Another Picture Of A Place In Another Time

Another Picture Of A Place In Another Time

By Paul McCann

In the village I grew I recall the gambling that went on around the back alleys and spare ground .Men would playing pitch and toss down at the back of the linen mill beside the brickyard . The police or the peelers as they were called,  would descend upon them in their efforts to break up the illegal gambling that went on . As a result the men would all scatter in different directions and sometimes they would forget about the money that was left lying on the ground .

There was always one man at the toss whose job it was to pick up the money when  the peelers came. The man in question was Nailer Clarke , a hard man and handyw with his fists . He was a local hero around the village .

Children in the street played games such as Cribby , rounders , run catch kiss, red rover , one two three red lights , thunder and lightening , queenio , leapfrog and off ground tig . The skipping games all jad songs that the children would sing in tempo with their skipping . Every Sunday there was a football match on an old cinder pitch that always attracted huge crowds . The matches were played from noon to nine thirty at night . People sat on the dump Hills there wrapped up in the magic of football in an atmosphere that could invade the pitch at anytime without a warning.

There were little hole in the wall places where you could get a drink at any time day or night like the Peppermint Lounge as it was known by the locals who would often make a stop there after being at the dance in town . In the hard times people always found ways to have a laugh at life and in the happy times people never forgot how to enjoy themselves . The strength of the  people’s character crafted out a lifestyle where they could always wear a smile on their face no matter what . No one had reason to want for more or less , everybody was happy with what they had .

At night young teenagers could sit in a fish and chip shop with a bottle of coke and feel like a millionaire . Couples walked hand in hand up and down through the streets of the village until the twilight lights hours came .

In the summer months people where drawn out from their houses to take long walks  up to the horseshoe bend and back again through Silverstream or a dander up to Cave Hill mountain to have look a view from the top . .

On the dark winter nights people would go to one of the local cinemas either the Forum , The Park , The Savoy or The Crumlin ,  to watch one the latest  movies in technicolour on a big screen.

I recall my Father would always bring us to the cinema . Movies were an affordable luxury and I got a regular taste of that around the old cinema houses of Belfast .

I remember the way the pipe organ would suddenly appear up from the floor on a rising platform to entertain everyone before the feature film began .

All over Belfast in the 1960’s there were these beautiful theatre houses with exotic names like The Ritz , The Coliseum , The Broadway , The Majestic , The Astoria  Park , The Lido , The Ambassador , The Apollo , The Lyceum , The Tivoli , Savoy and The Park , The Imperial . The Odeon formerly known as The Hippodrome which then became  The New Vic . The Capitol and  in my village there was the Forum picture house . The forum was opened in 1937 and closed on the advent of the troubles in 1967 .
Every week at my school a free Forum ticket went up for grabs for the student of the week . I did my best to win that by collecting dinner ticket money from the students and running messages for the teachers and of course being well behaved .

It paid off because I would reap the rich reward of getting that Forum ticket  .
My grandfather Frank or Yank as he was nicknamed ,  told me that during the war you could have gained entry for the an empty jam jar .The Forum could seat 1250 people and had a front and back entrance as well as a few side doors . On Saturdays , there was a children’s matinee and all the local kids queue up at the back steps entrance to gain entrance . For me as a child a free ticket to see a movie at the Forum was like a technicoloured dream .

The End

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