The secret lives of cats…

Christmas Eve is our cats’ birthdays so we got them a Pets Eye View cat collar camera this year as a present. So I put it on Freddie an hour ago, went out to the shops and came back to find out he has been out visiting other houses in the hood! And not just the gardens, oh no, he has been making himself quite at home.

Can anyone identify this house or the man in the photo? Is this you? How long has my cat been visiting????

It’s a Christmas mystery….

Freddie sets off in the frost

En-route to his friend's house

In the mystery house

The foot of Freddie's mystery friend who we have dubbed 'Man with the Black Leather Shoes'. Is this you???

Moses Fountain Hotel, Rome: Review

Getting on a Ryanair flight is like getting on a bus, and not a very pleasant one at that. It’s a bus with no room for your bag, that costs more than your average bus, is devoid of comfortable seats and will soon be one that costs €1 to use the loo. Sigh. But a Ryanair flight just before Christmas when there is the tangible scent of desperation in the air and the risk of snow canceling your flight is a whole other circle of hell. So why do we keep doing it? Because it’s cheap and because they so hate to have to give passengers any form of compensation the flights are usually on time.

I'd rather be on Ulster Bus...

But while we can just about cope with being herded onto a tiny plane by santa hat wearing staff with singularly dour expressions and be forced to be a captive audience for the wide variety of crap they try to sell you while you’re in the air, cheap, flea pit youth hostels that used to be my accommodation of choice a couple of years ago will no longer cut it on a city break holiday. So on our recent weekend in Rome, we decided to compromise – cheap, crappy Ryanair flight with a nice hotel at the other end and the nice hotel in question was the Moses Fountain Hotel, Via 20 Settembre, 98.

Santa Maria della Victoria

The area is very handy, about a ten minute walk from Termini station or two minutes from Repubblica metro. It is also directly opposite Santa Maria della Victoria church which contains the somewhat racy Bernini sculpture of St. Theresa writhing in the ecstasy of her communion with God. But, while very central, the area is quite relaxed and quiet, especially at night so Moses Fountain, housed in the sixteenth century terminus of the Acquedotto Felice that lengthened the III Century Roman aqueduct, “Alessandrino” as part of a project envisioned by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, is a most tranquil sanctuary after exploring the city all day. If, like me, you are a huge fan of all things aquatic, another pleasant detail is the fact that the aqueduct still works and the hydraulic system is still visible in the basement of the building. The upper floors, where the bedrooms are located, originally hosted the fountain keeper’s workshop and apartment, and the hotel supplies drinking water to the American embassy in Rome.

Stone plaque at Moses Fountain. All the history you need to know. If you can Latin that is :)

The hotel makes the most of this distinguished heritage, with a very picturesque terrace, resplendent with chic floral displays, tables and very quirky chairs. You can eat your breakfast out here in warmer weather or smokers will enjoy the panoramic views of the church across the road and various government buildings on Via XX Settembre.

Moses Fountain terrace

Moses Fountain is a very small hotel, which may be better described as an uber-luxe guesthouse, with a very small number of bedrooms, each of which has a theme. For our first two nights we stayed in the Indigo Velvet room on the top floor and, due to some kind of admin mix-up, a number of people had to swap rooms on the third night and we ended up in the Turtle Dove room. There is also a rather splendidly mad scarlet room, called the Swanky Cardinal. The two rooms we stayed in are both pictured below.

Indigo Velvet Room

Turtle Dove Room

Each room had the standard features of luxury hotel rooms – an incredibly comfortable bed, decadent arm chairs in which to recline and flat screen TV with satellite channels (including MTV, Sky News and Sky Sports – to Derm’s delight). Moses Fountain had a few little touches that really set it apart, however. These included an absolutely amazing Nespresso coffee machine (if you can forget the whole ‘we hate you Nestlé’ thing) in each room.

Your very own Nespresso machine - perfect (but unethical) coffee guaranteed with the flick of a button

And, not to be sneezed at, a 100% free and ever-replenished minibar filled with tins of coke, fanta, Peroni, fruit juice, Pringles, nuts etc and the thermostat which means you can control the heating in your room. This sounds like a small thing, but I always find most hotels insanely hot or really chilly so I found it very nice indeed to have control over the temperature. The rooms were also very quiet and had black out blinds so no streetlights to wreck your sleep – ah, it truly is how the other half live. For city centre, European hotel rooms they were also very spacious with lots of wardrobe space, arm chairs, desks, huge beds and palacial bathrooms. Turtle Dove room also has a balcony and blinds that are controlled via remote control, which must be the laziest indulgence possible!

His and hers sinks

So, that’s where you sleep, now what about the bathroom? The bathroom is a marble temple to the art of ablutions from the fancy Etro toiletries to the his and hers sinks, the fluffy bathrobes and slippers, the immensely deep bath and the rain-style shower head. One slight quibble might be that we didn’t find the water in the shower (yes, the very same water regularly quaffed by American diplomats) quite warm enough, even at its hottest setting although this wasn’t a problem in the bath.

