Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

It’s been a while since ‘Three Thousand Versts’ attempted a movie review, but it isn’t every weekend I attend the 'World Premiere' of an Irish flick. Belfast Film Festival’s ’Gala Screening’ of ’ Five Day Shelter ’ got off to an inauspicious start, when the star, John Lynch, introduced it with a cheery reference to Manchester United. With reluctance I decided to set my prejudice aside. I needn’t have bothered. ‘Five Day Shelter’ is an epically dreary and boring film. Imagine a fifteen minute short by film students at the local tech, extended to feature length. It starts wilfully slowly and remains stubbornly one-paced for eighty odd minutes. The characters may as well be cut out of card. There’s no trace of humanity or anything to empathise with here. Yes, it’s grim and urban, but to what end? The film introduces a couple of themes which could be interesting, but they aren’t developed at all. The main characters all have dogs and cats in their lives. They show some f...

Last week every newspaper carried at least one article in which pundits made their predictions for 2010. It was an invitation for rioting imaginations. But they missed a trick restricting themselves to one year. What about the decade to come? How would we like politics in Northern Ireland, specifically, to look approaching the year 2020? I have a very definite idea how I’d prefer business to be done. As yet it remains a distant fantasy, but there are some developments which offer hope that it could, possibly (plausibly) be realised, if the will exists. However the events and developments which appear below are certainly not predictions. They represent a best case scenario. Let’s look ahead. As 2020 beckons politics in Northern Ireland have changed, utterly. The last decade has witnessed a transformation which swept away parochial parties in the province and established, effectively, a four party system, integrated with the rest of the Kingdom. To cast an eye over the past ten ye...

What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t have a good old fashioned ill informed rant about the frustrations of daily life? Don’t answer that. There are a number. I won’t let them deter me. Is there anything that makes modern Homo sapiens angrier than driving? Don’t answer that either. There are countless worthier reasons for rage. Still, I must let off some steam on the subject of one of Belfast’s major intersections, the new Broadway Roundabout. I live a few minutes walk from this leviathan of tarmacadam, which was only fully opened earlier this year, after many months of traffic chaos. Am I happy now that it’s operating? Absolutely not! The roundabout, purportedly fully functioning, works less efficiently than it did whenever it was festooned with cones and pock-marked with temporary traffic lights. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful piece of road design – at 9am on a Sunday morning. Without any traffic you’ll whiz unto the West Link with barely a delay. However, if...

As an informed bunch, I appreciate that this blog’s visitors expect to read about crucial geo-political matters of the day. In that spirit, I feel bound to offer an update on my ongoing struggle with mice, unfolding in the former redoubt of the South Belfast dwelling house in which I live. More forensic readers amongst you will have noted that I refer to ‘mice’ as opposed to ‘a mouse’, because the insurgency has rather gained momentum. My response has been a security crackdown, in order to rock this proliferation of new rodent movements and establish unequivocally that overt displays of mousiness will not be without consequences. You will remember that from its traditional heartlands of the chimney breast and fuse box, my original enemy had been sighted in less familiar territory under the settee. My response was to remilitarise this area, deploying a weapon of mass destruction, aka mouse and rat poison. The enemy duly ate the poison, engineering his own end through questionable ...

A great many people want to be outraged. It is an observable facet of human nature. Perhaps they glean some manner of perverse enjoyment from being driven into barely contained hysteria and exercising muscularly whichever circuit of the brain is engaged in generating self-righteousness. Recently a leaflet was posted through my letterbox, inviting me to protest against paedophilia. Now I, along with 100% of other right thinking members of society, am opposed to paedophilia. I’m opposed to paedophilia being tolerated and opposed to paedophiles carrying out whatever unpleasant acts they feel compelled to perform. Why would I need to engage in a protest in order to clarify this stance? Barely anyone disagrees with me. No serious pressure group is proposing that paedophiles should have the right to engage in their favoured activities! I can only assume that the entire purpose of this rally was in order to vent outrage and anger that such a phenomenon exists in the first place. It ...

