Last October we took a week away in Elviria, near Marbella in Spain. I haven’t posted since returning, but there is work in the pipeline. I am penning a series on Andalusia, the region in Spain that includes a few places I have been, Malaga, Grenada, Marbella and Ronda, and a few places I haven’t; Seville and Cadiz, yet. Meanwhile, I am wintering at home, as usual. This particular work is set close to home. The original photo was taken by a backseat passenger and focusses on the receding view of Bray as we head north on the N11 towards the M50. Being a rearview, we can’t see where we’re going but have an ever-shrinking view of where we’ve been. A bit like life, I supose.
To which end I spend my days
within the poetry of motorways
In this acrylic it’s late Autumn and near the end of a rainy evening. You may just about make out a flyover in the distance and beyond that the Small Sugarloaf, or Giltspur, is consumed in the glare of the setting sun. The banner across the top of the rear window advertises Mooney’s car dealership on the Long Mile Road in Walkinstown. Shades of my youth lie there. My old school Drimnagh Castle was on the Long Mile and a whole vortex of memories is carried on the winds thereabouts.
Where ghost musicians haunt roads and lanes
with harps that once and old refrains,
I recall that I used to go on the hop some afternoons and head out along the Long Mile towards the Naas Road. One companion then was Gerry Ryan. There was one occasion where we got as far as the Red Cow Inn (a small bar then, in the early seventies) slaked our thirst with a pint and headed back home. Gerry was a nippy winger and went on to play soccer for Bohemians over in Phibsboro. He would graduate to the top division of English soccer with Brighton and Hove Albion and of course was capped as an Irish international. He stayed in Brighton after retirement and ran a pub, the Witch Inn in Sussex. Gerry suffered poor health in recent years and returned home to D12. He died in October at the age of 68.
There are other shades there also, and I’ve written of them in other ways. A poem of my old hometown might fit within some blues refrain for our theme song. I’ve included a few quotes here. It’s called the Girl from Fox and Geese.
This has been a wet summer, even by Irish standards. It is a constant perspective here to view life through rain streaked glass; huddled in a cafe shopfront, looking out the kitchen window, scenery rushing through the windscreen of a car. I’ve painted Connemara driving through the rain and more recently, a sodden rush hour from the upstairs front seat of a bus on Amiens Street. The latter I took from a friend’s photo (thanks Paula Nolan!) but this one is all me own work. Taken through the windscreen of our car parked on Florence Road, Bray, looking up towards Main Street and the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. We are dropping in to Florence Furniture and Antiques in the left foreground. A good antiques shop is a treasure chest of the past, and more. An alternative universe where it is possible to imagine each artefact a living thing, a receptacle for history and craft, and love, and much, much more; hopeful, awaiting its future in another setting. The stories they could tell. The building was previously an art shop, and a printworks before that.
Across the street is Hayes Butchers Shop, a long established family business and friendly with it. Stories and gossip are exchanged here in the old fashioned way. It’s where I get all the beef; if you catch my drift. The Church was established in 1843, funded by subscription including generous donations from Bray’s sizeable Protestant community. It was remodelled in the 1890s by WH Byrne who, around the same time, was supervising the reconstruction of Dublin City Markets on Sth Great George’s Street to the magnificent building we see today. The Holy Redeemer, however, looks very different now to the nineteenth century structure. The mid sixties saw the facade altered to a modernist gabled front with a new plain, soaring bell tower. Surprisingly, you will find the nineteenth century interior remains. The old within the new.
Most cities offer an open-top, hop-on hop-off bus tour. Mostly I can take or leave them. It does make for a particularly useful introduction to Belfast. Much of the city’s fame is steeped in the Troubles, interesting times to be sure. The suburbs featured even more than the city centre. The Falls and the Shankill were the capitals of the troublesome antagonists. There’s something slightly weird being a tourist on an open top bus, cruising through mundane working class residential areas, safe but with a frisson of danger. Perhaps weirder still to be a resident going about your business, yet at any time grabbed in the lens of visitors cameras. Though it could be worse, and once was. A loop through the docklands is also useful, stopping of course outside the Titanic exhibition.
The tour guides each have their own patter, a comedy routine in the making, a mixture of historical details and lurid anecdotes. The latter may be shaggy dog tales, but the history is convincing. We took a couple of jaunts, and so were treated to a variety of routines. Most were racy and jocular, and one who did a drearily hilarious comic turn.
The first stop was at St George’s Market on May Street, close to the Waterfront. This is an attractive redbrick Victorian Market from the end of the nineteenth century. Enter through the main archway into a hive of trading activity with hundreds of stalls selling books, clothes, art, antiques, hot food and snacks from friday through to sunday. The friday market dates back to the city’s formation in 1604, with fruit and veg, antiques, crafts, clothes and books. Saturday devotes itself to being specifically a food and craft fair, then sunday brings both elements together with live music thrown in. St George’s Market doubles as a music and arts venue with events ranging fron the World Irish Dance Championship to Deep Purple.
Next door is a pub that honours a singer of my own city, Ronnie Drew. It’s disconcerting to see his face around here, but consoling. Born in Dun Laoghaire in 1934, he founded his own group with Luke Kelly and others. The Dubliners first played in O’Donoghue’s in Dublin’s Merrion Row, a favourite haunt of mine. It’s good to see them commemorated in Ireland’s second city. Ronnie Drew’s is an ornate old style bar from the 1920s, with five large snugs along the huge arched windows at the front. Once called McGettigan’s, it was renamed for Drew following his death in 2008
The next bus takes us via City Hall and on to Great Victoria Street. From the city centre we head into the leafy suburbs of the University Quarter. This quarter includes the Ulster Museum, the Botanic Gerdens and of course Queens University, Belfast. The university was founded in 1845 as an associate college of the Queens University of Ireland, along with Cork and Galway. It was intended to be a learning centre for Catholics and Presbyterians as distinct from the Anglican Trinity College Dublin. Queens is enjoying its summer hiatus at the moment. I recall Freshers week, many moons ago, where the rag mag profiled a hopeful candidate in the student elections. He was running on the surprising platform of a Gay Paisleyite, with the ne’er to be forgotten slogan: Better Gay than Taig. Taig, from the common Gaelic name Tadhg, being the Loyalist slang term for their Nationalist foe.
