Carry On Down the Falls…

McKinstry Road. The last stop on the Belfast Glider route west of the city centre. Probably five miles and certainly 24 “stops”.

A small industrial estate and I begin the walk. It is easier to walk downhill than uphill. At 72, I notice these things.

There are two types of housing …public (Housing Executive) and privately purchased houses.
Lagmore is privately built. Probably 1990s and we nearly bought a house there in 1993/94.
Price-wise, Belfast houses are more expensive than those out in the sticks, but the compensating factor is the price of travel and convenience to Belfast.

In 1993/94, the Peace Process had still not reached the Good Friday Agreement and there was still a fear factor…especially with our sons. We decided against Belfast.

Twinbrook (NIHE built) …no fear factor. The first houses built there were around 1970 and my parents considered moving there. We did not go…it was too far and we had no car.

But if we had gone, we might have found ourselves next door to my wife’s family.

Of course, Twinbrook …when most people think of it, they think of Bobby Sands, and sure enough, he is immortalised in paint and stone.

St Luke’s Church. We were married there. As I stood at the altar, one priest told me that my bride was the first girl who arrived at the church door in time.

The other priest (the one who held me down) added that the bride was running up the aisle, dragging her poor father behind her.

I was….and am…quite a catch.

And Poleglass …1980ish NIHE properties. I have never been in Poleglass except at a couple of funerals at a new (to me) parish.

Lagmore, Twinbrook and Poleglass suffered from the usual “no facilities, no amenities” such as leisure centres, shops, etc but there are many more businesses than I remember on Stewartstown Road, notably Colin Glen Park.

The area even has a name. A sign at Colin Connect, a bus terminus, states that this is a “town” (sic) called Colin.

In 2002 we had an accident. A lorry hit us from behind at the roundabout at Upper Dunmurray Lane.

That roundabout was named …probably very unofficially as Teeling Roundabout to honour Lisburn United Irishman, Bartholomew Teeling who was part of the French expedition in 1798 and hero at Collooney and Ballinamuck and executed at Arbour Hill.

Now it is the Michael Ferguson Roundabout. Ferguson was a respected Sinn Féin councillor. I have no idea if this is official. Does a roundabout need a “name”? Or a ceremony? I am told that it is now so-named because locals wanted it….how was that guaged? Who decides these things?

Glengoland was once the most expensive real estate in West Belfast. But it is forever linked with Thomas Niedermayer, the German businessman kidnapped at his home by IRA and later murdered. His body was discovered a few years later in what is now Poleglass. No memorial to him of course. He was the top man at the Grundig tape recorder factory.

Woodburn PSNI…I am old enough to remember when it was the Woodburn Hotel. Notably when T (18) told me (19) to take her to something called a dinner dance and to hire a suit from Parsons and Parsons. We were 18 and 19, going on 15 and 16.

Blacks Road. A small unionist/Protestant enclave. No need for peace walls. The architecture provides enough distance.

A man is walking a greyhound. It is years since I have seen a greyhound. They used to be a common sight in West Belfast. As was dog poop. Men used to walk groups of them. The Woodburn gru (sic) is a rescue. His owner and I chat about the cruelty in greyhound racing.

And dogs? Where are the mongrels? The dogs I encounter seem to be Jack Russells, Labradors, Yorkies and Cockerpoos. In the 1970s all dogs were mongrels and rampaged in packs in housing estates. Occasionally the British Army poisoned them as the dogs (most were called Rebel) were as effective an early warning system as a dustbin lid.

Stewartstown and Hillhead were always posh, but I follow the sign that says “EV charging is available” at Patrick Sarsfields GAC. Now that’s a real blast from the past, as Sarsfields drew support from the Lower Falls (the clubhouse was at the corner of Divis Street and Dover Street). It looks like a nice ground, painted in the familiar green and black. I actually thought they had disbanded.

Shaws Road. Back in 1988, we considered sending our first son to an Irish Language school as he was doing really well at a nursery. Rudolf an Fia Rua and Ba Ba Caora Dubh as they say. I was a little concerned about the commitment. Language promotion, fund raising did not really appeal to me, (a civil servant). We did not send him there as my wife pointed out that there were no women on the interviewing panel. Still nice to hear the local five year olds leave school for the day and speaking in Irish.

Paddy Devlins old house. His house used to be heavily fortified and shamefully he was intimidated out of the area. Yet I am embarrassed by my association with him and amazing that he remains a hero to so many people in SDLP…well mostly in Belfast SDLP which I am not sure can be called the SDLP.

I still think St Genevieve’s Girls School is new but it must be there more than thirty years. Built on the site of St Josephs (Trench House) the teacher training college for young (Catholic) men.