On one of the terrace's rather fabulous, regal chairs

Since Moses Fountain doesn’t have a restaurant, cafe, bar or even really a reception area as such beyond the outdoor terrace and the stylish wooden bench with the black feathery cushions just inside the door, there’s not a lot else to review. The staff at Moses Fountain (particularly Manuela) go above and beyond just hospitality – they will recommend and book restaurants for you, phone taxis for you, show you where to visit, book exhibition tickets for you. Anything you might want in other words. They serve you breakfast in your room whenever you want it, replenish your minibar, replace your towels and make your bed – not just once a day, oh no, but at least three times a day or basically whenever you go out so your room is always clean, tidy and in the same pristine condition as it was when you checked in. This was a rather alarming experience for me – every time you left a sock on the floor or a used coffee cup sitting on a surface you would return to find it efficiently tidied away, giving you a very brief insight into what must be the lifestyle of the rich and idle and you can begin understand the crazed ego of even the most C-list of celebrity. Someone else literally cleans up all your crap and within about oh, say, 5 minutes you begin to expect it.

View from our room

As always, with a review of anywhere, the burning question is would you recommend it and would you return? To which the resounding answer is yes and yes. It’s not the cheapest hotel and, to me, it does feel like a very upmarket B&B in some respects but the staff are friendly and warm, Moses Fountain is the last word in chic comfort and the area is fantastic. For a city break that combines style, a central location and utter relaxation you couldn’t go far wrong staying here.

4.5 stars

That’s all from W[r]ite Noise until after Christmas – we hope you have a very merry one!

Letter from Down Under – Part 5

Our friend Gemma McHugh recently decided to take a year away from the rat race, saying goodbye to working in an office and paying rent, in order to embark on a very exciting trip to the land Down Under. Gemma is a trained reflexologist and is also very interested in energy medicine, guided meditation, yoga and reiki so she is hoping to work on organic farms and experience New Age Australasia and will be sending us regular bulletins back all about her progress! Will she ever want to come back though? Follow her posts over the next few months and find out…

Last time we checked in with Gemma she was Queenstown-bound…but it’s been a busy few weeks!

Hello everyone, how is life treating you all? All looking forward to Christmas?

Well, what can i say, these last two weeks have been an experience. I dont know where to begin. I took the Tranz Alpine cross, which was a train journey from Christchurch through the Southern Alps to Greymouth, which is renowned as one of the world’s most spectacular train trips.

Tranz Alpine train journey

Greymouth is on New Zealand’s west coast aka the wild west coast, it was raining and it made me think of the west coast of Ireland in that respect.  We stopped at these rocks called the Punikaiki rocks, also known as pancake rocks. They were rocks out at sea which had the look of pancakes, wonderful natural rocks. I took a bus to Nelson, where I arrived wrecked, aching muscles and a stiff neck and I thought to myself I need a bit of tlc so I booked into a motel rather than a backpackers, first bit of luxury- and probably the last too! The next day could hardly get out of bed, i was literally that stiff. I knew I needed, desperately, to get a massage. I went to a vegetarian cafe and I found a place to get a massage, where I met an Irish girl who was the masseuse. She was that nice she invited me to go for dinner that evening and we went to an Indian restaurant, the food was delicious. She really did an act of kindness as she paid for the meal, I was overwhelmed with her generosity. I am astounded when i think of the wonderful people i have met on this trip, it is too much to be just luck, i am believing more and more that i am drawing them into my life.

Cathedral, Nelson

Nelson is right at top of South Island and it felt like a very creative place, with a v good new age bookstore, mind you i had quite a few of books already(linda and roisin, you know this for a fact!!!). Then I travelled to Picton, where the ferry terminal is to take the interislander from the South to North Island. It took 3 hours and the trip across was spectacular, mid way you could see both islands on either side, a magnificient array of clouds and a mixture of turquoise and deep blue sea.  Arrived in Wellington, got connection to train station and arrived with Marie , who has kindly accepted me for wwoofing right up to and through Christmas. She wants me to housesit her house while she and her family go to oz to do a yoga retreat. She has been most welcoming, i feel i will get a lot from my time here. Her place is in Kapiti, on the coast, 45 mins from Wellington. Her two sons are beautiful, very energetic,nice having children around. They basically grow everything in their garden, mountains of broccoli, lettuce, blueberries, raspberries, they have a lemon tree. Marie said basically every day I can pick whatever fruit I want, I am in seventh heaven. To get such healthy, delicious good food is so treasured by me. Honestly with funds running low I cannot rate highly enough getting food given to you. Levels of appreciation have skyrocketed.

I’ve also been spending time in the yoga centres in Wellington and Kapiti where I’ve been wwoofing, mostly cleaning! Last week I went down to the beach which is 10 mins walk, beautiful views of the rocks and such a beautiful sky. I was mesmerized by the scenery and the lulling sound of the waves crashing on the shore and when I eventually looked around I found myself staring face to face with a Doberman, no owner in sight. I immediately turned my head, conscious that I needed to remain very calm. I took deep breathes and asked to be protected. I was terrified. It went away and I walked away sighing heavily with relief.

