Stepping Out #1

 Belfast. I live here and I have no idea why I live here. This is a capital city, the capital city of Northern Ireland, and it stinks. The whole city centre reeks of drains. There are hate preachers outside the city hall and amplified buskers whining R n B ballads on every street corner at blood-thinning volume. Everything else is drills and hammers and brick dust and scaffolding and JCBs reversing. A man, far too close to the mic, is singing "Stairway to Heaven" next to a building site. He's louder than the drills. 

The pubs are abysmal - when they're open. The bigger ones are open-plan tourist traps with yet more amped up buskers, while oblivious tourists stand in clumps in expensive rain-wear, smiling benignly while an idiot in a tabard and clutching an umbrella tells them half-practiced anecdotes about welding, and they all ignore the stinking elephant in the room. Belfast is rotten. 

The pubs I would go to, are either not open in the day or just far enough out of the city centre to be inconvenient. But even then I have nothing like a "local". Post-covid, no one knows me. I gave ten years of my life to the Black Box. Now I'm just another middle-aged punter. Worse, the accent makes me a tourist - wearing pastels with my arms behind my back and having to have the concept of beer explained to me by someone with pink hair. 

Susan and I were shopping - itself a depressing activity as I'm fat and nothing fits me. The tyranny of slim-fit is a scourge on the husky consumer, as is branding any item with a chest measurement of 40 "XL". 

Susan wanted to go for a drink. This never happens, so I was keen. But where? There's a sort of bar/restaurant in a tunnel next to Waterstones and I'd never been in, despite being intrigued. It's odd and unreconstructed, as though plucked whole from the 70's. I thought we'd give it a go. But it was full. The carpet smelled of fish. They did that ridiculous bit of mummery where you have to stand at an unattended podium in the doorway and "wait to be seated". Also there was yet more structural work happening at the end of the tunnel. It was impossible to escape the noise of drills. 

No. 

We headed toward City Hall. I'd never been to "The Doffer". How shit can it be? Well, I've still never been to The Doffer, as it was shut. Next door was Ten Square, so we went in. A wedding reception had broken out, like violence or a rash. They all had colourful hair and tattoos and were not respectful of boundaries, colonising every inch of the hotel. Children with mohicans did slides in the lounge bar. We stayed for one. 

Why is there no culture here? Why is there not enough Bohemian dollar to sustain a couple of cool pubs. Shit. Santeria. I could have gone to Santeria. I always forget that one. 

Eventually I went to The Spaniard, which, for once, was not rammed, and was therefore perfectly fine. Still stinks of drains though.