Likewise the church of St Michael the Archangel is still new to me after thirty years.

Finaghy Road. No point in looking to see if there is any memorial to Anne Maguire and her three children, who were victims of a road accident…a car being driven by IRA in 1976. Nor is there a memorial to Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, the Nobel Peace Laureates who became active in the Peace Movement as a result.

Frankly, I was never convinced about the Peace People. I would never have gone as far as saying they were stooges promoted by the British to undermine militant republicanism. I was really concerned that they undermined politics itself.

If this incident and the Peace Women are airbrushed out of West Belfast history, the same might be said of them being airbrushed out of the wider Norn Iron history. When President Obama was being cheered at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast and he was praising Peace laureates, John Hume and David Trimble, Mairead Maguire (nee Corrigan) was protesting American foreign policy at Belfast City Hall.

And for me that leads credence to the Peace Women being used. The children who died in that road accident were the wrong kind of victims. And the Peace Women were the wrong kind of Peacemakers.

The Andersonstown shops and Penny Lane, the waste ground behind the shops. No mark to indicate that this is where the “Two Corporals” were murdered. I stop there. I try to remember their names but I can only recall one of them. I was at work that day when the news filtered through…the telltale sign that something serious had happened: Catholics only whispered to fellow Catholics, and Protestants only whispered to fellow Protestants.

There is an IRA memorial close by at South Link.

Saint Agnes Church. I think it was the first place I ever saw a “green, white and orange wedding”. I do not suppose many people in 2025 know what that was/is. Simply put one bridesmaid wears green and one wears orange (more likely yellow) and when they stand on either side of the bride, it is quite a patriotic wedding. Quite possibly there is such a framed photo on top.

Andytown Leisure Centre. Seems a long time ago that there were no amenities in the area.

But there was always Casement Park. Except of course, there is no Casement Park. In the early 1960s Down always seemed to be playing in Casement like it was their home ground. I still have a soft spot for Down.

Of course, there is the controversy. Belfast is not a GAA city. But Casement should be the Antrim county and Ulster provincial stadium. It seems like an uneasy relationship …Belfast and the GAA. I was there the Sunday that H Block protestors took over the ground. I was there the Sunday that the cash receipts were stolen. Maybe I am a jinx. But the big GAA ground in Ulster is in Clones…surely not because of old restrictions on pubs being open on Sundays.

But is there a county in Ireland…Leitrim? Laois? Longford? that has a smaller capacity than (currently) Corrigan Park in Belfast?

Now hopefully the new Casement will be up and running in 2029, hopefully one year too late for the Euros and hopefully a lot of it paid for by the British government. I suspect most GAA fans are no different to me. Not a big fan of the Crown but I sure do love a half-crown. There is no need to be coy about the fact that no GAA fan wants the Norn Iron football team in Casement Park. Somehow we are not allowed to say this out loud.

Posh places…Fruithill. Tennis and Bowls.

And across Stockmans Lane to Eastwoods Scrap Yard and the Lucozade Factory or as they are now known Westwood Shopping Centre and Curleys Shopping Centre.

And the Felons Club. The most exclusive membership club in Belfast. All you have to do is have spent time in prison for a republican motivated act.

A lot of teddy bears dressed in Palestine flag colours.

And Milltown Cemetery. As well as pushing up daisies, the residents are pushing up Irish (and occasionally Palestinian) flags. Death is no excuse for not being committed to the cause (causes). In Life and in Death, West Belfast is a one party state.

A one-party state? Is that too harsh?.The IRA memorials, the International Wall, Roddy McCorley, Cultúrlann, Jamès Connolly, Michael Ferguson and of course the annual Féile.

Maybe “one culture state” is more accurate? But too much is airbrushed out. The Corporals. The Maguire children.

And I do some airbrushing myself. How far did I walk…….Castle Street to Hannahstown, to Lenadoon and to Lagmore and to Milltown. Maybe ten miles over three days and I passed right by the spot where a (Catholic) friend who joined Arthur Young’s reformed RUC was shot and suffered life threatening injuries. At the time I expressed no sympathy. I am not sure I knew a contact. It just felt easier to let it go. I saw him in his wheelchair about twenty years later when we both had an outpatients appointment at the RVH. Both of us were embarrassed. He died about a year later.

West Belfast…2025. It is what it is. I remember stuff. Too much stuff. But somehow, Remembrance is different. Taken over. Made formal. Made…official.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Legacy…that is the fancy word. The best thing is that the conflict resolutionists were defeated. And the letsgetalongerists routed.

Twenty years ago, they looked like THEY could win, making all the headway at sanitising our Troubled memories with feeling our pain and having big group hugs.

DON’T GIVE YOUR MEMORIES AWAY.