The yoga centres, ironically, have been bedlam happened with the arrival of Swamiji (Swamiji is a guru who was selected to be one since he was 9 years old. He is absolutely revered by his followers). Everyone was running around doing a hundred tasks to have everything perfect for him coming so it’s been something of a rollercoaster ride for the last few days. We have been to the Wellington Yoga in Daily Life centre three out of the last four nights, the other night at Kapiti. The evenings have consisted of Swamiji philosophising, which I have to admit it has been very interesting. We have also had plenty of delicious Indian dishes to eat (yum!), I have heard traditional Indian bhajans, which is music played by a band of five men. I also had the opportunity to watch a traditional maori greeting ceremony, with a poi dance, which was used by early maori warriors to strengthen their wrists. Last night we gave a lift home to a maori woman who was half Irish! Apparently a lot of the maori people inter-married and mixed with the Irish, she has given me her phone number and possibly i will be able to go to the Maori gathering place where they discuss events and talk about things. I think that will be an unbelievable experience.

So after all the chaos, I’m now in the house alone and getting some peace and quiet (bliss!), because everyone has left to go to Australia for a yoga retreat. Anyway, overall the last fortnight has been a real experience and that’s what life is all about, having experiences!

Gem x

Beautiful Christmas Presents – Locally!

Looking to start finish your Christmas shopping this week? It’s possibly a little bit nerve wracking to rely on the internet with Christmas drawing closer and the post increasingly erratic but it does seem to kill the Christmas spirit somewhat to just buy everything you need from the supermarket or the high street and it certainly doesn’t do much for small businesses and the local economy. On a slightly side topic, Christmas shopping provides us with a good opportunity to check out Ethical Consumer.org’s shit list of boycotted companies for companies you should most definitely not be supporting with you hard earned Christmas cash – the usual offenders are on there like Starbucks, Coca Cola, KFC and Nestle but there’s some other surprising ones on there, like Rachel’s Organics and Iams Pet food.

The crafty among us can make their own presents – hand knitted scarf? box of Christmas biscuits? but for everyone else, why not think about a unique, handmade, local present for a partner/family member/friend for Christmas?

We’re off to Rome for the weekend to hit up their Christmas markets and Italian design superstores but we’ll leave you with W[r]ite Noise’s pick of the local crop – see you next week!

1. Jewellery made by Stray Jewellery, Belfast. We uncovered these guys (and their adorable little dog, Buffy!) at late night art earlier this month, when they were hosting a party in Paperjam’s offices in Cotton Court. We all left with gorgeous presents for sisters or for ourselves, including beaded earring, a dazzling cocktail ring and a quirky camera pendant on a chain. All handmade, all unique, original and very, very stylish. Want it. Now. Please.

Camera Pendant by Stray Jewellery, £14

2. A tee shirt made by Tee and Toast. ALl the feeling of an amazing summer music festival packed into a jumper or a t shirt, rainbow colours, cute drawings, funny captions. Guaranteed to brighten up dreary winter days, especially with this limited edition woolly jumper tee or the Belfast Heavy Metal tee (below).

Belfast Heavy Metal Tee, £20

3. A hat by Lulu Rose. Fabulous, fashion forward creations, lovingly handstitched by Rosie Moore!

Sofia Brimmed Cloche, £30

4. A luxuriant XL size Bog Standard scented candle, all the way from Belfast! New, super big, three wick candles perfect for lighting in the living room when having friends round for wine and cake or while you read Vogue in the bath. And the Irish Winter scent is absolutely perfect for this time of year – warm, spicy, inviting :)

XL Irish Winter Candle by Bog Standard, £26.95

5. And, last but not least, the Suki Tea Christmas giftset. A tray, a pot, and a little tub of delicious Christmas tea – there is officially no better way to wake up on Christmas morning.

Suki tea giftsets, £32.95

And if this is making you feel all ethical, righteous and inspired don’t forget to download RATM – Killing in the Name Of today to make it Christmas no. 1! Click on the pic below to check out the rather hilarious video of them performing on 5 Live yesterday…

No, I certainly won't do what you tell me...

Slide: Review

Last weekend some of the W[r]ite Noise crew decided to go on a Friday night adventure to Belfast’s newest (gay?) bar, Slide on Ann Street (purely in the interests of research you understand!). The lovely Aileen who did my eyelash extensions last week told me about Slide’s existence and like many people I was surprised because I had seen the old Capstan Lounge being renovated over the last few months and I’d even been for dinner in Little Wing a fortnight ago and failed utterly to notice the entrance to the brand new bar right next door.

Slide is owned by the same people who own the very popular Muriel’s Cafe Bar on Church Lane, a bijou cocktail and wine bar named after apocryphal Belfast milliner, Muriel, who, according to legend, is also alleged to have been a woman of the night, giving Muriel’s its hat/lingerie theme. I have also heard that the people behind both Muriel’s and Slide is Mr Bill Wolsey, Belfast hotelier extraordinaire, owner of the Merchant and Bangor boutique hotel, Salty Dog and head of Beannchor, Northern Ireland’s biggest independent bar operator. So expectations for Slide ran relatively high as we enjoyed a chicken and parma ham risotto, mocha mousse, bottle of cabernet sauvignon and a coffee in the house before we went out (credit crunch gourmet!).

