The first house I lived in when coming to Belfast was in
front so I take an almost proprietorial interest in the fate of the Ormeau
Bakery building on the Ormeau Road. It was part of the fabric of the city
dating back to the 19th century and its history and advances marked changes in
technology and culture. The wee house I lived in was an artisan terrace house
owned by the Bakery, not at all bad to be in but you had to watch the weather
when you had the washing out; leave your clothes out in the rain and the smuts
from the bakery which normally ascended would descend and be washed into your
clothes which would duly come back in looking rather worse and greyer than
before they were washed in the first place. The house and its neighbours
disappeared in the early 1980s when the bakery was extending and they built
what I describe as a modern red brick fortress complete with narrow windows
looking like they were designed for firing arrows at passers by. Even in the
context of Troubles Belfast it looked out of place and certainly not in any way
matching the older red brick building and its extensions (though at the back
the Ormeau Bakery always looked prison fortress like).
The Ormeau Bakery was known as a Protestant workplace,
though the Ballynafeigh area where it was situated was, and is, very mixed. I
don’t know how mixed the Bakery was but I do know a trade union shop steward
who attempted to take action on (loyalist) flags and emblems issues, before he
had the backing of the law on neutral work spaces, was knee-capped for his
troubles. His pay was docked from the moment he didn’t appear in to work. But
the margins in the bakery business were small and changing diets and the growth
of supermarkets meant the bakery business was becoming much more difficult. The
small ‘home’ bakeries which were a pleasant aspect of retail life in Northern Ireland began to close. Then the Ormeau Bakery itself was bought out by a
multinational (RHM) and, while the brand continues, the product is made
elsewhere in the city.
The Ormeau Bakery building was bought to be turned into
apartments. The new overall external design was – is – rather unimaginative;
the 1980s red brick castle was changed somewhat by the addition of large
vertical stripes but nothing to make it link more with its traditional older
part. And a grey two-storey superstructure was added. The net result is that
the building looks like it has three parts, none of which fit together; it
looks smart only because it’s just being finished. Shortly after the scheme was
announced, all the apartments were booked by word of mouth, without
advertising, though a Diarmuid Gavin designed courtyard was included; with the
slump in the property market I understand many of these erstwhile buyers have
lost their deposits by refusing to go further with their purchase, perhaps
reckoning that a lost deposit was a small price for not paying even more over
the current market odds for what had been their dream apartment.
I have copies of photos from 1974 showing a bakery lorry
being hijacked on the Ormeau Road immediately outside the Ormeau Bakery during
the Ulster Workers’ Council strike, and another photo of two policemen running
for cover under gunfire from loyalist gunmen in the street nearby (Park Road) at the same time. Right beside the Bakery a Catholic family house was blast
bombed in 1976, I think the third time they had had a house bombed –
fortunately they were not injured, and there were other pub and house bombings
and killings in close proximity.
We have travelled far in the intervening years, as far
indeed as loyalist paramilitary decommissioning. But I remain intrigued by a
black roughly rectangular mark the size of a poster on one corner of the bakery
building, and its survival despite all the intervening time and the building
work which has gone on. It is indeed the location of a poster, long since
peeled off leaving a black mark from the original adhesive, of what was a
government exhortation to move from violence in 1972 after the Bloody Friday
bombings in Belfast by the IRA (21st July 1972; 26 explosions, 11 killed, 130
injured). The past remains in the present, and the mark of Cain endures.
Sláinte an Twalfth
The Orange Order has admitted it is much smaller than it had
purported to be – not a hundred thousand, not even forty thousand, about 36,000
(Irish News 29/6/09) though in 1969 it had swelled to 93,000-odd. But when you
take into account all those who support it one way or another coming up to and
on the Twelfth of July (bands, fellow travellers and spectators) it is still a
sizeable body of people – if you were around parts of East Belfast on the fine
evening of 1st July you would think everyone was out on the streets to support
the parades. However with the Troubles over, I wonder whether the Orange Order
will slowly decline, not to non-existence but to near-irrelevance, if it hasn’t
already achieved that. Of course if people want to celebrate their
Protestant-only heritage in the North, or even in the Republic, so be it, but
when you consider the exclusive Protestant and Catholic ‘heritages’
respectively in Ireland, you wonder what there is to celebrate without some big
‘buts’ or excuses for parts of that ‘heritage’. Me, I would much prefer to pick
and choose what I celebrate; I feel there’s far too much dirty linen on all
sides to wave it as a flag.
But my attention was drawn to a poem or song by nineteenth
century cabinet maker John Frazier (1804-1852) which is named “July 12th” but
celebrates the collective. John Frazier or Frazer – my limited researches from
my desk indicate both spellings used – may have been born a Presbyterian in Co
Offaly, certainly that region of the country, but became a Catholic and is
buried in Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery, a k a ‘the dead centre of Ireland’. There’s some information on his writing if you do a web search including on the
website of the Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society at
http://www.offalyhistory.com/ - see ‘The contribution of Offaly writers to
Irish literature’, item no.31 under ‘Reading Resources’ on the side menu. An
interesting aside here is that John Frazier, who may have been from Birr, was a
Presbyterian who became a Catholic; in the 1820s a Catholic curate in Birr, Fr
Michael Crotty, fell out with the church and became involved with Anglicanism
and he had a cousin, Fr William Crotty, who joined Michael in Birr and
eventually became a Presbyterian minister.
