History Girl

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Memories from the History Girl mural in east Belfast’s Thistle Court. (Close-ups below.)

  • We used to go to Church Street East Disco … It was brilliant. Dee Street Disco in the Community Centre was good too.
  • Geary’s and The Tab sold all the electrical goods. The TV rent man came on a Friday. We sometimes didn’t answer the door!
  • I loved Nabney’s, Burkes and Nellie Stewarts. Dora Burnes was a good wee shop too.
  • There was a swimming pool in Victoria Park that opened in the summer. It was always freezing though!
  • I used to buy a bag of broken biscuits and and damaged fruit as a treat, when I went to the cinema.
  • We used to get our hair cut in Sammy Sanford’s.
  • The Road was always busy – shops and bars all the way along.
  • Barlow’s hardware at the Conswater Bridge used to have all the plates and cups outside in crates for you to buy.
  • I drank in the Con Club. It was great – they didn’t let women in!
  • I came from Singapore to live here with my husband. He died and I went home, but had to come back to Belfast. I missed it too much … it’s my home now.
  • My granny had a bathroom. I thought that was great. Our toilet was in the yard …
  • I worked in the Ropeworks and love it … the craic was great.
  • I loved Joe Bump’s chippy – the pasties were great.
  • If you were late for work at the Ropeworks they locked the door and you lost your pay. Hardly anyone was ever late.
  • My grandpa took me to the shipyard and swung me on a crane in one of the workshops. My mummy was raging when she found out!
  • We used to play Kick the Tin … there were sometimes 30 of us all playing together …
  • I loved the smell of Inglis’ Biscuit Factory along the Road.
  • The was The Vulcan, The Ulster Arms, The Four and Twenty, The Clock Bar and The Armagh House. Hastings, who own all the hotels now, used to own a good lot of the bars on the Road.
  • I remember seeing a ship being launched in the yard. It was about 1976 and all the ones from Mersey Street School went. I met my daddy in the crowd of thousands.
  • You got your good shoes in Irvine’s and your gutties in Warwick’s. It’s still there.
  • My granny kept her milk in a bucket of water because she had no fridge.
  • I worked in the shipyard – left school on a Friday and started in the Yard on Monday.
  • Everyone had a net bag made in the Ropeworks. You don’t see them nowadays.
  • We followed the Glens everywhere, but a home match in the Oval was always the best craic.
  • All my mummy’s brothers were in the Army or Navy during the War … they all came back.
  • I remember Stanley Brookes. They cashed your Providence Cheques.
  • We used to go to the cinema on a Saturday morning for the Kids Club. It was always bunged!!

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Father, Protect Me

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Here is a completed mural from the Painting For Palestine project (Fb) on the International Wall, Divis Street, Belfast, showing a man holding an injured child against a backdrop of razed buildings in Gaza. It is now 125 days since Israel began its war on Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7th and images of parents carrying their dead and injured children, and of the devastation of Gaza’s buildings, are now all too common – here is an Al Jazeera gallery from December.

Like the ‘Khan Younis mass grave’ (seen in Another Martyr In The Earth), this image is also by digital artist Saïd Hassan (ig). The next mural (to the right) can be seen in A Window To A Free Country.

January 26th:

January 24th:

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Soso And Omar Ashour

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Siblings Soso and Omar Ashour were brought to a Gaza hospital in the first week of the Israeli attack. Artist Raed Yousef Qatanani (ig) took them as subjects (ig photo | ig video of the pair) for a painting which has in turn been reproduced on the International Wall in west Belfast as part of the Painting For Palestine project (Fb).

January 26th:

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Out The Back Of Boots

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“Pro tanto quid retribuamus?” – What shall we give in return for so much? – is the motto of Belfast. These instances are in Castle Street and in Fountain Place, which is “out the back of Boots” – generations of Belfasters (since 1975 – Belfast Live) have used Boots to move between Donegall Place and the Fountain area (or fountains (plural) – see Fountain Street Spirits).

(See previously: Pro Tanto on a mural of HMS Belfast | Pro Tanto on Clifton St Orange Hall.)

Warp, weave, scutch and hackle are actions in the processing of flax fibre (Ulster Linen).

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Only Human

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“‘The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. [… We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.]’ – James Connolly” [in 1910’s Labour, Nationality And Religion, part 6]

Lasaır Dhearg (web) paste-up at the Grosvenor Road entrance to the Royal, to coincide with the general strike of January 18th that included dieticians, physiotherapists, radiographers, midwives, and nurses (BBC).

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Painting For Palestine

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In January 2024, in response to the prolonged Israeli attack on Gaza, many murals on the “International Wall” on Divis Street were painted out and work began on reproductions of artworks by artists from Palestine and elsewhere in the region. The project was called Painting For Palestine and a Facebook page and GoFundMe page were launched.

According to Bill Rolston (Fb) (who can be seen in the second image, below), there was a plan last Autumn that Palestinian artists would create their own “international wall” and include murals designed by CNR artists. The Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli invasion on Gaza – now ongoing for 108 days – put paid to that project, and instead art by Palestinian painters is being painted in Belfast in support of Palestine. (Here is an NVTv segment on the project.)

All of the following were painted out: Operation Pagoda, #Unblock Cuba, Jim McCabe, Black Taxi CIC, Springhill-Westrock Massacre, Falls Commemoration Committee, Lenár Lınn, Hunger Strikers (1916). The Nugent-Hughes-McKee, the museum bookmark, Stop The Slaughter In Gaza, and the two anti-Agreement panels (Khader Adnan and Republican Prisoners Still Exist!) remain.

This entry shows images of whitewashed panels and early progress on the first seven of the new murals, taken on January 14, 15, 17, and 20.

Here are links to the originals:

The Land Is Ours – Mohammed Alhaj, Abdullah Al Najar, Rami Al Safadi, Abdel Hamid Fares
(man holding child) – Saïd Hassan
(soldiers standing over children) – Saïd Hassan
(family group) – Ahmad Shaweesh
(Soso and Omar Ashour) – Raed Qatanani
(child and phoenix) – ?
(cooking in front of tent) – Saïd Hassan

The first (left-most) panel will reproduce a mural called ‘The Land Is Ours’ by Mohammed Alhaj, Abdullah Al Najar, Rami Al Safadi, and Abdel Hamid Fares that once stood in a Gaza school; the second, next to the first, is currently blank (see the image above).

The grid and cartoon for a mural from digital artist Saïd Hassan (web):

Another image by digital artist Saïd Hassan, showing soldiers standing over dead children:

Four murals are being painted over what were previously Lenár Linn and Hunger Strikers (1916). The originals for these were designed by Ahmad Shaweesh (ig), Raed Qatanani (ig), ? [please get in touch], and Saïd Hassan (web).

Shaweesh’s piece is a deliberately unfinished image of a group of people, perhaps a family, in distress. Qatanani’s image is a portrait of Soso and Omar Ashour as they sat in a Gaza hospital during the first week of the Israeli invasion.

The original artist of this figure with a phoenix is unknown.

The last of these four murals is by Hassan and shows a woman cooking over an open fire in front of a tent in a refugee camp.

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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