The main building fronting onto University Road was designed by the English architect Charles Lanyon. It is an impressive gothic redbrick with a central tower inspired by Magdalen College in Oxford. Lanyon also designed the Campanile at Trinity College Dublin and many Belfast landmarks, including the Palm House at the Botanic Gardens nearby, Belfast Castle and Crumlin Road Courthouse and Gaol. Lanyon Place is named in his honour, though the modernist slab of a railway station seems somewhat ironic.
The tour heads west towards the Falls Road, a two mile long thoroughfare heading from the city centre to Andersonstown. The area is home to the Catholic community of West Belfast. We stop at the Bobby Sands mural, one of the most famous of Belfast’s many political murals. It dates from 1998, around the corner of the Falls at Sevastapol Street, on the gable end of the Sinn Fein hq. Sands was sentenced to fourteen years in the H-Block at Long Kesh for possession of a firearm in 1981. He went on hunger strike to campaign for political prisoner status and was elected MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone. After sixty six days he died at the age of twenty seven, in May. A further nine men died before the hunger strike was called off in October.
Further down the Falls we glimpse Divis Tower, a twenty storey residential block from the sixties. Standing 200 foot tall it was a significant landmark of the Troubles. The British army occupied the top two floors as an observation post, though they could only access it by helicopter. Residents moved back in fifteen years ago.
Turning left off the Falls, a row of murals occupies the Solidarity Wall along Northumberland Street. Alongside national and local heroes, other international revolutionaries favoured by Republicans are commemmorated. These include Palestinian, Basque and South African activists, with Nelson Mandela prominent amongst them.
Through a double gate, we leave the Falls and enter the Shankill area, a Loyalist enclave. Murals now switch to assertions of Britishness with the Union Jack and King Billy (William of Orange) signifying that you’ve crossed the divide. That divide is demarcated by the Peace Wall on Cupar Way. This was erected by the British Army in 1969 to prevent inter community strife between Nationalists and Loyalists.
There are thirty km of walls in total, in various areas throughout Belfast. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, following the IRA ceasefire of four years earlier, effectively brought an end to hostilities. The Peace Wall could at last live up to its name. The barrier has evolved into an open page for the amateur graffitti artist. A litany of hopes and dreams scribbled by the great unwashed, and the great and the good. National and international leaders have made their mark. Bill Clinton, a significant force in the Peace Process was here. According to our guide he contributed the quote: I never slept with that woman! I doubt it. Ironically, the symbolic importance of the wall has itself become a barrier to taking the thing down. It’s longer now than at the end of the Troubles
Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching’s is blue
They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu
Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games
Hiding out in treetops, shouting out rude names
Whistling tunes, we hide in the dunes by the seaside
Whistling tunes, we piss on the goons in the jungle
It’s a knockout
If looks could kill, they probably will
In games without frontiers
War without tears
(Games Without Frontiers is a Peter Gabriel song from his third solo album Peter Gabrel. The title is taken from a Trans European tv show of the sixties and beyond: Jeux Sans Frontiers. That line is sung by Kate Bush as an alternate chorus. British tv used the more combative title: It’s a Knockout.)
We stop along the Shankill Road where the atmosphere is muted and rather grim. I wonder if we should strike up a few verses of We’re on the One Road. But perhaps its message of togetherness might be misconstrued along here. Returning to the city centre, the bus deposits us at Donegall Square and the City Hall.
Our last night on the town brings us to Bittles Bar. Occupying a flatiron wedge at the junction of Victoria Street and Church Lane, it dates from 1868, when it was known as the Shakespeare. The literary theme continues inside the small triangular bar. A great selection of paintings are crammed into every available space with group portraits of Irish literary and sporting heroes enjoying a few pints. There’s a large canvas of Yeats, Behan, Beckett, Wilde and Joyce, while peace era iconography brings together erstwhile combatants of the Troubles, Adams and Paisley sharing a joke. The pub’s most popular poet seems to be Padraic Fiacc who gazes down, not quite benignly, at the bar. A spiky quote: Screeching gulls in a smoky bacon sky, hints at a spiky character. Christened Patrick O’Connor, he was born in Belfast, the son of a barman. His family lived in the Markets area nearby, having been burned out of their home in Lisburn. They moved to New York and Padraic grew up in the notorious Hell’s Kitchen area. A case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. He connected with his Belfast roots in the forties and returned to live here in 1956. A member of Aosdana, he died only recently, in 2019 at the grand age of 95.
Meanwhile, although the night is still young, last orders are called. I had just been extolling the benefits of Belfast in peacetime only to be made aware that we were caught in an unfree state, with antediluvian licensing hours. Ten o’clock on a Sunday night on a Bank Holiday weekend and we’re out on the street. So it looks like I’m going to wake up in the city that does sleep. However, a stiff, and anxious, walk back to the Titanic quarter, and the wonderful Premier Inn provides a pint of Harp, or two, to take us to the midnight hour.
We’re staying in the Titanic Quarter, practically next door to the eponymous attraction. The tall gleaming building is a landmark in itself, embodying in its design a suggestion of the famous liner built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard nearby. Edward James Harland was born in Yorkshire in 1831 and moved to Belfast in 1854 to manage Robert Hickson’s shipyard on Queens Island. In 1858 Harland bought the shipyard from Hickson. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff from Hamburg had worked as Harland’s assistant, and soon was made a partner. Harland and Wolff prosperred, forging a lucrative partnership with the White Star shipping line. White Star exemlified high quality service for the transatlantic passenger trade. The Belfast shipyard became exclusive builders for them, providing ships on an ever more grandiose scale, culminating in the Titanic in 1912.
