August 23-29, 2025
SATURDAY 23 In the morning we mooched around Ardglass and found an off-licence. In the afternoon we went to the beach at Ballyhornan and watched Anne’s sister Ita doing a marathon swim. In the evening we boogied into the late night at Anne’s birthday party at Ardglass golf course.
📌 Anne says that snooty people pronounce Londonderry as “Laundry”.
📌 The Ardglass butchers shop sells something called “baby boils”, which I’m told is small potatoes.
SUNDAY 24 Dawn excused herself briefly from Anne’s birthday barbecue saying she had acid reflux and needed to return to her room for some Gaviscon. Later, after a lot of wine, she confessed that her “acid reflux” was in fact the result of her bra being too tight.
📌 When they were all children, Anne’s younger sisters took revenge on her one day by putting slugs in her bed.
MONDAY 25 In Belfast city centre, the small, pokey alleyways connecting main roads are called “entries” (nearby ones include Pottinger’s Entry, Sugarhouse Entry, Joy’s Entry). Seeing them prompted a childhood memory of a newspaper cartoon strip in my hometown Liverpool called The Back Entry Diddlers.
📌 Got a nice thank you message from Anne for her birthday present.
📌 Even in Belfast Project Artworks have prints in the Plus rooms of Premier Inns.
TUESDAY 26
📌 On our way up the coast north of Belfast to the Giant’s Causeway. In the distance across the Irish Sea you can see Scotland.
📌 I tried, with not much success I think, to explain the geology of the Giant’s Causeway to Seàn. I must have sounded like a bad schoolteacher with my tutorial on the difference between magma and lava and the unique mineralogy of basaltic lava that meant it solidified into neat interlocking hexagons of fine grained, very hard black rock.
WEDNESDAY 27
📌 Torrential rain brought a watery feeling to our visit to the Titanic Museum. But once we got inside at least we had the opportunity to dry off, unlike Leonardo di Caprio.
📌 Seàn was so wet from the walk over from their Air B&B in Templemore Avenue that he needed a new (dry) T-shirt.
📌 The rain had obviously pushed too many visitors into the museum and it was oppressively crowded. The most memorable section for me was towards the end when all of those who survived or perished were named. One of the perished shared the name of my wife. Cruel factoids abound, such as the absence of a single pair of binoculars on the ship’s bridge, the captain was steaming too fast towards ice, warnings unheaded, etc. Ultimately, the story of the Titanic is pitched as a story of Belfast itself with naked empire, sectarian and class divisions included.
📌 We never knew Belfast was famous for its linen.
📌 Included in the price of the Titanic experience was a free exhibition of Lucian Freud etchings. I think if Lucian had been on board the Titanic when it struck the iceberg he would have been one of the first into the lifeboats, just like all the other privileged classes who watched the poor people die.
THURSDAY 28
📌 Breakfast in The National reveals another Belfast building interior that carries the weight of a once successful iron and steel industry.
📌 In Belfast city centre there’s a £500 fine for drinking in public places.
📌 With yet more rain forecast we opted for a visit to the Ulster Museum, which not only boasted a flock of sculptured dragons by “the world’s best basketmaker”, a superb photo exhibition by Akihika Okamura, a Japanese war photographer who settled in Ireland after the Vietnam War and a big and quite solid collection exhibits of all kinds..
📌 One of the best exhibits in the Ulster Museum is a prop from the TV series Derry Girls. In one episode the girls are asked to state the similarities and differences between the Protestant and Catholic communities of Ireland. The differences won and included the news that “Protestants keep toasters in cupboards” and “Catholics love bingo”.
FRIDAY 29
📌 The tour guide says Belfast used to be called Linenopolis. He also says that the Albert Memorial Clock tower leans not because sex workers used to prop themselves up against it but because it was built on wooden beams that have rotted. Belfast also used to be a cash-only city, which is why it has so many banks (many now converted into pubs and restaurants).
📌 My wife says fancy photo effects make me look a lot worse (ie, older) than I really am.
Read all of my scrapbook diaries…
PLEASE MESSAGE WITH ANY CORRECTIONS, BIG OR SMALL.
Billy's Scrapbook 
You were the Back Entry Diddler 😉
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I like to think so. Liverpool’s answer to the Artful Dodger.
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