Slide has been getting talked up on the Queer ID forum where Buzz opines: ‘ belfast needs a pantibar / flounge pre club bar SOOOO badly’ and Alan2007 enthuses ‘Legend thats handy! I love Belfast over the last year its replaced my London trips that Ive had to cut back on! Hollister is open which is good 2!’. With all this intense hyperbole and Bill Wolsey’s hand in its creation, alongside its fabulous central location in the no man’s area between Victoria Square and Cathedral Quarter which has now been bridged by Muriel’s and the Roost, we were quite excited and accordingly heaped on the hairspray, back combing and designer label clothing. But were we disappointed?

Slide is a two floor affair, reached, as I mentioned, via a rather discreet doorway tucked beside Little Wing pizzeria. The only obvious sign of its existence is a chalk board sign on the pavement and some very lovely female bouncers who politely greeted us when we arrived. At the top of the stairs was another friendly lady who relieved us of our £5 entrance tax and explained the concept of the bar to us.

On the first floor is a cocktail bar and a room of unisex toilets (I know – unisex! Ick!), while upstairs is the club and a smoking terrace. We decided to avail ourselves of the cocktail lounge, a relatively small space with turquoise walls, banquet seating and is currently bedecked with gaudy Christmas baubles attached to the ceiling.

On the otherside of the bar you can see into the VIP room which can be hired out for private parties and has a huge brass bed for reclining decadently on while you sip on the array of cocktails on offer.

And, speaking of cocktails, we opted for a Berry Collins gin-based, tangy concoction and a kitcsch and delightfully fruity and sweet Singapore Sling, and sat to people watch for a while. Cocktail prices seemed to range from about £6 upwards, with champagne cocktails the most expensive.

We were there on a Friday night coming up to Christmas, which is obviously a key night for staff parties and a very busy one for the centre of town. This might have gone some way towards explaining the slightly unexpected gay bar crowd of snooty gay fashionistas, straight girls in party dresses and chubby straight men in plaid drinking pints. Next adventurous step was to try out the unisex toilets, decorated in a very minimalist black and white. Each cubicle had its own sink and there was not a urinal in sight, which was altogether very pleasant (although hardly surprising, since I once helped compile a list of the best loos in Belfast for an in-flight magazine which was discussing the best loos in Europe and I voted for the bathrooms in Cloth Ear, another Beannchor venture) Each cubicle could really have done with its own mirror for emergency make up repair, however, and, as these toilets serve both the cocktail bar and the upstairs club, it goes without saying that the cleanliness standards steadily deteriorated throughout the night.

Upstairs then was a rather lovely smoking terrace, which had mood lighting and almost Parisian (like if you squint really hard and think of France?) views across the Belfast rooftops. Since it was surrounded by walls on three sides, the terrace was pleasantly sheltered which is always useful to know if you’re a smoker – in my case of the strange herbal cigarettes one can buy in Holland and Barrett. Yum.

The club was a slightly strange affair. Tables are laid out almost cabaret style, the DJ booth is on the same side of the room as the bar and the dance floor isn’t huge yet the music is played at the kind of volume to suggest a sweaty, heaving mass of bodies on a huge, pumping dance floor, although for the first hour we were there most people stood around in little knots or sipped drinks at tables in a very refined fashion. The musical style was decidedly retro in a very knowing, trendy sort of way – 90’s disco classics like Delerium’s Silence being wheeled out for example. The barmaid upstairs was loving the tunes and didn’t stop moving, mixing drinks, working the till, dancing and singing along all night which was nice – it’s good to see someone who enjoys their work.

There’s also a cloakroom upstairs where I had to retreat to for a while when my friend met a gentleman at the bar. The dude working in the cloakroom was the most friendly and quite dry young man named Paul who had a shock of well groomed facial hair and let me look at his gay magazines for a while so I could make myself scarce. Because the window into the cloakroom had a vaudevillesque red velvet curtain it felt rather like a visit to the bearded lady but I couldn’t complain.

We eventually left about half 12 and I managed to flag us down a black taxi (read more here about just how easy – or not – it is to get home from a night out in Belfast) on Victoria Street. All in all a good night, not horrendously priced, fun music, very polite and efficient staff and a mixed but friendly enough crowd. I think there is still some confusion as to whether Slide is indeed a gay bar or just another version of Muriel’s, which is just around the corner but this isn’t altogether a bad thing to see straight and gay flirtations happening side by side in the one club and it makes for a less cheesy atmosphere than the Kremlin, for example. There is something very slick about Beannchor’s bars – Slide, Muriel, the Spaniard, the Roost et al which can leave you feeling a bit empty – there’s charm but not necessarily a lot of charisma. Still, they make a very worthwhile addition to Belfast’s growing upmarket but (fairly) unpretentious bar and club scene.

Four stars ****

Get Home Safe? Then provide us with some options…

Anyone living in Northern Ireland will doubtless be familiar with the Get Home Safe Campaign, ads for which are prominently displayed on billboards and bus stops around Belfast and beyond, like the ones below. So forgive me if I rant a bit about the whole campaign – it’s the W[r]ite Noise way, I’m afraid :)

The message? That you ought to think about how you’re going to get home safely from a night out before you even set foot outside the door. When you look at some of the ad images, they’re rather disturbing – an attractive girl on her own about to take a short cut through a park in the dark while a hooded man ominously approaches (is that Crescent Park, does anyone know? how many pre-Venue bottles of cider has that park played host to? ah, memories…) or a young guy walks home under the surveillance of what look to be very mild mannered hoods conveniently gathered under a streetlight so he can see them looking menacingly at him. Not really the sort of things that are inclined to make people want to go out and part with their increasingly scarce money in Belfast on a night out during a recession – welcome to Belfast, now please be careful not to get raped or beaten up on a night out.