The decline of Belfast shipbuilding saw Queens Island left derelict. A handful of structures were listed for preservation, including the Titanic slipway and the iconic Samson and Goliath gantry cranes. These were only built in 1969 and 74, and are still in use as part of the dry dock operations of the yard. The Titanic Quarter development was proposed in the mid nineties. The Odyssey Complex was an early development which opened in the new millennnium. The Arena hosts the Belfast Giants hockey team, and is also a venue for music gigs. The Premier Inn, our hosts, was the first hotel opened here in 2010.
The Titanic Belfast visitor attraction was proposed as a focus for the site. It was intended to emulate Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao as a prestige scheme which would inspire a regeneration of the area itself and the wider city. Overseeing the project, Dublin firm Harcourt Developments enlisted American architect Eric Kuhne and London firm Event Communications. The building echoes the outline of the huge White Star ships, standing as high as the Titanic hull on completion. Locals have given the nickname the Iceberg. The silver sheen of the building comes from its aluminium cladding, whose jagged finish also isuggest ice crystals. The visitor centre stands on the slipway where the Titanic was launched.
The Titanic Experience will take a few hours. It first immerses the visitor in the rapidly growing nineteenth century city of Belfast, then takes you from the ship’s conception, through gestation and birth, and on to that fateful voyage, and beyond. It is a story of dockland and street, nuts and bolts, the savage vastness and caprices of the sea, and of course people. The people who designed her, who toiled to make her, who were charged with sailing her, who paid to sail in her, who survived or perished, as the die would have it.
Titanic is the most famous ship ever, though it never completed its maiden voyage. Carrying 2,224 passengers and crew, she set off from Southampton to New York by way of Cherbourg and Cobh, then known as Queenstown. Hopes would have been high. Here was a voyage into a new world, upon the greatest ship afloat, proclaimed unsinkable with the best in modern safety technology. Allegedly. Third Class were better catered for by White Star than they would have been elsewhere, with cabins instead of open dormitories, their own dining rooms, a smoking room, reading room and an assembly hall. Facilities in first class were luxurious, based on the quality of the Ritz, with restaurants, gymnasium and turkish baths, A glorious Grand Staircase swept up through seven decks topped by a metal and glass dome.
She sank on 15th April 1912 off the coast of Newfoundland. Capt Edward Smith went down with the ship. One thousand five hundred people died. The names of all the dead are displayed on a huge wall as we begin our descent from the exhibition’s top floor. Stories abound, ranging from modest steerage to those of great wealth and fame. There was the unsinkable Molly Brown, who survived. Born Margaret Tobin in 1867 to Irish immigrants in Missouri. She moved to Leadville, Colorado, in her teens and married mining engineer James Brown who became wealthy through his work. A wealthy socialite, Margaret didn’t forget her poor background, and applied herself to philanthropy in the cause of women and workers. Her survival became the stuff of legend and led to her posthumous nickname
Fate smiled on others who either missed the boat or got off. Amongst those who disembarked at Cobh was Fr Francis Browne, an Irish Jesuit and photographer. He received a first class ticket from Southampton to Cobh as a gift from his uncle. On board he befriended a rich American couple who offered to pay his passage to New York. He telegraphed the bishop and the reply was swift, and negative: Get off that ship! Browne studied at Dublin’s University College with James Joyce who remembered him with a walk on part in Finnegans Wake. Even more unsinkable than his namesake Molly, he was a chaplain in the Great War and survived the Battle of the Somme, Passchandaele and many other fierce battles. Wounded five times, he was awarded the Military Cross and the Crois de Guerre. The survival of Browne’s photographs form an enduring legacy of life in the twentieth century. His photographs chronicle life in Ireland and abroad, while his record of the Titanic, its passengers and crew before their date with fate, is invaluable.
Nearing the end, with the weight of the dead above us, we descend to the depths. The Titanic rested undisturbed for more than seventy years. In 1985 Robert Ballard and Jean Luis Michel found the wreck. Celebration was spontaneous, though Ballard quickly saw the problem of joy in what was, is in effect a mass graveyard. A film by James Cameron in 1997 featured Leonardo de Caprio, a steerage passenger forging a love affair with Kate Winslet. Their celebration of life at the ship’s prow gives a photoshoot moment for visitors seeking to recreate the moment starring themselves. My companions oblige, though I must draw a veil over that.
After the full emotional experience of the Titanic spend some time on the Nomadic, parked adjacent to the visitor centre and included in the admission. The Nomadic is the Titanic in miniature. It was used as a ferry for passengers from the dockside to the Titanic anchored offshore. The interior is lovingly preserved, with some ghostly projections taking us back to the days.
After all of that, it was time to sink a few cold ones. There are few oases this side of the Lagan. It’s a ten minute hike across a selection of bridges to the city centre. We took the Lagan Weir Bridge which curves to the west bank where it is guarded by the Big Fish. This sculpture by John Kindness was commissioned at the end of the last century as part of the urban regeneration along the riverbank. The fish is clad in ceramic scales, many with texts and images illustrating the city’s history. Aptly, it stands at the confluence of the Farset and Lagan rivers.
The Farset is the river that gave Belfast its name: the mouth of the Farset, Beal Feirste in Gaelic. The original settlement was here, and a small dockland grew up. This was covered over in the eighteenth century and is now Queen’s Square. The buildings on the south side of the square would once have faced the quayside of the old town dock. The oldest building in Belfast survives here, and houses McHugh’s Bar. It was built as a private residence in 1711 and by the following decade a public house was in operation. McHugh’s serves food and drink and there are lively evening music sessions. Its large outdoor terrace facing the square was perfect for a perfectly sunny day. Our own trio was augmented by a trio of friendly locals and we fell into the heaven of lively conversation and chilled beer in the afternoon sun.
The Albert Memorial Clock dominates the square. Built to honour the Queen’s Consort who died in 1861, it is Belfast’s very own leaning tower. Being built on land reclaimed from the River it leans four feet off the vertical and stands, if precariously, over a hundred feet tall. It was once a haunt of prostitutes. Perhaps it was a form of sympathetic magic, or just that they, like the tower, had the time and the inclination.
