“Belfast Central waiting for a train, seems to me things have come full circle.” This first line of Juliet Turner song Belfast Central means a lot to me. I was living in Belfast nearly 25 years ago when I fell in love with my current husband. We listened to a lot of Juliet Turner back then.
We were on the Enterprise, heading to Belfast, when the song came back into my head. Our daughters were not able to come with us for my mother-in-law Queenie’s 76th birthday lunch, so we went on our own. I assumed the train would stop at Lanyon Place, the station that used to be called Belfast Central. It has always annoyed me that they changed the name. “Lanyon Place, waiting for a train” was never going to make a memorable line for a song. But we did not stop there. Instead, the train pulled into an architectural marvel called Belfast Grand Central Station and I was amazed.
I haven’t been to Belfast in a while. I did not know that the old Great Victoria Street train and bus station had been demolished and replaced by this stunning new station. It’s vast and full of natural light. There’s a small M&S and a couple of hundred parking spaces for bikes. Expecting the squat, unremarkable Lanyon Place, arriving there was disorienting in the best way.
Grand Central Belfast Station opened last October, but this post-Troubles transport hub, designed by McAslan & Partners, had somehow passed me by. Architect Rebecca Jane McConnell has described it is something new for Belfast, a place where the architecture “finally focuses on enjoying space, rather than securitising it”.
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After thoroughly enjoying the space, we walked into town, past the Grand Opera House and down the back of City Hall. We were too early for the lunch, so we ambled in the sunshine along to George’s Market, thinking, for the hundredth time, why can’t Dublin have a George’s Market? Outside, a man with a harmonica had a sign that read, “Tell me your birth date and I’ll tell you the day”. So we told him our dates and he correctly identified the day of the week of both our birthdays. “It’s an algorithm in my brain,” he said by way of explanation.
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We wandered through the market. Pored over the photo albums of dead people and admired necklaces fashioned by a talented silversmith, a kind woman with stories in her eyes. We shopped for vinyl and hot sauce and fudge, as a band played country music and small children ate home-made marshmallows. One of the hot sauces was called Violent Intentions, but I tasted it anyway and then stole some milk from a coffee stand – I can’t stand milk but it was an emergency – when my eyes started streaming.
“Belfast’s got the buzz”, was the tagline for the city when we lived there years ago. It never really rang true, or at least not in the way the tourism officials hoped. It does now though. It was Sunday but the city was buzzing with shoppers and tourists. Down the road from the market, music was blaring from a charity shop called Show Some Love, where all profits go towards hygiene products and underwear for people living in hardship. We bought a dress and a Nirvana sweatshirt for our daughters from a smiley man called Connor.
To The Ivy then, overlooking City Hall, where Queenie was in great form. And why not? Her children and grandchildren around her, a sweet potato curry in her bowl and candles on a red velvet cake. For part of her present, the family chipped in to send her off to Blackpool to see a popular comedian called Gary Gamble. Queenie is mad about him. Knowing full well Gary Gamble and I definitely don’t share the same sense of humour, she forces me to watch a video where Gamble is telling Fr D’Arcy a joke about three sets of people trying to get into heaven. I won’t spoil it for you but in the video it appears as though Fr D’Arcy might actually expire from laughter at the gag which includes the word “fanny” as a punchline. Queenie and her daughters ask me if I want to join them in Blackpool and are neither surprised nor offended when I say, “That’s a hard no”.
Nearly 25 years since I crashed into their lives, they know me so well. And I know Queenie well enough to tell her the top-quality china ramekins she bought in a second-hand shop, decorated with strawberry plants, are not to my taste and that I’ll be sending them back up north with her son. No problem. She can always get her money back. She’ll try again with some other bargain. More often than not she gets it right.
Belfast Grand Central, waiting for a train, seems to me things have come full circle. Heading back home to Connolly. Buying our dinner in the tiny M&S, fresh pasta and a sauce. Something quick to rustle up for our teenagers when we land back in Dublin. Queenie, heading back on the same train to Portadown, insists on buying our supplies and some ginger beer for the journey. She’s not one for hugs. I hug her anyway. The train eases south. We’re already planning our return.