But surely these ads are just urging reasonable caution? Well yes and no. How do they suggest you get home safely? They probably don’t mean on public transport, since the absolute joke fabulous Translink system we Belfast residents are saddled with does not operate past 11pm in the city centre. Yes,11pm! I know we have early closing times in Belfast compared to say Dublin, London or Glasgow but most bars and clubs stay open until around 2am at the weekends, so having no buses or trains after 11pm isn’t exactly helping things, wouldn’t you say? Back in the bad old days on the late 90s, early 00s, Translink used to run an overpriced and all too infrequent Nightline service from the city centre to places such as Bangor, Lisburn and Ballynahinch. It was about £3 a ticket, instead of the £15-£20 a taxi would have cost back in the day. So if you got separated from your friends or you happen to socialise with (shock! horror!) people from outside of your own community, you could still get home for a reasonable amount of money, from a well lit area of the city centre and that was fine. But in 2003, Translink decided to end this service for reasons best known to themselves. For people not from Northern Ireland – Translink is a private company that has more or less a complete monopoly on our public transport services, entitling them to charge whatever they want (£1.60 from Ormeau Bridge to city centre for example, a distance of all of about a mile) and while they (grudgingly) offer multi-journey tickets these are nowhere near as good value as an Oyster pass in London for example. Also, for reasons best known to themselves buses only run in and out of the city centre and never across the city. So if you want to go from east to west you must change buses in the centre of town or to go from Lisburn Road to Forestside you must first take a bus to outside the Europa, walk across the road and get on another bus. Which requires two separate bus fares needless to say. So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that their former Chief Executive was being paid the pricely sum of £374,000 per annum back in 2006. I wouldn’t like to think about what they’re paying the top dog now but I’m sure they can easily afford it, nevermind us lowly Belfast citizens and our pitiful needs for safe, efficient, convenient and fairly priced public transport. Quiet plebs!

So is it any wonder that despite the recession more or less everyone takes taxis in Belfast on a night out? It’s more or less you’re only option. Belfast does have black taxis but our taxis are a little bit different from taxis elsewhere in the UK. Black taxis used to be another variant of public transport during the Troubles and when our good friends in Translink refused to run frequent (or sometimes any) bus routes to particularly notorious/deprived etc areas around the city. People therefore shared these taxis which picked up at taxi ranks around the city centre and stuck to more or less prescribed routes, dropping people off along the way. Public hire black taxis can now often be very expensive – some Egyptian guy in a black taxi outside Laverys attempted to charge me £9 for a journey home, a trip which ordinarily costs around £4. Needless to say I refused to pay him what he wanted and much abuse and vitriol was forthcoming.

So you’re supposed to phone a taxi from a reputable taxi company to come and pick you up. Which is all very well until you get separated from your friends or decide you want to leave early and then you have to stand on the street on your own, using your phone which according to the UK government is basically just asking to be mugged and wait for however long it takes for a taxi to arrive, hoping you don’t get stabbed or slapped or kicked or raped (if you take the message of the Get Home Safe posters to heart) while you wait. You could pre-book a taxi? Well yes, but gone is any degree of spontaneity and the whole point is that things can happen over the course of the night that might make you want to go home early. Running into your ex-boyfriend, arguing with a friend, a migraine – the reasons are endless, really. And add to that the fact that on particularly busy nights a lot of taxi companies won’t take pre-bookings unless it is to pick up from a home address – which is understandable from their point of view since they doubtless lose a lot of business waiting for people outside pubs who don’t appear, having completely forgotten about their taxi in their quest for a gravy chip but is rather unfortunate for anyone who needs picked up from town.

So what does Belfast City Council et al suggest? That you ‘think when you drink’ (an amusing maxim echoing the drinking game rule to think while you drink) – god forbid you should let your hair down, have a good time and not have to think for a few hours. You should always carry enough money to get home, though this won’t help you should you have to get into a dodgy (although often licensed) taxi that charges you double what the usual taxi fare home is. That you ‘don’t get separated from your friends and don’t let them wander off on their own, especially if they have had too much to drink’ and ‘look after each other so everyone gets home safely’ – great, not only do you have to worry about yourself but now you have all your drunk friends to worry about as well, god forbid they should go to the toilets on their own, go outside for a smoke, or (horror of horrors) pull on a night out. The responsibility ought not to be on you to look after your friends. Yes, we probably should drink a bit more responsibility, despite what the facebook group ‘I’m not an alcoholic, I’m Irish, there’s a difference’ might think. But it should not be up to family members to pick you up at 2:30am after a long night out nor is up to your friends to make sure you are 100% safe every minute of the night.