Readers with good memories may remember that I was locked in a battle of wits many months ago, with some manner of super-rodent possessed of abnormal cunning and intelligence. In common with locations on which the media descend to cover the story ‘du jour’, just because the reports have dried up, it does not necessarily follow that the situation has ended. In fact the conflict has remained frozen over most of the summer. My foe’s last appearance was in mid July, just after I returned from Russia. I had lifted the traps at my girlfriend’s behest, lest we should return to the smell of decomposing mouse. When Chekov’s away …… We were enjoying an Indian takeaway (the cupboards were bare) when the intruder reappeared, displaying even more insouciance than normal. It was clearly necessary to remilitarise the living room, re-priming traps and equipping myself with poison (a WMD deterrent if you will). This display of might appeared to do the trick. There hadn’t been sight or sound of...

The awesome ability of people in Northern Ireland to become offended at the most trivial perceived slight has been exhibited once again, as two customers are purportedly to sue the Hilton Hotel alleging that its staff refused to show last month’s all Ireland Gaelic Football final. Whether the hotel actually did show the final or not appears to be disputed. Although, frankly the facts are neither here nor there. It is the notion that a 5 star hotel should not have discretion to decide which programmes are convivial to the ambience it wishes to create and which are not, that is simply outrageous. More laughable still is the suggestion that declining to show something on television comprises an “affront” to anyone’s “dignity and national identity”. Are the two litigants the biggest MOPEs in the history of MOPEry? Assuming (and it's fair to assume) that the match was not blocked out on TVs in guests’ bedrooms, why would anyone choose to visit the Hilton Hotel in order to watch...

My first reaction this morning upon learning that Irish League referees, led by infamous Linfield fan Davy Malcolm, were considering strike action to get higher match fees, I suspect may have been shared with other supporters. ‘An extra £50? For that lot? They’re incompetent! I wouldn’t give them 50p’ and so on. This is, after all, a group of men (and indeed women) who count amongst their number the appalling Frankie Hiles, a prancing, grinning imbecile from Coleraine who once expressed the opinion on local television that nothing was sweeter than seeing a team from Ballymena being defeated (albeit that the interview was concerned on that occasion with rugby). Hiles had officiated Ballymena United games on countless occasions before and has done so on many more since those remarks, with predictable consequences. An apposite analogy might be Mike Riley (from Leeds) admitting his loathing for all things Mancunian in an interview ostensibly about rugby league whilst conducting a car...

The much vaunted Westlink improvements , which have caused disruption on Belfast’s roads since 2006, opened a few weeks ago. Sort of. An underpass now takes motorists destined for the M1 motorway beneath the Broadway Roundabout, the largest junction which formerly impeded traffic leaving Belfast by this route. This forms the most crucial part of a scheme which is designed to allow traffic to flow more freely in and out of the city. Even allowing for cones which are still blocking some lanes and the ongoing pootering about from various workers, I am ready to officially declare the results – SHITE. Don’t get me wrong, I have used the Westlink over the last fortnight, whereas once I avoided it like the plague, despite it being much the most direct route home. But this is July. The schools are off, people are still away on their holidays and already the road is beginning to wheeze and struggle with the volume of traffic. Several points of congestion are building up. What will it b...

Last night my rodent nemesis delivered a humiliating reverse in the war of wits being fought in our front room. This morning I found that one of the mouse-traps had been tampered with and the piece of bacon had been removed (also presumably nibbled) before it was tauntingly deposited on the floor some inches from the device. The trap had not been sprung. Previously the cunning freedom fighter had emerged once again from behind the television and disappeared into the cupboard housing our fuse box. This raised my hopes that I may have had him trapped. No such luck. The mouse might henceforth be known as Steve McQueen, because he had managed to find some minute route of escape. This morning I sprung the trap myself and have reset it with the bacon more firmly lodged in the bait tray. I would, however, be unsurprised to find it gone tomorrow morning. My mouse appears to be a worthy adversary and it may be time to take the gloves off. Poison could be the only answer. I refuse to ...