The area has moved upmarket in recent times. The Cathedral Quarter is named for St Anne’s Cathedral nearby. Once a warehouse zone this warren of cobblestone lanes is the go to area for city nightlife. Such colourful names as the Thirsty Goat, the Cloth Ear, the Chubby Cherub and Bunsen Burgers clamour for your drinking and dining pleasure. We wander for a time in the summer haze of evening through a long narrow laneway beneath neon umbrellas with a caption saying there’s only seven types of rain in Belfast, all seven days a week. But not this weekend.
Edinburgh’s Old Town rises south of Prince’s Street, an audacious signature across the sky. The Castle occupies the high, westernmost part of Castle Hill. This is a volcanic plug, formed when magma cooled in a massive volcano that stood here three hundred million years ago. The hill that remains stands four hundred and thirty feet above sea level, surrounded by cliffs on three sides. Rising two hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding plain, it made for an ideal defensive location in ancient times. Picts, Gaels and Anglo Saxons have taken advantage of that and abided here. Its Gaelic name is Dun Edin, the fortress of Edin, though who, or what, Edin was, nobody knows. It was established as a burgh by King David in 1124. David ruled from 1124 to 1153. He subsequently became a saint, the only avenue of promotion open to a king, and seldom granted. In the real world, he introduced Norman style administration to Scotland, superceding the Gaelic system that prevailed.
More coloquially, Edinburgh is also known as Auld Reekie, or old smoky as we would say. Being built on a rocky outcrop, and this being the north, the fires of the citizens smoke could be seen from twenty miles away. And country folk do refer to the big city as the Big Smoke
Beneath Castle Hill lies the New Town, with Prince’s Street marking its northern edge. Edinburgh’s principal street is lined with imposing commercial buildings, though a grumpy Dub might say it is like O’Connell Street with one side missing. That, of course, allows for the view, probably the best urban panorama you are likely to see. The serrated skyline of the Old Town topped by the Castle, viewed across a sylvan park dotted with choice statues and grand buildings.
The eastern end of the street is dominated by the Balmoral Hotel and Calton Hill with its monument strewn summit. Edinburgh is also known as the Athens of the North, eighteenth century travellers noting the similarity between the cities, particularly the Acropolis floating above the lower city and Castle Hill. Artist Hugh William Williams held an exhibition in 1822 with his sketches of Edinburgh and Athens displayed alongside each other for comparison. Calton Hill became the focus for this notion with the design of the National Monument of Scotland modelled on the Parthenon in Athens. Begun in 1826 as a monument to Scotish soldiers and sailors who had died in the Napoleonic Wars, lack of funds meant it was left incomplete in 1829. This might also recall one tourist’s comments on first seeing the Acropolis; hmmm, it will be nice when it’s finished
The view over the city from here is certainly iconic. The Balmoral Tower nearby is a dominant feature on the skyline. The building was designed by William Hamilton Beattie, and completed in 1901. It operated as the North British Hotel until the early nineties, when it became the Balmoral, just in time for my arrival in Edinburgh. At least, I dreamed of staying there, while lounging with M atop Calton Hill back in the day, furiously smoking into the mist, wondering which improbable tower we would most like to occupy for the night. One writer who made her dream real was JK Rowling. She was then just beginning her series on the exploits of tyro magician Harry Potter.
The Philosopher’s Stone began life in Porto, ultimately seeing the light of day in Edinburgh where she lived from 1995. Her haunt then was the Elephant House coffee shop, its magical views of Edinburgh Castle inspiring the fantastical setting of her work. She completed her series in a room at the Balmoral, something of a point of pilgrimage for the more fabulously well to do Harry Potter fan. It will cost you a grand a night. It would take me nearly a week to spend that amount on accommodation here. Which is plenty. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows brought the epic to an end in 2007.
The Elephant House is set further south on George IV Bridge, one of a number of bridges connecting the Old Town with its surrounding lowlands. The bridge is mostly lined with buildings, but there’s a gap at the Elephant House where you can gaze into the gloomy chasm of Cowgate. A terrace to the rear of the coffee house gives wonderful views of the castle, and here Rowling liked to sit and let her imagination run riot. Sadly, the building was giutted by fire last year, and there has been no movement since towards reconstruction.
Other than the Balmoral, the south side of Prince’s street is devoted to parkland and spectacle. The main rail station, Waverley, is next door, recessed in the hollow between North Bridge and Waverley Bridge. The Mound, leading up to the Old Town, was made from excavated ground, and the lower slope hosts The Scottish National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy. Prince’s Street Gardens makes a wonderful foreground for views of Castle Hill. All of this was originally a stagnant pool, the North Loch, filled in on the construction of the New Town.
The Scott Monument marks the eastern entrance to the gardens. It is two hundred feet tall, the largest monument to a writer in Europe and was designed by an amateur, George Kemp. He won the competition to design a fitting memorial to the recently deceased writer and work started in 1838. The dark, gothic masterpiece was completed in 1844, but Kemp never saw that, having drowned in the Union Canal some months earlier returning home from work.
Walter Scott was born in 1771. A writer, historian and public figure, he became a personification of Scottish literature and nationhood. He was amongst the first to use history as a basis for literary fiction with The Waverly Novels. These begun in 1814 with Waverley. Scott, then best known as a poet, published them anonymously, and subsequent novels had the byline: the author of Waverley. The narratives are frequently set in 17th or 18th century Scotland; such as Rob Roy, but also in Medieval England (Ivanhoe) and during the the Crusades in the Holy Land. They became hugely popular, defining narratives of the Romantic Age, establishing in our minds, or hearts, the exalted notions of romantic love, adventure, heroism and nationality. Something that Waverley Station, named for them, scarcely does. Walter Scott died in 1832.
The National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Academy are at the base of the Mound. Both are in the neoclassical style and designed by William Henry Playfair. The Academy opened in 1826. Its annual exhibition, like our own RHA, features the work of contemporary Scottish artists. The National was built thirty years later and features leading traditional Scottish painters along with a good collection of international art; Peter Paul Rubens, Titian,Cezanne and Turner amongst them. The Impressionists are well represented, allegedly. However, as seems to be the case in most cities these days, half the gallery is closed for renovation, which put paid to the Impressionists. The gallery is rather small to begin with, but there is a fine display of Scottish masters.