What we need is late night, reliable public transport which departs frequently from designated, well lit areas of the city centre. Licensed private hire taxi operators such as Fonacab and Value Cab should be allowed to pick people up off the street at the driver’s discretion instead of just being bookable by phone. Pub closing times need to be staggered so thousands of people don’t descend on the streets at once looking for a way home. And if Belfast wants to take itself seriously as some kind of European capital city, the city council should really be doing more to ensure the city streets are safe, even on Friday and Saturday nights, for people, whether male, female, a teenager or a tourist, making their way home alone – whether on foot, in a taxi or on a bus or train.

Christmas Playlist – Spotify Required!!

It has been a rather hectic weekend of drinking cocktails in one of Belfast’s newer and rather fabulous bars, Slide (come back and visit us later in the week for my review!), eating mince pies in Avoca, going to see Where the Wild Things Are, rather reluctantly hitting the gym and finishing up work on the Belfast Conference Guide 2010 so today seemed like the perfect  opportunity for a loosely Christmas-themed playlist, featuring the likes of Devendra Banhart (going to see him in Rome on Sunday, very excited!), Low, Manic Street Preachers, Sufjan Stevens and, yes, RATM. So click on the magnificently camp pink deer below, crank up your laptop speakers and enjoy some festive-related tunes…not an X-Factor finalist in sight ;)

Friday Interview: Peter Geoghegan

Today we’re chatting to Peter Geoghegan, travel writer, political journalist, fellow blogger and all round cultural maven ahead of  his appointment as editor of a new magazine called Political Insight.

Peter, you’ve lived in Longford, New York, Edinburgh, Denmark and now Belfast. Do you still have itchy feet?

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” Quoting Seneca is probably not the best way to start an interview, but to hell with it… I’m a big believer in the regenerative power for a change of scene, there’s nothing like waking up in a strange town, or even a familiar one you’ve not visited for a time, to subtly alter how you look at the world. So I guess in that respect I think I will always be peripatetic. But I also think you can train yourself to look differently at really familiar places – one of my favourite tricks is to look at the tops of buildings, you see a totally different city in the roof tops. It sounds wacky but next time your walking down Royal Avenue have a go (but be careful not to get knocked over!)

Where would you like to live next?

There are many cities I’d love to live in – Hong Kong, Buenos Aires and Budapest to name a couple – but my next stop is Edinburgh again. It really is such a beguiling and enchanting city, the perfect place to call home as you hop around the world.

You’ve variously written a thesis, an academic book, many travel articles and news reports. What’s your favourite style or mode of writing and why?

The more I write the more I think my favourite genre is the opposite of whatever genre I am writing in that day! But seriously, to borrow Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor about the fox and the hedgehog, I’m something of a fox in that I’m interested in knowing a little about a range of subjects rather than a lot about a few. (Not a good trait in an academic). For that reason I prefer journalism, particularly book reviewing and travel writing, primarily because both have the most scope for going off on wild tangents! News reporting is quite constrictive and requires rather more tenacity than I have, especially when subjects are unwilling to speak on the record.

Tell us about your involvement with Culture NI…

Well, I guess I should start by saying that, regrettably, my involvement with CultureNorthernIreland is coming to an end next week. I’ve recently been appointed editor of a new magazine called Political Insight, which is being published by the Political Studies Association of the UK and Wiley-Blackwell and will appear three times a year. It’s a full-colour magazine which aims to present research on politics in an entertaining way to a wide audience. First issue is April 2010 so it’s all systems go!! (ed: ok – I’ll allow the obvious plug since it does sound rather impressive!)

But I’ll definitely miss Culture NI. I actually started working for CNI years ago as a freelancer while I worked in the Art College in Belfast. I liked it so much I gave up the day job! Covering music, books and theatre in Northern Ireland has been great fun and, thankfully, the good shows far outweigh the bad. I’ve also had the chance to interview heroes like David Simon (creator of the Wire) and Animal Collective, though I think my most memorable interviewee was Josh Harris – he’s a self-promoting American artist/Internet mogul who told me variously that the mafia were after him, he was the most important living artist and he had 10 years left to live. If only all interviewees were such good copy!

You’ve taken a keen interest in local culture and you’ve written numerous book reviews as well. Have you ever thought about dabbling in writing your own novel/screenplay/poetry? If so, what would it be about? Or, if not, why not?

Hmmm, that’s a bit of a thorny question. I think that if you peel back the surface of most critics (and, indeed, most journalists) and you’ll find a frustrated wanna-be artist… and I guess I’m loathe to admit that I’m one too! I did write a lot of fiction when I was younger, though I fear it was juvenalia, and every so often I scribble the odd short story but at present I like both the time and inclination to write anything more serious. Perhaps this will change, I was heartened when Ian Sansom told me that he discovered how to write when he met a novelist who told him to write 500 words a day every day. At the time Ian was a painter and decorator, and look at him now.

You’ve stayed in some pretty top notch hotel establishments around the world (ah the life of a travel journalist!). But if you could take a fantasy trip somewhere and stay in a hotel (either real or imagined, past or present) with a fantasy group of travel companions, where would you go, where would you stay and who would go with you?

