For as long as I can remember I have had a thing for derelict buildings. Sure, they're grim but so's Belfast and no matter how much the council waste on stupid little advertising campaigns it always will be. OK, sometimes they become a total danger and have to be torn down and other times they become a magnet for hoods and have to be bricked but ( Read more... )

You'll all remember the whole garden lark that I waffled about in the summer. Silence on that score was due to the entire thing grinding to a premature halt not long afterwards. There was a lot of fuss about getting cement to plug gaps that delayed things, a lot of fuss about getting a new back fence that delayed things, my being sidetracked into ( Read more... )

So, like in the good old days, a meme is doing the rounds and it has fallen on me. Apparently this originates on the wild hinterlands of Facebook but, knowing nothing about such diabolical malevolence, I am indebted to caddyman for initiating me into the inner circle of this particular one. Essentially the remit is to talk at some length about a specific ( Read more... )

It's an annual tradition of mine to buy the Sky Sports Football Yearbook. There was a time I was first in the queue on the day it came out (well, the day after, given that almost everything takes an extra day to reach this backwater burgh of mine) but now that boyhood fire is no longer in my blood I tend to wait until around this time as by now ( Read more... )

( On the passing of an old friend )

( Not done picspam and waffle for a while, have I? )

Woodvale Park at the top the Shankill Road is one of the oldest parks in Belfast, having been opened to the public in 1888. Up to that point a Reverend Glover had been head buck cat up there but he sold it to the old Belfast Corporation who decided to throw it open to the locals. As parks go it's nothing special to be honest, just some trees and ( Read more... )

I was reminded of a conversation I had with queenmartina just yesterday concerning old terraced houses in Belfast whilst in my second home (that's the Shankill Road to you, squire) today. The demise of the white-rimmed doors of Dee Street off the lower Newtownards Road came as a surprise to her but what came as an even bigger surprise to me was that I chanced ( Read more... )

Kaboom, blam-oh, etc. Yes, it's my favourite time of year again ... NOT! I know it's just a bit of fun but all this constant banging and whooshing and people in half-arsed costumes demanding money with menace really gets on my wick. Fireworks have never impressed me and the two years I fell victim to the American import that is trick or treating ( Read more... )