Monarch of the Glen by Edward Landseer is the most famed. Landseer was an English painter, but frequently visited the Scottish Highlands for their wild landscapes. He also provided the Lions guarding Nelson’s Column in London. The Monarch was painted in 1851 having been commissioned by the House of Lords. Since they proved too stingy to pay for it, it went into private ownership. Frequently loaned out for exhibition, it became hugely popular with the public. Pears Soap acquired it in the twentieth century and used it in its advertising. Distillers Dewars and Glenfiddisch followed suit. McVitie’s use of on the packaging of Scottish Shortbread probably lead to the painting being deemed the ultimate biscuit tin image of Scotland. Eventually it came home in a way, Diageo selling it to the National for the knockdown price of four million.
From the National Gallery of Art I head uphill towards the Edinburgh Writers’ Museum. This should be easy to find, but wasn’t. Edinburgh is a windie city, and I am distracted by the rain, the bagpipes and the sheer joy of it all. I find myself in Bow Street and seek solace in Ian Rankin’s Rebus Pub Crawl, remembering that the Bow Bar is number four on the list. The West Bow is an ancient Edinburgh Street, rising in two levels to the giddy heights of the Castle. The Bow Bar is a determinedly traditional brown bar, dark and timbered, with floor to ceiling windows. In fact it was refitted in this style in the early 1990s. I order an IPA from the young one behind the bar, a Belma and Louise, to be precise. The bar is packed but I make for the one vacant table by the window where I pose in the shaft of honeyed light sweeping down from on high, and lose myself in the moment.
There are few cities that provide the spectacle and depth of Edinburgh. Its skyline is an imagined fantasy, ancient and ornate. Implacable of outline, yet it harbours a wealth of tales, written and being written up until this very moment. Cities are as much a construct of stories as they are of stone, Edinburgh rejoices in both. Like Dublin, you can translate it through its writers, distant and contemporary wordsmiths honoured in various ways. Prince’s Street features the stunning spire of the Walter Scott Monument, rising two hundred feet into the sky. There are more discreet memorials too. The dark laneways of the old town speak of Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde. Above them rise a conspiracy of spires and turrets, the broken teeth of old volcanoes, the whispering stone of graveyards and kirks. Sleuths saunter in the shadows, from Sherlock Holmes to John Rebus, while demons and wizards, killers and creators number amongst the cast of Edinburgh’s multitude of stories.
As one door into this maze, I thought of the contemporary world of John Rebus, that hardboiled detective created by Ian Rankin. Planning this trip to Edinburgh, only my second, I messaged Rankin if he could offer a tour of Rebus watering holes as a pathway through the city. Rankin obliged, so I had a list of seven pubs giving me a route through the streets of the Scottish capital.
It has taken me three years to act on it.The lockdown gave us our own version of the plague, locking us into awkward isolation. I had first visited Edinburgh in the mid nineties. Autumn is a good time to visit Scotland, grey, gold and auburn, and prey to mists. It was a treat for my fortieth birthday, which falls on Saint Andrew’s Day. Andrew provides the Saltire for Scotland’s flag, being the patron saint. And I am half Scottish. My father was born in Scotland, in the mining country of Blantyre, between here and Glasgow.
Back then, myself and M took the Hidden Edinburgh tour, which was a guided walk through the subterranean city of the Old Town. Gloomy indeed, especially in late November. It took off from the Royal Mile, the spine of the city. Our young guide was as charming, loud and funny as we expect a Scottish guide to be, they’re just born to it. Tales of ghosts and ghouls and graverobbers loomed out of the misty evening. We journeyed beneath the streets themselves, finding graveyards down there too, Stopping in a catacomb, our guide whispered this was once an entire street which had been blockaded in Plague times, the residents left there to die, or survive if God so chose. Now, that’s what I call Lockdown.
Rankin was born in 1960 in Cardenden, Fife, north of Edinburgh, on the far side of the Firth of Forth. He never intended to write a detective series. The first Rebus adventure was intended as a stand alone novel, as something of a modern day version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Titled Knots and Crosses it was published in 1987 and followed by Hide and Seek in 1990, also influenced by Jeckyll and Hyde. Hide, get it?
Rebus himself was born some years before his creator, in the later forties up in Fife and hardened in the smithy of Northern Ireland during the early Troubles. Exit Music, 2007, saw Rebus reach sixty, retirement age for a police officer. Rebus was buried, but not dead, and rose again five years later in the appropriately titled, Standing in Another Man’s Grave. Rebus now retired but unable to let the past, or the present go. Rankin has published twenty four Rebus novels up to the recent A Heart Full of Headstones 2022.
Rankin puts the Oxford Bar, Rebus’s most regular haunt, top of his list. Coincidentally, my trip to Oxford some years back, also took a writer’s prism, in this case Colin Dexter’s Morse. Myself and M took a wonderfully entertaining tour in tandem with the adventures of Morse, and of course the long suffering Lewis. The Oxford Bar itself is in Edinburgh’s New Town. The idea of the New Town was first proposed by James VII when Duke of York (of New York fame) as a sophisticated extension to the overcrowded ancient city above. The Battle of the Boyne put paid to that, as James lost his crown, but the idea was refloated in 1766 and a design competition held. This was won by a young local architect James Craig and work soon began on the project.
Prince’s Street forms the southern edge. George Street is the central axis, along the apex of a low ridge from the Albert equestrian statue in Charlotte Square to the Melville Memorial in St Andrew’s Square. It is calm and wide, diners relaxing outdoors in the midday sun. Queen Street completed the northern perimeter. The narrower Rose Street and Thistle Street lie between, with the transverse streets at right angles: Hanover Street, Frederick Street and Castle Street The naming emphasises the theme of the unification of the two kingdoms, as some like to see the annexation of Scotland. It is all very Georgian and grandiose. But there are creeks and alleys.
