Belfast Sayings And Quotes

One more thing," I said because I couldn't help myself. "Mallory, if your middle name is Audrey and your initials are M. A. K.. -" She raised an index finger. "Don't say it, Beantown." "We are totally calling you Mack now." "Mallory fumed. "My friends in Belfast used to call me that. Constantly." That wasn't a no so I decided we had permission.

was rubble and broken glass, what one poet would memorably describe as “Belfast confetti.

the violence intensified, grandiose funerals became routine, with rousing graveside orations and caskets draped in tricolor flags. People took to joking that there was no social life in Belfast anymore, apart from wakes.

Once, in the summer of 1995, Adams gave a speech at a rally in Belfast. He looked like a politician, in a crisp summer suit, consulting his cue cards. But during a pause in his prepared remarks, someone in the crowd shouted, "Bring back the IRA!" As the audience cheered, Adams chuckled and smiled. Then he leaned into the microphone and said, "They haven't gone away, you know.

Indeed, it could occasionally seem that support for the armed struggle was more fervent in Boston or Chicago than it was in Belfast or Derry. The romantic idyll of a revolutionary movement is easier to sustain when there is no danger that one's own family members might get blown to pieces on a trip to the grocery store. Some people in Ireland looked askance at the "plastic Paddies" who urged bloody war in Ulster from the safe distance of America.

--Thing is though, Spud, whin yir intae skag, that's it. That's aw yuv goat tae worry aboot. Ken Billy, ma brar, likes? He's jist signed up tae go back intae the fuckin army. He's gaun tae fucking Belfast, the stupid cunt. Ah always knew that the fucker wis tapped. Fuckin imperialist lackey. Ken whit the daft cunt turned roond n sais tae us? He goes: Ah cannae fuckin stick civvy street. Bein in the army, it's like being a junky. The only difference is thit ye dinnae git shot at sae often bein a junky. Besides, it's usually you that does the shootin. --That, eh, likesay, seems a bit eh, fucked up like man. Ken? --Naw but, listen the now. You jist think aboot it. In the army they dae everything fir they daft cunts. Feed thum, gie the cunts cheap bevvy in scabby camp clubs tae keep thum fae gaun intae toon n lowerin the fuckin tone, upsetting the locals n that. Whin they git intae civvy street, thuv goat tae dae it aw fir thumsells. --Yeah, but likesay, it's different though, cause . . . Spud tries to cut in, but Renton is in full flight. A bottle in the face is the only thing that could shut him up at this point; even then only for a few seconds. --Uh, uh . . . wait a minute, mate. Hear us oot. Listen tae whit ah've goat tae say here . . . what the fuck wis ah sayin . . . aye! Right. Whin yir oan junk, aw ye worry aboot is scorin. Oaf the gear, ye worry aboot loads ay things. Nae money, cannae git pished. Goat money, drinkin too much. Cannae git a burd, nae chance ay a ride. Git a burd, too much hassle, cannae breathe withoot her gittin oan yir case. Either that, or ye blow it, and feel aw guilty. Ye worry aboot bills, food, bailiffs, these Jambo Nazi scum beatin us, aw the things that ye couldnae gie a fuck aboot whin yuv goat a real junk habit. Yuv just goat one thing tae worry aboot. The simplicity ay it aw. Ken whit ah mean?

Like the Hindu in Belfast who was asked whether he was a Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu, those of us who follow this fresh reading of the New Testament want to say to our critics right and left, ‘Don’t imagine that because we don’t check all your fundamentalist boxes, we must be modernists, or that because we don’t check all your modernist boxes, we must be fundamentalists.

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly driveling style employed by the journalists of tourism. 'Land of Contrasts' was our shorthand for it. ('Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new.' 'South Africa: a harmony in black and white.' 'Belfast, where ancient meets modern.') It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few weeks ago that my enemies in the 'peace' movement had decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper, was: 'Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country.' Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, 'Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one'? 'Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women.' 'Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones.' 'Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime.' I could go on. (I think number four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the 'doves' to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like, 'The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic.

