study them indirectly, covertly, for to look directly at them breaks an unspoken communal agreement. All the same, occasionally someone will stare directly at you, ripping the delicate fabric of your little world, until the line moves and normality returns. In your rear-view mirror lies another world, framed by the back window. Your vista is different, and so is your behaviour: you can make eye contact, smile, wave, gesticulate, flirt, curse. The mirror has different rules; you are not face-to-face.
This morning I’m sitting at the lights, watching as behind me a smart young blonde girl in an immaculate cream-coloured Mini fixes her makeup. It is a major junction, where the Westlink meets the M2, and she knows it will be a long time before the lights turn green. She applies red lipstick and brushes a little powder on her cheeks; the eyes have already been done. She lowers the compact and a frown of dissatisfaction scuds over her face; she cannot see the results of her efforts properly in the vanity mirror. Purposefully, she reaches over to the seat next to her, hokes momentarily in her bag, and in one perfect movement lifts her smartphone in front of her to take a picture. She turns the phone around, studies the photo and then takes another. Satisfied, she stashes the phone, pushes up the sunshade, and returns to the business of commuting. She has timed the whole operation just right. I want to blow her a cheeky kiss, to acknowledge her vanity and resourcefulness, but the lights have changed and I move off, changing quickly up into third. We will never meet.
The knocking usually starts early, around six. The first sound is the thud of a small metal hammer on wood. It is invariably followed by a scraping noise, then more knocking, more scraping. It will continue at intervals throughout the day, with the last session coming after tea-time. Like the howling propjets landing at City Airport it is such a part of my life now that I rarely notice it. The racket is made by Süskind, the pigeon keeper, whose house is on the corner. He is loosening and clearing the bird shit from the beams and perches of his pigeon house. His back yard runs parallel with my street and his daily routines happen in full view of my front window. The bird house is a large wooden shack, clad with faded, peeling plywood, and with a flat felt roof, which Süskind lashes down with a rope when gales are forecast. It sits on top of the sloping kitchen roof, supported at the front by metal girders. To access it there is an aluminium builder’s ladder which gives onto a small wooden landing above the yard gate. Set at right-angles to this is a short, unreliable-looking, home-made stair. He has replaced two of the rotten steps in haste recently and the new ones lie crookedly, as if in a young child’s drawing. They are already covered in a dirty grey-green film of algae. On the front of the shack there is a line of eight rectangular windows, covered with chicken wire and polythene. Above them is a shelf for the birds to land on; it has two further windows, one without polythene, and a hatch, which is hinged at the top. Süskind is in his fifties. He generally wears black — otherwise nondescript — trousers, and a brown jumper. His jumpers will often be patterned with bold, clashing stripes. The outfit does not change with the seasons — I have never seen him in his shirtsleeves, even on the hottest days. He wears a handkerchief around his neck, which is used as a dust mask when he is scraping out the shite; it gives him the appearance of a Wild West train robber. His head is topped with a mop of wavy, sandy, hair that is pushed back from his forehead. Although I often see him in the street, on his bicycle, we have never talked. His world is of the sky. There are rituals: at midday he lurches up the ladder with dishes of food and water for the pigeons. He is smiling, his mouth twisted into an evil-looking rictus, as if he is privy to some dark, secret joke. He disappears into the gloom of the bird house and after a few moments of footering about, the hatch is pushed open. His head and hands emerge into the light, and the singing begins. He has a fine tenor voice, and it projects Galway Bay and other Josef Locke favourites powerfully into the street. Passing pedestrians are startled by this unexpected performance and pause to stare up, but Süskind is oblivious to them; he sings for joy alone. As he sings he drums his fingers gently upon the shelf, and the pigeons flock down from the trees and rooftops where they have been awaiting him. They slip past him, through the hatch, and into the shed to get their feed. One has landed at the end of the shelf, and is showing no inclination to come inside, so he turns his head and makes a clicking noise with his tongue to encourage it. When this last bird has entered he belts out another verse, retreats inside and closes the hatch. The singing has stopped and instead he is now loudly humming a tune as he comes through the door and turns to padlock it. Caught up in the music he moves his legs to the rhythm, wiggling his arse like a hula-dancer’s. Today’s feeding done, he descends the ladder, still crookedly grinning. He is happier than anyone I know. Later, I walk past his front door on my way to the shop. As I go to cross the road I catch a flash of fluorescent yellow at the edge of my vision, and a muttered word, fuck. I turn my head instinctively to glance. It is Süskind, coming through the gate on his bike, but he is nowhere near me or the young man walking towards him from the other direction. As I turn back to cross the road I hear his rough voice behind me: What the fuck are ye lookin’ at? I turn my head again, but he is away, pedalling through the soft rain towards the Ormeau Road. His world is of the sky.
