Glenn Patterson's new book
Spent today walking the streets of 1831 Belfast with the writer Glenn Patterson.And the city hustled and bustled as noisily as it would have done on a Monday lunchtime 181 years ago,although you didn't have to shout to be heard overbus engines then. More likely nothing more intrusive than a horse-drawn gig or maybe even a sedan chair. I couldn't get over how noisy the city centre was. Between buses, buskers, bypassers,one-sided mobile phone conversations, newspaper vendors, piped music from shops, it was the height of cacophony! But Glenn reckoned that in 1831, aMonday lunchtime in Belfast would have been just as noisy. I didn't want to argue as he has just written a mighty book on that time, including not only sounds, but sights and smells too. You can smell the streets (they don't smell pretty).
Glenn's new book “The Mill for Grinding Old People Young” isa historical love letter to his home town, his many layeredresearch worn lightly, in a way very similar to Joseph O'Connor's “Star of the Sea”. The characters are writ large, against the social, political and economic history.
Gilbert Rice is the central character, introducedfirst as an 85-year-old in 1897, then taking us back tohis teenage self, in 1831, living with his grandfather on what is now Royal Avenue.Westood outside what are now the Clarkes and Zara shops where the house would have been,with Glenn colouring in how the street was mainly residential back then. The young Gilbert then got a jobworking in the Ballast office at the busy City Port, getting drunk, falling in love andgetting exercised about the Donegalls who owned Belfast. There's a beautiful sense of a rite of passage for the young man and for the reader too who is on that journey of discovery with him.
It's almost like we are time travellers, with all our knowledge of what is to happen to Belfast in the future, from the yet to be builtCity Hall to the sinking of the Titanic to two World Wars to civil unrest to powersharing.
Glennsaid that he found the mid 1800s fascinating, 30 odd years after the 1798 uprising,many of the peoplewho took part in that were still around were politicians and business people,in a way, he says, similar to contemporary Northern Ireland.
Off mike, he was still pointing out remnants of the past - alleyways, buildings and streets that map outhow little the city has changed, holding onto its past with pride. It's no coincidence that the publishers of Glenn's book, which he finished writing a year ago, have held off publication to the Titanic centenary. The city is now ready to face the horror of thetragedy of the Titanic,and remember it as it was when it left here. Likewise Glenn's book takes us back in time, to apeople and a place that fed TitanicTown and shapedwhat this place, despite all that has happened, remains.
It's a great read. I'm just sorry that I've finished it.
"The Mill for Grinding Old People Young" by Glenn Patterson is published by Faber on 15th March.
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