The Oxford Bar is well hidden, an oasis in a cramped enclave of grey brick on narrow Young Street, north of George Street. It dates back to 1811 and retains the intimate structure of its origins. There’s a tiny bar inside the entrance, a few steps up to a larger room to the rear sparsely furnished in gloomy wood, aglow with honeyed daylight through the sandblasted Oxford window. It’s there I take my pint of IPA and sit as if in a sepia photograph, my only company the solid beam of sunlight, and a man reading a novel by its light. It’s a literary pub, to be sure. I noticed Robbie Burns presiding over the bar as I ordered my Deucher’s. The photo gallery features musicians and others, but most notably Rankin himself (natch). I see too that Colin Dexter is a noted visitor. On the way out, I receive a bookmark or two as souvenir from the pleasant landlady who served me,
Outside, I take in the atmosphere in the traditional manner before heading south along Castle Street. Rose Street, reminds me of Cork’s Oliver Plunkett Street, narrow, straight, cobbled and quaint.It’s pedestrianised and a busy mix of shops, cafes and bars. Abbotsford is at the eastern end. Named for the home of Sir Walter Scott in the Borderlands to the south. The pub is an Edwardian saloon, well upholstered beneath an ornate ceiling and around an imposing mahogonay island bar. There’s a restaurant upstairs. I order a Tennents, frothy and longlasting, the gift that keeps on giving. The bar is busy and I take my drink onto the terrace where I can catch the suns afternoon rays. A nearby busker rests his back against the railings of Rose Street Garden. This open air cafe and wine bar is a popular celbrity haunt. It les at the back of The Dome on George Street, a neo-classical building from 1847, once a bank and now a chic restaurant. Back on my stretch of pavement, more are following my lead in taking the air. It’s most pleasant. The busker’s repertoire is Dylanesque, with a tartan weave that includes The Proclaimers amongst others. He’s giving it the full nine yards, and might be better dialling it down a bit. I wonder should I ask him to sing Faraway.
Number three on the list is the Cafe Royal. This is beyond St Andrew’s Square on a secluded side street. The Cafe Royal is a lovely Victorian bar with towering glass windows designed by Architect Robert Paterson.from 1863. It describes itself as an Oyster Bar. Though shellfish is poison to me, there are more edible alternatives including haggis, venison and other Scottish delights. The walls are adorned with glorious ceramic tiled panels by John Eyre and stained glass windows featuring famous inventors such as James Watt. I can imagine myself in an age of elegance, amongst the gleaming brasswork and gasslamps. Prince’s Street is just a block away, abuzz with the height of the tea time rush. But here is a place to shelter from the outdoors, however benign, and bask in the glow of crafted opulence, art and intimacy; and a fine malt whisky, of course.
Cork is very much defined by the River Lee, flowing both through and around the city centre. It rises in the Shehy Mountains in West Cork, feeding the beautiful lake of Gougane Barra, named for Saint Finbar, and from there to Cork City. West of the city it divides, holding the centre city in its embrace before uniting again to the east where it flows into Cork harbour.
On a glorious Spring morning, we head out West. Washington Street leads through what was once medieval Cork. It was laid out in the 1820s and named George’s Street for King George III who had just died. A century later, blood running high in the fight for liberty, it was decided that another George, America’s revolutionary leader George Washington, made a worthier focus for honour. Cork Courthouse was built in the 1830s by George and James Pain, in the neo classical style as a ‘temple suitable for the solemn administration of justice’. It certainly looked the part, but was notoriously cold and draughty within. Ironic then, that a malfunction in the heating system virtually destroyed the building in a blaze on Good Friday, 1891. Local architect William Henry Hill designed the reconstruction, retaining the intact portico and facade, adding a copper dome.
Further on leads to Lancaster quay, the leafy river banks lined with gleaming apartments. It’s a pleasant walk along the Western Road to University College Cork. UCC campus occupies a scenic wooded parkland with the South Branch of the river framing its northern rim. The College was founded in 1845 as one of three Queens Colleges of Ireland, with Galway and Belfast. In the twentieth century, Cork became part of the National University of Ireland, along with Galway (UCG), Dublin (UCD) and Maynooth.
Near the entrance, amongst the trees, is the Glucksman Gallery. The Glucksman was opened in 2004, in an award winnning design by Irish architects O’Donnell and Tuomey. Truly a floating modernist statement with three floors of display, including themed temporary exhibitions. Whatever’s on show, the building is a sublime experience in itself. It is named for Lewis Glucksman, American financier and chairman of Lehmann Bros. He was a generous patron of culture in Ireland including the Millenium Wing of the National Gallery. Glucksman lived in Cork for the last twenty years of his life, and died there in his house in Cobh in 2006.
At the centre of the university, the buildings are grouped around a Gothic Tudor quadrangle. Architects, Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward designed much of these early buildings. As we dally in the cloisters, soaking in the history and the atmosphere, Government ministers flit through the arcades discussing affairs of state. Current Taoiseach, Michael Martin, would be amongst them, a graduate of these groves. Honan Collegiate Chapel dates from the early twentieth century. In the the Celtic Revival style of the time, it harks back to starry times of saints and scholars. Isabella Honan, a wealthy Corkonian, was the Church’s benefactor. The interior is particularly alive with Irish arts and crafts, Eleven of its nineteen stained glass windows are by Harry Clarke.
We return along College Road via St Fin Barre’s which is worth a visit. Its three spires are a dominant feature of the city skyline. The interior includes a small exhibition of the church’s history. The Cathedral grounds make a calm retreat from the city’s embrace.
Nearby is Elizabeth’s Fort. Looming over the south branch of the Lee, it was built in 1601 by Sir George Carew. On the death of Elizabeth, the Mayor led a revolt and a force of 800 men siezed the fort and demolished it to thwart the forces of James I. Lord Mountjoy retook the city and ordered it rebuilt. The star design dates from its rebuild in 1626. Cromwell also added to it in 1649. It became a Jacobite stronghold in the Williamite wars. When the city was taken by William’s forces in the Siege of Cork, the fort held out but the city walls were breached after a week of bombardment. From 1719 to1817 it functioned as a barracks and subsequently a prison for those awaiting transportation to Australia. It reverted to military use, became a Royal Irish Constabulary barracks and hosted the Black and Tans during the War of Independence. It was burned by anti treaty forces in the Civil War and was afterwards a Garda Station until 2013. Now open to the public, entrance is free and you must run the gauntlet of cheerful meet and greeters. This, in fairness, does make for a good introduction to a historical site and our Cork hosts were excellent. There are guided tours at one o’clock each day for a couple of euro, but you can self guide as we did. Lifesize action figures guard the spaces giving scale and context to the visit. There’s a small museum which maps the historical development of Cork City and the Fortress, and a picnic area too.