Much of the Irish landscape is dominated by peat bogs; the anaerobic and acidic conditions in the densely packed earth mean that the past in Ireland can be subject to macabre resurrection. Peat cutters occasionally churn up ancient mandibles, clavicles, or entire cadavers that have been preserved for millennia. The bodies date as far back as the Bronze Age, and often show signs of ritual sacrifice and violent death. These victims, cast out of their communities and buried, have surfaced vividly intact, from their hair to their leathery skin. The poet Seamus Heaney, who harvested peat as a boy on his family’s farm, once described the bogs of Ireland as “a landscape that remembered everything that had happened in and to it.

Make up your mind as she makes up her face She'll never really know her place You'll lay on her frame and give her a new name And bless her with all you can spare Empty as wire, violent as fire You'll carve her out of thin air She's crashed home and cruised your world But you can't get the Belfast out of the girl This is how you throw her, you think you know her Empty as wire, violent as fire She hasn't left you yet but she will By airplane ticket or kill-me pills Sewn into her dress, she can't refuse (careful what you love, what you abuse) She knows violence, she knows please Her hands for cuffing and she says nothing And hooks her hands behind her knees You fuck her flag and feel it unfurl But you can't get the Belfast out of the girl.

They liked him; Belfast, who was a favourite, and knew it — mimicked him, not quite behind his back. Charley — but with greater caution — imitated his walk. Some of his sayings became established daily quotations in the forecastle. Popularity can go no farther! Besides, all hands were ready to admit that on a fitting occasion the mate could ‘jump down a fellow’s throat in a reg’lar Western Ocean style.

Indeed, it could occasionally seem that support for the armed struggle was more fervent in Boston or Chicago than it was in Belfast or Derry. The romantic idyll of a revolutionary movement is easier to sustain when there is no danger that one's own family members might get blown to pieces on a trip to the grocery store.. Some people in Ireland looked askance at the "plastic Paddies" who urged bloody war in Ulster from the safe distance of America.

Neither I nor the poets I love found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force god to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it's a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning I sit, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I'm being listened to. There, I greet God in my own disorder. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus. I recognize and greet my burdens, my luck, my controlled and uncontrollable story. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my unloved body, my own love, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world someday. I greet my story and hope that I can forget my story during the day, and hope that I can hear some stories, and greet some surprising stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet. Hello to you all, I say, as the sun rises above the chimneys of North Belfast. Hello.

Men sitting doubled up in the upper bunks smoked short pipes, swinging bare brown feet above the heads of those who, sprawling below on sea-chests, listened, smiling stupidly or scornfully. Over the white rims of berths stuck out heads with blinking eyes; but the bodies were lost in the gloom of those places, that resembled narrow niches for coffins in a white-washed and lighted mortuary. Voices buzzed louder. Archie, with compressed lips, drew himself in, seemed to shrink into a smaller space, and sewed steadily, industrious and dumb. Belfast shrieked like an inspired Dervish: — ‘... So I seez to him, boys, seez I, “Beggin’ yer pardon, sorr,” seez I to that second mate of that steamer — “beggin’ your-r-r pardon, sorr, the Board of Trade must ‘ave been drunk when they granted you your certificate!” “What do you say, you — !” seez he, comin’ at me like a mad bull... all in his white clothes; and I up with my tarpot and capsizes it all over his blamed lovely face and his lovely jacket... “Take that!” seez I. “I am a sailor, anyhow, you nosing, skipper-licking, useless, sooperfloos bridge-stanchion, you! That’s the kind of man I am!” shouts I... You should have seed him skip, boys! Drowned, blind with

THERE IS an old saying that in Belfast it rains five days out

the gingery tyke, ominously wise for his years, who meets the wandering hero in Belfast and asks whether he is Catholic or Protestant. “I don’t know,” Hook says. “You don’t know? I’ve fuckin’ heard it all now,” the boy replies. In

• While Rommel was going to see Hitler to beg for more tanks and a tighter command structure, Eisenhower was visited by Churchill, who was coming to the supreme commander to beg a favor. He wanted to go along on the invasion, on HMS Belfast. (“Of course, no one likes to be shot at,” Eisenhower later remarked, “but I must say that more people wanted in than wanted out on this one.”) As Eisenhower related the story, “I told him he couldn’t do it. I was in command of this operation and I wasn’t going to risk losing him. He was worth too much to the Allied cause. “He thought a moment and said, ‘You have the operational command of all forces, but you are not responsible administratively for the makeup of the crews.’ “And I said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ “He said, ‘Well, then I can sign on as a member of the crew of one of His Majesty’s ships, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ “I said, ‘That’s correct. But, Prime Minister, you will make my burden a lot heavier if you do it.’ ” Churchill said he was going to do it anyway. Eisenhower had his chief of staff, General Smith, call King George VI to explain the problem. The king told Smith, “You boys leave Winston to me.” He called Churchill to say, “Well, as long as you feel that it is desirable to go along, I think it is my duty to go along with you.” Churchill gave up.