There are four verses of “July 12th” which are well sung by
Sean Tyrell at Youtube
and I will only quote the final verse;
And though it be in our country’s cause
Our party feelings blended
‘Til lasting peace from equal laws
On both will have descended
‘Til then the orange lily be
Your badge, my patriot brother
It’s the everlasting green for me
And we for one another
And we for one another
The only thing I will add to that is an ‘amen’, and hope
that the marching season goes smoothly this summer.
Ulcer-Scots
Continuing with things Northern, when is it OK and PC to poke
fun at cultural identities such as the Ulster-Scots dialect? Certainly the
extent of usage of ‘the hamely tongue’ (as Ulster-Scots is colloquially known
to its fans and users) in Ulster today remains to be proved. The main function
of some Ulster-Scots promotion seems to have been to allow Unionist Prods to
proudly claim they had their own language, and thus badge of identity, as well
as Teagues (Ulster-Scots and Irish respectively). Certainly the Ulster-Scots
dialect exists, along with a number of Ulster-Scots words in common usage in
the North, but there are profound questions to be asked about the extent to
which it should be supported by the state (advertising such as for a ‘Head Yin’
for an Ulster Scots body has done nothing for the image).
Anyway, there is a website, “1690 ‘an all thon” at http://1690andallthat.blogspot.com
which, ironically for a website purporting to be Ulster-Scots but poking fun
quite deeply, may edumicate sum folkes in Ulster-Scots wurds. Read them and
weep with laughter? Or feel it is poking fun heedlessly and needlessly? Or
both? As with the web in general, you are the jury.
‘Sláinte’ amháin
The summer time is comin’, the trees have already been
sweetly bloomin’, and I hope you’ll be having a wild mountain (or beach) time
of it. Part of getting the ambience right for relaxation is having the right
drink to sip. I have nothing against alcoholic beverages, indeed I have been
known to partake of the odd one the odd time or two. But while there is a time
and a place for many things, alcohol is not something you want all the time,
plus there is the fact that some people eschew alcohol altogether, and there is
a fine art of mixing non-alcoholic drinks which is sometimes ignored (certainly
by pubs which tend to charge through the nose for any non-alcoholic drinks
apart from those with designated driver schemes). The popularity of smoothies
over the last years adds to the options but, again, you may not want a fairly
heavy fruit drink all the time either. I’m quite partial to non-alcoholic beers
as well though I think the availability in some European countries of
low-alcohol beers (0.5 – 1.00% alcohol) is also quite good – to get drunk you’d
have to get sick (sic) of drinking them first.
My favourite non-alcoholic drinks are very easy, such as
half pure orange and half soda water, of course best if the orange is freshly
squeezed but very acceptable in any case; this is easily ordered in pubs as
well. A drop of concentrated apple or pear juice with tonic water gives a very
pleasant buzz (unfortunately the price of concentrated apple juice doubled very
quickly over the winter at my wholefood store where, incidentally, prices in
general seem to have been soaring due to supplier increases). The old cut up
lime or lemon in a jug of water in the fridge is an excellent standby, giving
you cool hydration and nothing much else apart from a bit of flavour. If you
can buy (or make) elderflower cordial then that and soda water is perfect.
You can experiment with all sorts of combinations of soft
drinks though unfortunately most dilutable drinks in your supermarket are
likely to have aspartame as a sweetener which I would not recommend since it is
a known carcinogen and health hazard (a crazy situation I have commented on
before). And a low rather than no-alcohol drink for the hot weather that I
enjoy as well is cooled water with maybe a quarter white wine – taking the
alcoholic content down to the level of beer or below. It has also been proven,
as a learned person like yourself probably knows, that hot drinks cool you down
in hot weather better than cool drinks (presumably the body’s reaction) but in
the peak of summer you probably don’t want to be sipping your hot tea all the
time either.
Now I hope we get the weather to go with it…..
- - - -
Well, I rest my case for the summer, though if the truth be
known I don’t use a case or a briefcase, some people would think I should use a
nutcase but that’s another matter. I wish you a good rest over the summer from
whatever you do, recharging those batteries is important for all of us (and
that can be a relatively green thing to do) - I’ll see you again as autumn is
coming in. Until then, have fun, be funny, and may we get our share of the
sunshine, literally and figuratively - Billy
Who
is Billy King? A long, long time ago, in a more
innocent age (just talking about myself you understand),
there were magazines called 'Dawn' and 'Dawn Train'
and I had a back page column in these. Now the Headitor
has asked me to come out from under the carpet to write
a Cyberspace Column 'something people won't be able
to put down' (I hope you're not carrying your monitor
around with you).
Watch this. Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman
pass by (because there'll almost certainly be very little
about horses even if someone with a similar name is
found astride them on gable ends around certain parts
of Norn Iron).