It would have to be the original Hotel Adlon on Unter Den Linden in Berlin during the roaring 20s. I’ve always found Weimar Germany, with its decadence and abandon, a fascinating historical period and, of course, Berlin was at the heart of it. You had Bauhaus (in Germany), directors like Fritz Lang, amazing writers like Thomas Mann and, of course, Marlene Deitrich. Back then the Adlon is visited by everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Louise Brooks – I think I’d be happy to spend a few days with a random selection of its patrons, just soaking up the atmosphere. The hotel was badly bombed in the Second World War, it ended up on the East German side was eventually demolished, though it was rebuilt in 1997 I’ve not stayed in it… maybe some day!

Give us some insider tips about which big cultural events residents of and visitors to Belfast should keep their eyes peeled for in 2010…

I don’t have too many insider tips I’m afraid, but if I was here I’d definitely check out Edwyn Collins at the Out to Lunch Festival in January  – the man’s a living legend.

Enjoy our chat with the very articulate Mr Geoghegan? Click to read more of his musings over on his blog! Or stick around and read a few more Friday Interviews, with folk songstress Emily Scott perhaps, feminist aerial dance icon Kate Lawrence or Buddhist spiritual lifestyle guru, Sally Taylor.

Bunny and the Bull: Review

It’s coming on Christmas and along with (a) cutting down trees, (b) putting up reindeer and (c) singing songs of joy and peace, QFT are preparing to screen a few Christmas flicks (including The Red Shoes and – of course – It’s a Wonderful Life) and then to shut up shop over the holidays. Boo hoo.

So despite the fact I’d been up since 6:15am, been in Coleraine all day, taught a seminar, written hundreds of words and really wanted nothing more than to vegetate in front of the TV, I decided to vegetate in front of a screen at QFT with a bag of revels and watch new indie British cult classic in the making (Withnail and I for Urban Outfitters-attired hipsters perhaps? Although the tagline is – no joke – ‘Withnail and I for the mentally ill’) Bunny and the Bull instead. I know I’ll be glad I did in a fortnight’s time when I’m experiencing severe QFT withdrawal and having to resort to Virgin movies on-demand. Shudder.

Featuring the talents of director Paul King (of Mighty Boosh fame) and, somewhat predictably, the comedic stylings of Richard Ayoade, Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, Bunny and the Bull is a strange hybrid of many genres. It has all the gentle, sentimental, surrealist whimsy of a Michel Gondry feature, the road trip/bromance vibe of an American comedy, a quirky, anti-social, yet ultimately loveable hero/protagonist in the mold of Stéphane in Science of Sleep or Lars in Lars and the Real Girl, the earnest, 60s-inspired morality of a Wes Anderson or Richard Linklater film and the zany psychadelia of a Beatles album.

Old Gregg - not a flirtini drinker...

So far, so Boosh. The Mighty Boosh comparisons are inevitable – same director, some of the same actors, undeniably the same school of humour and sense of the absurd, more humorous cocktails (flirtini anyone?) and in many ways it feels more like you’ve been watching a few, choice Boosh episodes back to back than a feature film.

What? I just don't get it...

But there are some differences. In my opinion, The Mighty Boosh tries (and sometimes fails) to channel a sort of wacky, eccentric, quintessentially British humour along the lines of Monty Python, Blackadder and League of Gentlemen. I absolutely loathe this sort of thing. Many people will hang me out to dry for saying this, but my appreciation of most British comedy begins and ends with Alan Partridge. While I’m on a roll, I may as well confess I think 95% of Pink Floyd’s creative output is utter awfulness. So, given my peculiar brand of prejudice, too much Mighty Boosh is just far too grating for me, even though it is filtered through the lens of a mild, stonerish fug. Bunny and the Bull is altogether a slicker product. There’s a narrative. There’s a love triangle. There’s travel. There’s fairly relentless gags and humour. And there’s a kind of hodge podge upbeat and poignant ending.

Put down the hairspray and everything will be ok...

I do have to confess I found Steven, our hero, played by Ed Hogg, pretty but instantly forgettable. And he’s kind of annoying too, with his all too obviously styled hair and cute little woolly jumpers. Stevem shambles about in a bathrobe, watches back to back episodes of Ray Mears, orders takeaway for lunch and spends 27 minutes in the shower at the start of the film so we’re supposed to feel sorry for him? Hell, welcome to PhD life. And that’s on a good day. Oh wait, he’s actually managed to get a PhD, just to impress a girl? Well now I really hate him. Smug, successful idiot with his tonged hair. His only saving attributes are that he likes to indulge in grammar chat and drinks blue cocktails. Hmm…those are pretty good ones actually. Maybe I could grow to like him after all…

Reading and Q&A with Ian McDonald, Lock Keeper’s Inn

The week before last, on a Thursday at the rather strange hour of 17:26 (not quite afternoon, not quite evening) after a hastily scoffed and very necessary plate of pasta, me and Derm hustled out to the Lock Keeper’s Inn to a reading organised by Castlereagh Arts, an offshoot of Castlereagh Borough Council. A series of these readings had been organised but they had somehow completely passed me (alas!) but the night’s writer in residence was to be a fellow blogger, Ian McDonald, TV production company guru by day and self-proclaimed ‘writer of sci-fi for people who don’t like sci-fi’ by night. With a list of publishing credits under his belt that would make all aspirational writers green with envy, McDonald has also been nominated for such prestigious accolades as the British Science Fiction Association and the Arthur C. Clarke novel of the year awards and has actually won both the British Science Fiction Association novel of the year and the Philip K.Dick collection of the year awards. So, as Ron Burgundy might say, the guy’s kind of someone, a pretty big deal etc.

