What if "Time" wasn't a tag but a sign that something sublime
Was happening in a place where on the face of it the shine was long gone
Where the map and the flag combine with the past
To cast a shadow so sad you can see hope rejected in every breath drawn?
But maybe just say the unexpected was a portal for the immortal
With the angels in the architecture and the wings torn into a forlorn poster where most of us would just walk on?
If the talk of strange sights wasn't only for the lonely and deranged
But a rent in the veil for us all and a miracle dawn?
Coolfin Fortuna Egeria Daphne Pandora Euterpe and Thalia
Seven streets seven sisters goddesses muses and all the sweet dirty Southside
Lyrical grime full of legends and yesterdays spent in a ramshackle tale
It might be Time
This is where you notice him, the first day, on the corner of Fountainville Avenue. It's his hair and his eyes, and the angle he makes with the brick wall, slouching in his navy school uniform.
Stephanie sees you noticing. She and Angela rake you the whole way up the road. This is the function of your friends: to make a complete mockery of every tentative attraction, while simultaneously providing it with plenty of oxygen for potential healthy growth. You'd do the same for them.
Three days later, by means of your extensive network of spies, you find out his name. Daniel Healy. Ds and Hs appear in a range of different scripts at the back of your maths exercise book.
You and Stephanie and Angela talk about how you'll get fake IDs and go to the Eg, and maybe Daniel and his friends will be there. Angela says she got in one night with her big sister. To be honest, you don't exactly know what a fake ID looks like. You start planning your outfit anyway.
You've worked out that Daniel lives up one of these streets, Derryvolgie or maybe Adelaide Park. One afternoon before your violin lesson, when Stephanie and Angela are at netball, you walk carefully up and down, assessing each house for evidence of the Healy family. His mum would probably have the garden really nice. His dad would be out at work now, but he'd drive home in a Volvo at six o'clock and swing his little sisters round and round when they run out to meet him.
On Saturday at orchestra, Aoife Curry tells you that Daniel doesn't live on the Lisburn Road at all. That's his friend Mark. Daniel lives in the Holy Land, with his mum and Anna and Nicky. His dad doesn't drive a Volvo or swing anyone round. He was killed four years ago in an accident on the M1.
Also, she says, Daniel just started going out with Jennifer Thompson, who has naturally blonde hair and grade eight French horn. Everybody knows that brass players are the best kissers, but you hadn't thought until now about it being girls too.
You think about all this a lot, with a permanent cramp in your stomach. You're quieter even than usual. Stephanie and Angela tell you he was never worth it and exchange glances as you try to casually brush away a tear that you didn't mean to cry.
Later that summer, though, you decide that Stephanie's stupid next door neighbour Michael has improved quite a lot now that he is taller, and you start casually hanging out in her back garden in your newly cut-off Levis. It's hard to build up much of a tan when your family holiday is at your granny's in Aberdeen, but at least your legs are long and thin. Longer and thinner, you can't help thinking, than Jennifer Thompson's.
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.
.
You're home from Bristol for the summer and your mum paid for you to get your hair done "properly, for a change". Afterwards, since it's a gorgeous day, you buy yourself a Polly Pineapple and sit in Cranmore Park for a while.
He sits down at the other end of the bench.
He's at Glasgow doing English and Philosophy. He has one more year to go. He's on his way from Mark's house to his evening bar job. It's weird being home for him too. He keeps in touch with Mark, of course, but that's really all. Anna and Nicky are in sixth form now and a bit wild. He's trying to keep an eye on them but they just laugh at him. It's great to see you. You must meet up over the summer.
The strange thing is that this is actually the first time he's spoken to you. Doesn't he know this? It was like he knew you already.
You don't meet up over the summer.
.
.
.
After the wedding, Stephanie and Michael move into a house at the bottom of Larkstone Street. It's right beside the railway tracks, but you get used to the noise after a while.
You visit them every time you're home. That's what you call it when you're talking to them, though Belfast doesn't feel like home any more. You sit on their sofa, drinking the red wine Mike chose specially for you, and a flash of pity catches you. Your own life feels bigger than Larkstone Street.
.
.
.
Steph and Mike's party is tonight. Your heart isn't really in it. Redundancy doesn't feel like a great chance to reinvent your life just the way you want it. It catches you in the stomach, the way grief always does. It makes you feel like hiding in your parents' spare room, like the useless thing you are now.
But when your mum, who is possibly wiser than you think, suggests a nice evening helping her clear out the attic, you put on some black eyeliner and an outfit that doesn't reek of self-pity and get your dad to drop you on the Lisburn Road. He quite likes being your chauffeur these days.
Steph looks gorgeous. She has been loyal over the last couple of weeks, trying hard to lift your spirits, collaborating with your mum and dad. She's glad you're here. You're glad of your eyeliner. And you're glad you came too. The party is mellow. You only know a few people, but it's Belfast, and even the people you don't know know someone you do. Your stomach begins to unclench.
The doorbell rings again. It's Mark, Steph says, and that friend of his from school.
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.
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You've rented a house in Melrose Street. The landlord allowed you to strip the living room walls back to the brick. It's going to look fantastic.
You're up a ladder, trying to position the Velcro strip of your Roman blind, when you notice it. The angle, as he slouches in his navy t-shirt against the wall, beside you.
Newtownards, Albertbridge, Castlereagh, Woodstock, Cregagh, Ravenhill, Ormeau, Malone, Lisburn, Donegall, Falls, Springfield, Shankill, Crumlin, Oldpark, Cliftonville, Antrim, Limestone, Cavehill, York. The spokes of Belfast's rickety wheel.
When you're from Belfast, you identify yourself by your spoke, one of the ancient roads radiating out from the city centre. The Newtownards Road is mine - a ramshackle slope of memories, disappointments and barely visible beauty.
And for many of us, the other spokes are unfamiliar, bordering on foreign. History and circumstance kept us chalking hopscotch on the pavements of our own streets, hurrying straight back home from pocket money sprees in Donegall Place, buying adult houses near our old primary schools.
I was in my forties before I'd walked along the Falls Road, one of the furthest spokes from my own. The City Cemetery was a particularly exciting discovery, and I asked my parents why we'd never been taken there as children. Thoughtless - the reasons were so many and so painful. In an ordinary city, we'd have gone on Sunday afternoon walks there. Belfast wasn't ordinary.
One of my long-term photography projects is my Belfast Street Odyssey. Last weekend, I walked and photographed part of the Falls, from the cemetery down to the Carnegie Library. I compared it to the Newtownards Road. Better views. Prettier nineteenth century buildings. More gaps and waste land. The same urban details that I love finding all over the city. A sense of apprehension giving way to exhilaration and then mainly thinking about whether I might save up for a new lens. Ordinary stuff, as it should be.
They're watching you, even if you haven't noticed them. Belfast's guardians.
Pinned to their plinths and facades, they see it all unfold, flourish and fade. They know that everything passes.
To see what's special about the architecture of Belfast's city centre, you have to look upwards. At street level, there are dozens of very run-of-the-mill premises, with a few honourable exceptions. At rooftop level, there are dozens of amazing sights, mainly dating back to the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth.
Some of the rooftops are iconic; some may be more of a puzzle. How many of this selection can you identify? (My dad is the leading contender so far, with a very respectable seven out of eleven....)