I apologise in advance if today’s posts are a little on the lax side. I didn’t sleep well last night. In fact for much of the night, I lay awake in a state of agitated blood-lust, straining to hear the thwap of an activated trap, and possibly the anguished squeal of a vanquished mouse. My foe is far from Burns’ ‘wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie’. On the contrary, whilst it may be inaccurate to say that the rodent ambled from behind the television when making its first appearance, during Friday’s Holland vs. France clash, certainly its scuttle was imbued with a casual lack of urgency which suggests that it already considers itself an inhabitant of the house fully entitled to enjoy the amenities of the living room. My girlfriend was initially inclined to accept the mouse’s claims of equality of residence (mainly on the grounds that it reminds her of a gerbil), and was eventually moved more by her father’s observations that mice breed, eat things, suffer incontinence and get...

Apologies for the following rather parochial post. It won't mean a great deal to people at the vast majority of points in the cluster map at the bottom of this page. Still, today I wish to complain about the constant reincarnations inflicted on a pub on Belfast’s Lisburn Road, which I will never, despite what various owners might contend, know as anything other than Hunters. I have been visiting Hunters for over ten years on and off. The pub came to my attention initially as the essential pre-match watering hole for Northern Ireland home games. Then for substantial periods Hunters has been my closest bar – the local which I repair to for essential Premiership games, or just to read the paper and have a pint after work. The relationship has not always been smooth. For a spell when Northern Ireland was less popular and following the team was not as fashionable as it has become recently, the pub refused to admit supporters after games. Naturally, given the large quantities of cash ...

I have no intention of blogging a series of retrospective posts as the year draws to a close. Nor will I be adding a modish “y” to the word like. “Likey” ! Why the hell do people do that? However the Guardian’s “most irritating person of the year” survey made me consider on whom exactly I have focussed the majority of my not inconsiderable ire during the last 12 months. I must admit that my opprobrium is an ocean in a state of constant flux, perpetually rising. Daily it expands to claim great fresh tracts of human behaviour. During a large part of this year I have been without a car and therefore my road rage has been substituted for pedestrian rage. Previously I may have been most exercised by the driving manners of those in vans, most often those in white vans, most often those in white Ford Transit vans. Or it may have been the drivers of four by fours who attracted the majority of my bile. Why do these people need their vast suburban tankers to transport children to school?...

I couldn't help but titter at this story carried by the BBC about a 15 year old "rock music fan" being discriminated against because of his shoulder length hair. Now whether Grant Stranaghan of Ballyclare High should be allowed to wear his hair long is an issue on which I have not yet formed any view (and nor am I likely to, because frankly it is not a very interesting question). But I will say that the reaction of his father to his son's treatment and the threat of legal action may be construed as just, well ..... A LITTLE BIT OVER THE TOP! "I could have cried when he told me what they did to him - they put him in a room and threw work at him, no contact with anyone.This is Northern Ireland in 2007. Solitary confinement, I think it's called." Yes. This is Northern Ireland in 2007 and thus we have a huge song and dance about a pupil being required to work on their own for a while because they've breached school rules. Mr Stranaghan must have a dim ...

I am becoming increasingly exercised by the BBC’s insistence on destroying potentially high-quality programming by inflicting on viewers the ubiquitous imbecile Alan Titchmarsh as presenter. This smug, self-regarding cretin is a tired parody of himself, yet from sub-Partridge day time chat shows he has somehow been promoted to fronting the Corporation’s prime time flagship natural history series Britain: A Natural History and latterly The Nature of Britain. If it wasn’t bad enough having his irritating round head constantly filling the TV screen, on a visit to Waterstones on Saturday I rounded a corner to be confronted with an entire display of smirking Titchmarshs as the incurable scrivener has seen fit to inflict a volume of autobiography on the unwitting public. It is titled in irksome Yorkshire dialect “Nobbbut a Lad”, which on its own is enough to justify a book burning. Titchmarsh’s debut novel, I am reliably informed, featured an overlooked TV gardener becoming a national sex s...

There seems to be an almost universal misapprehension under which the cyclists of Belfast are labouring, that they have the right to cycle on the pavement. This is not the case. A bicycle is a VEHICLE and as such it should no more be whizzing along the pavement narrowly missing those on foot, than should a car or indeed one of these increasingly rapid and huge mobility buggies. In the meantime may I urge pedestrians who are using the pavement as of right, to harangue and perhaps even stick an umbrella in the spokes of these idiots who do not understand that if they can't cycle on the road the shouldn't be cycling at all.