For anyone who either doesn’t know me or who has perfected the art of feigning rapt attention while thinking about other altogether more interesting things while I am ranting, I am in the last stretch of constructing a PhD thesis with the somewhat oblique title Marginalised Bodies, Liminal State: Body, Gender and Place in Contemporary Northern Irish Fiction (and that’s the snappy version). So, although I’ve never really been a sci-fi fan my PhD research led me in the direction of McDonald’s novels, and I’ve just finished reading his 1991 classic, King of Morning, Queen of Day, which, despite the fact that it was first published eighteen years ago (and is – shockingly – currently out of print in the UK), has been on people’s radars again recently, partly due to the fact that it has just been translated into French this year and subsequently won the prestigious Prix Imaginales for best translated novel (ah the francais and their all-consuming love for all things folklorique!). So anyway, I was pretty excited about the whole thing since as a general rule I’m far too lazy to actually go around interviewing writers.

The sense of excitement was not in any way lessened by the slightly freaky setting – Lock Keeper’s Inn (which is one of my tap favourite Belfast cafes and one of the best ideas for a business ever, btw) is right down on the tow path, beside the Lagan. It can be accessed by parking behind the Ramada Hotel and crossing the bridge or parking down at the bottom of New Forge Lane and walking along a stretch – which by night is a pitch black winding path of doom – at your peril. We went for the slightly closer option but were still greeted by Conor Maguire, Arts Officer and all round friendly chap from Castlereagh Council, carrying a huge torch/lantern kind of thing who very kindly chaperoned us the whole way to the door, like a ferryman across the river Styx, delivering us safely so we could purchase a pot of Suki tea (for me!), a filter coffee for Dermot and a rather amazing slab of chocolate cake to share. Who says PhD research can’t be fun??

Things kicked off with Ian doing a ten or fifteen minute reading from his brand new novel, which has only just been sent away to the publishers, The Dervish House, which is set in Istanbul in the fairly near future (2027 I think?) and features a young boy with a heart defect which has kept him cooped up in his apartment in swaddled in cotton wool by his over protective parents heading off on a covert adventure into the city as a ‘boy detective’ to try and solve the mystery of a neighbour of their who has gone missing. The story was immediately captivating, in a not altogether dissimilar way to King of Morning, in its whimsy and its very immediate portrayal of place and setting, and I was quite disappointed when it came to an end (note to self – must pre-order…).

A very informal Q&A then began, and since there was no more than fifteen or twenty people in attendance in some ways it just felt like a chat in a pub. Without the Guinness, of course. The first topic raised was NaNoWriMo. (Confession – I made a very half-hearted attempt towards doing this, wrote about 300 words and gave up. I am not one of life’s natural writers it appears). Three of four brave souls owned up to being participants, one of whom was writing a science fiction-style opera set in space or something along those lines and had managed to rack up 42,000 or something, another of whom was another local published sci-fi writer (PhD research turns you into an unimaginable geek in case you were wondering what I’m on about), T.A. Moore. I haven’t read The Even yet but it’s definitely on my list there somewhere…

Questions turned to Ian’s own writing methods and how he creates such vivid and evocative settings for his novels. For anyone hoping for a trade secret and a shortcut way to landing a massive publishing deal, Ian’s answer would have been disappointing: meticulous research, travel and time…about 3 years a novel! He visits a lot of the places in question, subscribes to numerous magazines such as New Scientist, reads travel books, history, internet sources, the lot. He knows such obscure details as how aristocrats committed suicide by poisoning themselves to death with honey, what the local nicknames for Turkish football teams are or the name of a street in Rio on which you can see a million dollar apartment complex literally next door to a hastily constructed favela. And, what’s more, he’s interested in knowing even more and freely admits that 90% of his research has to be discarded in order to decant the 10% that is realy interesting, and really captures something of the place, whether the crucial detail is a three legged cat lazily cleaning itself in the Turkish sunshine or the sounds and smells of early C20th Dublin.

Ian also delved into his theory that the development of certain technologies at certain times tends in certain countries tends to reflect something about the culture and even potentially the spiritual aspirations and religious tradition of that country as well. This lent itself to a discussion of how ideas come about and things are invented, with all this human endeavour very much located within the idea of a collective consciousness, which segued (naturally) into a more general discussion of parallel world theory. I have been mildly obsessed with that notion since I read The Beach by Alex Garland in my impressionable teenage years, a fire fueled by Richard Linklater’s Waking Life which I saw in the QFT at roughly the same time.

I thought 4 years of somewhat gruelling undergrad philosophy (logic, anyone?) at university slightly cured me but listening to Ian McDonald talk I started to feel myself get really very interested in all of it all over again. So, maybe sci fi is for me after all..Now I just need to find a way to somehow work it into my thesis and err… finish the fiercely addictive Millenium Triology by  Stieg Larson first….As always – so many books, so little time :)