Nano Nagle footbridge crosses the southern branch of the river back to Grand Parade in the city centre. The Lady of the Lantern was born as Honora Nagle in 1718. She was smuggled abroad for an education, as that particular avenue was closed to Catholics then. Returning to Ireland she resolved to remedy the situation. She opened her first school for the poor in 1754 in a mud cabin in Cove Lane in defiance of the Penal Laws. At night, by lantern light, she’d bring food and medicine to the poor. Nagle founded the Presentation Sisters order and took vows in 1775. Ten years later, she died of TB.
The South Mall is the city’s financial zone, wide; tree-lined and elegantly austere. We rejoin the river at Parnell Bridge. On the opposite bank, Cork City Hall on Albert Quay resembles Dublin’s Custom House both in its structure and its placement, floating serenely over the city quayside. This particular building is of more recent vintage. Designed by Jones and Kelly, it was built in 1936 to replace the old city hall. That building, originally the cornmarket, dated from the mid nineteenth century, and Jones and Kelly sought for a grander reflection of the original which was destroyed during the War of Independence when the Black and Tans burnt Cork in reprisal for the Republican activities of the natives. However, the term Rebel City goes back much further to the War of the Roses in the fifteenth century, when Cork backed the doomed Yorkist cause.
Running parallel to the Mall is Oliver Plunkett Sreet, the first street to be laid out to the east of Grand Parade in the early eighteenth century. It became a thriving shooping street, pedestrianised by day, and a nightlife hotspot into the wee small hours. Long and low lying, it is the street most likely to turn into a canal when the nearby river rises. We return along the north branch of the river, past the modernist bus station. This evokes memories of catching the bus to Kinsale; whether the two of us or more, impossibly young, rucksacks and tent rolled up tight and heads full of songs and hope.
The Hotel Isaacs garden makes a good spot for an afternoon drink. An attractive nineteenth century gothic redbrick on McCurtain Street, the bar is accessed through a discreet archway. Within, the enclosed hotel terrace is framed by a jungle of plants and an impressive cliff face with water feature. The resident family of ducks peek out at us. Used to human company not to make strange, they are exceptionally cute. The hotel restaurant is stylish with a good menu, though we fancy a more informal atmosphere on our last night. We’ve noticed a burger joint farther down the street. Son of a Bun serves good burgers, good foaming beer, with a cheerful vibe and a sidewalk terrace to take the fresh air and watch the world go by.
A knife, a fork, a bottle and a Cork,
That’s the way we spell New York, right on
A knife, a fork, a bottle and a Cork,
That’s the way we spell New York, right on
Cocaine on m’Brain was a hit for Dillinger from his album CB 200, in 1976. Sung, spoken really, in a strong Jamaican accent, not a million miles from the local patois. Only a pond separates us. Which all goes to show, you can take the man out of Cork, but can you get the cork out of the bottle?
Cork was built on an island between two branches of the River Lee. It means marshy place and is very prone to flooding. There were monastic and Viking settlements here, but is first noted as a city in the reign of King John, Lord of Ireland, in the late twelfth century. I regularly passed through on the way to family holidays on the south coast, and later with friends in those halcyon days; heading for Kinsale, or other vague destinations, by Hook or by Crooke. We once camped near Shandon, but more salubrious accommodation would come.
I stayed here in 1980 for the Jazz Festival and the Labour Party Conference. We stayed up late at the Metropole which had formed into one of those festival club montages, wandering from room to room as different jazz performances floated from doorways – solo piano, bebop combos and goodtime trumpet playing band. The Jazz Festival was born in 1978 when Jim Mountjoy, marketing manager of the Metropole, was looking for something to coincide with the new October bank holiday introduced by Labour minister Michael O’Leary the previous year. This often coincides with Hallowe’en, the ancient Celtic festival of the dead. Wild and windy, and wonderfully spooky, what better time for a festival of the devil’s music in a southern delta. The sponsors then were John Player whose cigarettes provided an excellent companion to all forms of music, though perhaps forever associated with Procol Harum’s A Salty Dog.
We sailed for parts unknown to man
where ships come home to die
no lofty peak nor fortress bold
could match our captain’s eye
Ella Fitzgerald headlined at the Cork Opera House that year, and for forty five years the festival has featured the cream of local and international jazz, and its children too.
Our accommodation then was more modest than the Met. When the last note sounded in the wee small hours, we got our car and headed south of the river. Darkness still reigned though the rain had ceased. However, that most Corkonian of downpowers must have burst the dykes and the streets turned to waterways. Back in Venice again, at the wheel of my own motor launch, a Renault 4 to be precise, I drove milk float slow with water halfway up the hub caps.
This time we take the train. There’s a train every two hours from Dublin Heuston, and the journey takes about two and a half hours. The frequency ensures it’s not too crowded. I avail of my free travel pass, with M being my designated minder. We arrive in Cork Kent and make for McCurtain Street. The Isaacs Hotel is opposite the larger Metropole hotel. McCurtain Street itself is north of and parallel to the River Lee.
At the foot of McCurtain Street, St. Patrick’s Hill takes us down to the river. This is the north branch of the River Lee, embracing Cork city centre on its low lying island. Patrick Street, across the bridge, is the wide and winding principal street. It has the most ugly street lighting you are likely to see, a deranged bundle of oblique scaffolding and spotlights which clash with the elegant streetscape.
Cork is Ireland’s second city. Recent boundary changes have seen its population surge towards the quarter million mark. Back in the day, in the seventies and eighties, it held barely a hundred thousand souls. Walking the city streets in late summer, that increase is palpable. There’s a buzz abroad.