I take back the notebook and begin. While sleet pelts the windows, I read to George. “Outside Belfast, in County Down, a young-“ “Wait!” George presses his hand to mine. “That’s not how you start a story.” “How do I start it?” I ask him, looking up from y words. “Do I say, ‘Once upon a time’?” “If you want.” He seems incredulous at this boring start. “How about…” I think for a breath or two. “How about, ‘Not long ago…’” “And not far away,” he says. “Or,” I say with a grin, “’once upon a… wardrobe’!

Ulster before 1969 had been sick but with hidden symptoms. Streets and streets of houses with bricked up windows and broken fanlights, graffiti on gable walls, soldiers everywhere: Belfast was now like a madman who tears his flesh, put straws in his hair and screams gibberish. Before, it had resembled the infinitely more sinister figure of the articulate man in a dark, neat suit whose conversation charms and entertains; and whose insanity is apparent only when he says calmly, incidentally, that he will club his children to death and eat their entrails with a golden fork because God has told him to do so; and then offers you more tea.

There was a discomfiting sense in Belfast that there was no place where you were truly secure: you would run inside to get away from a gun battle, only to run outside again for fear of a bomb.

Schools had let out early and most businesses were closed in anticipation of the storm. My last ride dropped me off in Belfast, telling me that he was trying to get as far as Augusta, before State Road 3 became impassable. Standing alongside the two-lane coastal highway with darkness not far off, I was half thinking that I should turn back. My mind was made up for me when I stepped back off the road, making room for a big State DOT dump truck with a huge yellow snowplow. His airbrakes wheezed as he braked, coming to a stop, at the same time lifting his plow to keep from burying me. The driver couldn’t believe that I was out hitchhiking in a blizzard. This kind of weather in Maine is no joke! The driver told me that the year before a body had been found under a snow bank during the spring thaw. Never mind, I was invincible and nothing like that could happen to me, or so I thought. He got me as far as Camden and suggested that I get a room. “This storm is only going to get worse,” he cautioned as I got off. I waved as he drove off. Nevertheless, still hoping that things would improve, I was determined to continue…. My next ride was not for quite a while, but eventually an old car fishtailed to a stop. It was a clunker, covered with snow and I couldn’t really see in. Opening the front door, I realized that both seats were occupied. “Sorry, I’ll get into the back,” I said. Opening the back door, I saw that both people in the front were women. The car was cold and they explained that the heater didn’t work but they sounded like they felt sorry for me. “Where are you going, sailor?” the woman behind the wheel asked. “It’s going to snow all night,” the other one added. Again, I didn’t know if I really wanted to continue. “Well, I was going to New Jersey but maybe I should find a place here in Camden.” “What? No way!” I heard them say. “Come stay with us,” the younger one said with an interesting smile. She looked cute peering at me from under the hood of her green parka. The fur surrounding the hood still had some snow on it, so I assumed that they hadn’t come from that far away. I don’t know what I was thinking, when I agreed to their offer of staying with them, but it didn’t escape me that the woman driving was also attractive. I assumed that she must have been in her late thirties or early forties. The woolen scarf around her neck was loosely tied and her brown hair was up in a knot. “We’re just coming into town to get some bacon and eggs for breakfast,” the older one said. “We could use a little company. Come on,” the younger of the two, invitingly added. How could I say “no” to this kind of flirtatiousness? Giving my name, I said, “I’m Hank, and I certainly appreciate your offer.” They pulled into the snow-covered parking lot of a local food market. “We’re Rita and Connie. Let’s get in out of the cold before we freeze to death.

In December 1970, Aristotle Onassis tries to buy the Belfast ship-yard Harland and Woolf. Seven union leaders spend the night in Claridges at his expense. One of them says later that his bed was too soft.