It’s a drizzly October morning and I’m walking to work from the Bedford Street bus stop. In my right hand I’m carrying a sweet milky tea from the kiosk. Crossing the busy street at Wellington Place to get onto Donegall Square North I half-run the last yard, and the tea slops through the hole in the plastic lid and down my woollen overcoat. Under my breath I curse the mess, and rub it away with my sleeve. No damage done. I continue on my way, weaving through the rush-hour mob on the slick grey pavement, trying to avoid another spill.
At the top of Donegall Place the crowd has thinned out, and I am crossing at the lights when a cyclist nearly runs into me. He is engrossed — muttering to himself through small mean lips, which are pursed into a tight fishy pout — but he sees me in the nick of time and stops. He is thin, hatchet-faced, with lank grey-blonde hair, and is wearing a well-used tracksuit. I get the sense that soon he will greet the doorman with a platitude, enter the panelled lift, and disappear into a top-floor executive suite. He will emerge after a short time, showered, scented and groomed, wearing a bespoke suit, for Sumatran coffee and his first meeting of the day. He’s riding an expensive-looking mountain bike, but I don’t pay it much attention because now his cold blue eyes are surgically inquisitioning me. He doesn’t need to say anything: the red light at which he should have stopped is of no consequence, and I am plainly at fault. I stand transfixed for a moment, warm tea dripping from my hand. Then it’s over. I am only an inconvenience, not the real target of his mission.
It was home time. My route back to Montgomery Street car park took me from the High Street through the stone-flagged pedestrian zone around Arthur Square in the city centre. It was a bright September evening and Corn Market was teeming with shoppers and weary office-workers heading for cars and buses. The scratchy sound of a Romanian fiddler playing his favourite tune on a horn-violin still rasped thinly from the narrow entry behind me. He was a small, grubby man with a cheeky smile, and it always cheered me up to see him.
There is a certain predictability about the streetlife around here. Aside from the fiddler, and his two discordant accordion-toting compatriots, there’s an old hippy who sits atop his amp, singing dodgy versions of John Lennon songs, and pausing every now and then to smoke a roll-up and drink tea. At lunchtimes a West-Indian evangelist in front of the Spirit of Belfast sculpture undauntedly implores an impassive stream of passers-by to return to the Lord. I have never seen anyone stop to listen to her.
This evening was to be different: unexpected musical delights awaited me. Outside the boarded-up shop front of Priceless Shoes four teenage girls in school uniforms were busking with guitars. Fourth or fifth year, I guessed. One of them was not playing her instrument, and had slung it down by her side as she sang, its neck pointing down to the pavement. She learned that pose from some TV pop star, I thought uncharitably to myself. Their voices were delicate, their harmonies good. They were singing Christian songs, sharing the Good News, and a small crowd of twenty or so people had formed in a semicircle to hear it.
Standing just in front of this rush-hour congregation was a skinny, grey haired alcoholic with a small dog at his side. The mongrel did not move and was not bothered one bit by the swinging movement of the leash as the drunk vigorously conducted the group with both of his hands. The mutt was oblivious to his master’s acrobatting, and sat patiently observing the other side of the street. The remainder of the audience stood within earshot of the girls, but kept themselves at a safe distance from the conductor. The expressions on the buskers’ faces were all different: demure amusement, stoic indifference, unconcealed revulsion and skyward-looking embarrassment. They knew they would make no money while the drunk was there; his very presence caused an exclusion zone which kept any potential benefactors well away from them. Yet they could not stop singing, for this meant defeat, surrender to the malign. It seemed that they would have to ignore the distraction and keep going until the miscreant got bored or the peelers arrived.