Narrow lanes lead off Patrick Street, boasting such colourful names as Drawbridge Street, Bowling Green Street and Half Moon Street. The names evoke an olden atmosphere and this pervades much of the streetscape too. There are plenty of cafes and bars with outdoor seating, bohemians, students and tourists mingling with the ever growing throngs of modern shoppers.
The Crawford Municipal Gallery is within this warren. The Crawford is always a port of call for myself and M when in Cork. William Horatio Crawford, brewer and philanthropist (a good mix) funded the art college here. Beamish and Crawford produce the famous Beamish stout, a black ale with creamy head just like Guinness. Originally the building was the Custom House for Cork, built in 1724, it later was home to the Royal Cork Institution. The Art School was rechristened for its benefactor in 1885 and became the Crawford Municipal Gallery in 1979 with the relocation of the art college to new premises.
We are returned to our own college days inside the door where there’s a permanent display of casts of classical Greek and Roman statues by Italian Antonio Canova. Donated by George IV (as Regent) these came originally from the Vatican. Most spectacular is Laocoon and His Sons, which was also an emblem of our own college. It dominated the entrance to NCAD, then in Kildare Street alongside that other parcel of rogues, the Dail or Parliament. The Crawford also includes work by leading Irish artists: the stained glass of Harry Clarke and Evie Hone and paintings by William Orpen, Jack B Yeats and Nano Reid. Crawford College painters, James Brennan, Henry Jones Thaddeus, and William Barry also feature. The Zurich Prize Portrait exhibition was the main visiting attraction. We had seen it in Dublin but it was well worth seeing again.
From the Crawford on Emmet Place, we head along Paul Street to a small plaza ooutside the shopping centre: Rory Gallagher Place. There’s a sculpture by Geraldine Creedon which depicts a swirling guitar emitting streams of Gallagher songs. Gallagher is the much loved blues guitarist who founded Taste in the sixties. For my generation, seeing Gallagher play was an early rite of passage. Always on the road, his annual stadium gig, and the odd festival appearance were a must for the young rock fan. Gallagher was actually born in Donegal, in the later forties, but his family moved to Cork when he was five. As a teenager he played with the Fontana showband, but was ever moving towards the Blues-rock scene. With the power trio Taste, he enjoyed live success in Belfast clubs, and achieved chart success with their first two albums, Taste and On the Boards. His solo career brought him guitar hero status, but his fame waned in the eighties. He died in 1995, aged forty seven and is buried at St Oliver’s Cemetary in Ballincollig on the city outskirts.
On the Boards is Gallagher at his best. There’s a jazz sensibility in his playing and arrangements. Saxaphone, played by Rory, adds a particularly moody dimension. Released in 1970, it was their last album as Gallagher went solo after the Isle of Wight festival. What’s Going On was a hit single. Gallagher’s disregard for such fame didn’t help his career, or indeed musical development. Railway and Gun is another number that showcases his range as a guitarist and composer.
I visited Porto last September, my arrival coinciding with that of a rainfront which accompanied me for the duration. My accommodation, Sunny Balcony, Trindade, had an extensive, recessed balcony along the front wall giving me a good, sheltered panorama of the city in the rain from the fourth floor. Below my window was an overpass, taking the ring road below across a junction connecting to the city’s main street. It was busy, but cosy, there’s something soothing about the hiss of urban traffic in the rain. Visually too; the traffic forming into a sinuous illuminated snake. At ground level, the overpass provided shelter, and car parking. I passed under regularly between my accommodation and the restaurant across the road, and on to the city centre nearby.. The scene reminded me of an artwork I’d found many years ago in a calendar. The artwork, from the seventies perhaps, showed a similar underpass in an unnamed city, probably French or Belgian, the noirish nocturne suspended in a monochrome blast of chromium urban lighting. Porto was a calling for me to echo that painting.
In this acrylic I am using a different palette, with a more structured, geometric composition. I used a red ground, as the night is mild despite the rain, and the street lighting had a pinkish tinge. This is balanced against a cool grey for the city fabric with a dash of blue on the rainsoaked cobblestones. Of course, being me, it’s raining.
Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
Why does it always rain on me?
even when the sun is shining, I can’t avoid the lightning.
That song, by Scottish band,Travis, is taken from their 1999 album The Man Who. Lead singer, Fran Healy wrote it after a failed sun holiday in southern Israeli . Tell me about it. I have sometimes wondered if I could rent myself out to drought stricken regions as a rain god. Then again, there have been sunny days. Too many of them and you start missing the rain. So, let it fall, it washes the world and softens the sharpness of city life. And is often beautiful.
January is cold and blear, a time for hibernation, especially for ancient Hibernians like myself. This painting is appropriate for the season in terms of climate and the hectic humdrum after the Christmas festivities, but there are harbingers of the joys of life too. The view is from the upstairs front seat of a bus barrelling down Amiens Street. Connolly Station and Bus Aras, the main train and bus stations respectively, are just behind us, ahead Dublin like crystals in the rain. Liberty Hall at almost sixty metres tall, considered a skyscraper when built in the sixties, really does scrape the sky on days like this. It is still the fourth highest building in Dublin. Off to our left the pyramid capped glass towers of George’s Quay Plaza, much the same height, line the far bank of the river. Straight ahead, the Customs House, Gandon’s late eighteenth century masterpiece, is shrouded in trees. Everything melts in the unrelenting rain.
But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
The photograph was taken by a friend of mine from Art College days, Paula Nolan. Back then, the late seventies, the Art College was in temporary premises on George’s Quay. Paula is a photographer of note, her work being shown at successive RHAs. Her photos can rise to the clouds above, but frequently, as here, feature the drama of ordinary life in the city as she put her morning commute to good use. Despite all the mayhem and the rain, it makes me almost wish to be commuting again.
Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
Joni Mitchell wrote Both Sides Now in 1967, and it was a big hit for Judy Collins the following year. Mitchell’s version is from her album Clouds, 1969.