Apart from the japery of his conducting, the drunk was not objectionable; he did not leer at the girls or shout slurred heckles, nor did he attempt to steal their meagre earnings from the open guitar case. If they only realised it, he was their perfect audience, fully involved in the performance, God’s praises washing over him, mellifluous, potent, maybe transformational. These golden-curled angels could save him from his dissolute ways. But will they even try? I pondered, as I walked up Arthur Street towards the grey concrete mass of the car park.
When driving in the outside lane of Ireland’s motorways it is inevitable that, at some stage of your journey, you will see in your mirror a sleek, aggressive car approaching at very high speed, flashing its headlights and sitting uncomfortably close to your rear bumper. It will stay there, a seething four-wheeled cauldron of fury and impatience, until you move back into the inside lane. This car will be a BMW.
As I was driving home from the Andytown Road, the evening traffic on Stockman’s Lane was, as usual at this time, jammed solid in both directions. In the opposite lane, one car’s length away, there was a middle-aged man in a gleaming black BMW 3 Series. Through his open window I could see that he had short, tidy hair, and was wearing a boldly-striped shirt. His black suit-jacket hung in the rear window. As I watched, he poked a gold-ringed finger into his nose, hoked out a yellowy snotter, inspected it, and popped it into his mouth. He was still sucking his finger as he crawled off towards the M1.
Winter had been unusually cold. The gloom had endured for so long that it seemed as if nature was completely unable to find the light switch. In May it was finally flicked on, the sun graced us, and all of a sudden it was spring.
When hot weather arrives in Belfast certain rituals are performed: students in the Holylands bring their sofas out into the street, their windows yawning open to leak alternative music and sport commentaries onto the now-dusty streets. In the early evenings the smoky smell of charring meat rises above the hubbub of not-yet-drunken conversations in front gardens and back yards. Trios of skinny spides carrying tins of cider tie their football jerseys around their waists, exposing protruding ribs, tattoos in Chinese characters, and luminous sunburned skin. Forget Christmas – now is the real season of goodwill – the sunshine cheers everybody up. Strangers joke and chat with each other on street corners and in thronging beer gardens. Packs of girls in open-top cars, wearing skimpy clothes and sunglasses shout saucy chat-ups to young men on the pavement as they pass them. Maybe they will meet later at a bar by the Lagan, or in a hiving nightclub. The sap is rising.
It is Saturday and the Ormeau Park is busy with elderly dog-walkers, red-faced joggers, strolling couples with pushchairs, and kids on bikes. Toddlers show their parents the colourful primrose beds, and then run giggling to hide behind the bushes. Small yapping dogs futilely chase grey squirrels that easily escape them, gracefully disappearing into the newly-leaved Horse Chestnut trees. There is a small group of stubbly drinkers with an Alsatian dog on a rope leash in the dark recess of the shelter but they are never troublesome, and as expected, they ignore me as I pass by. I have been taking time out, sitting on one of the benches and enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face and arms. I have been watching the world go by for nearly an hour, and am now taking one last lap of the park on my way home.
Heading back towards the Ormeau Road I move out of the sunshine into a shadier stretch of path, which is flanked by evergreens. There is a T-junction where I need to turn left to reach the bottom gates of the park, and here I encounter a young woman, approaching from the shadows on my left. She is looking straight ahead, absorbed, and doesn’t seem to notice me, so I slow down to let her go by. She is pretty, with fine features and straight hair that reaches to her shoulders. She is wearing a long summer dress with a thin cardigan over the top of it. Her sunglasses are pushed up on top of her head, so as she passes me I can clearly see that she is silently weeping.
I used to walk past the launderette at the top of Agincourt Avenue on my way to Queen’s University. In the winter I would cut through the entry to briefly warm myself in the hot steam that blasted out from the huge tumble driers inside. I always looked forward to this part of the journey: the steam, the smell of freshly laundered clothes, the pretty girl working behind the counter. In the summer I would keep to the pavement, avoiding the steam. Through the open doors the sounds of the launderette billowed out into the street: the growl of the machines, muted conversations, and above it all the tinny clamour of the radio playing pop songs. On one hot day I noticed that the radio had been placed too close to one of the driers, and its plastic side had melted into a twisted, but still functioning, mess. It was playing ‘Disco Inferno’.
Vernacularisms 