red mum

FOR years and years the Young Wan had a Belfast accent despite living her whole life in Dublin. She had it even through the first years at school and slowly but surely little Dub things would creep in.

At one stage she even adopted one of the worst parts of Dublin accents and I say this without prejudice cos there are other Belfast collaqualisms and broad-accent on particular words she also adopted from time to time that also drove me nuts.

When she was really young she already understood the difference between how people speak in Belfast and Dublin and you could ask her to say things in Belfast and Dublin and she would, it was a great party piece.

I suppose I have little by little adapted my own lesser-Belfast accent. It has never been intentional, why would I want to lose my accent but maybe it isn’t as strong as it was. And then I don’t know, maybe I have adopted more Dublin sayings such as grand and the like than the accent. But there are some words that I had to change the way I say them or people just won’t understand.

Dame as in Dame Street is one, Dorset as in Dorset Street is another. While our Dame to Dublin’s Dame isn’t that different, Dorset has an infliction on it that we [Belfast] don’t use at all. When my Belfast mates first heard me pronounce it the way I have to they laughed their heads off and slagged me off saying I was a dirty Dub. (I know I have written about this before but I can’t find it at all.) As Dorset Street is where Belfast drivers come into the city you say it a lot.

Then there are times when I hear my accent really strong, like on videos and I think Jaysus that is crazy. And then there are times when Red Mum is red-misty angry and apparently the accent comes out really strongly then.

Now the Young Wan’s accent, I suppose, is kinda strange; a real mix. I don’t really notice it anymore, except when she puts on something, then it jumps out at you. This can happen anytime but normally when she is on the phone to her pals.

So over the summer she is with her Nanny (Belfast accent) and when talking to the Young Wan on the phone everything was aye. She’s gone all Belfast!

I SAID I would be a better blogger in a previous post and I have sat here going ‘hmm maybe I could write about…’ ‘or maybe I could write about…’ – nothing has gone beyond the first sentence. Just as I was about to sign off I thought I might explain the photo I use as my icon. So here goes.

I love this picture, obviously which is why I use it (it is cropped a little). It invokes so much for me. I remember the dress I was wearing, the colours and patterns on it, I also remember I had many outfits like that. I remember the day the picture were taken, I remember the car. Does it sound ridiculous but I can see me in the capture of the child in the picture despite the fact I am four or five years old when the pic was taken. I also love the way my shoes look like they are on the wrong feet, you can’t beat the 1970s with a big stick.

It was the second picture in a series of two showing me with one of my brothers in front of the car. The first picture is a typical family kid’s portrait of the two of us grinning wearing mad 1970s outfits standing in front of a swanky car and the second is the one I have used to represent me in the blogosphere.

I have somehow mislaid the pics thought I know they are in this flat somewhere and I want to have them framed together – they’ll look great.

The pix were taken in the lower Falls in Belfast on Cyprus Street outside my grandparent’s house with St Peter’s primary school in the background where my Daddy and his siblings went to school. I often remember staying overnight there and not being able to sleep because of the music coming from the teen disco they would run at weekends during the 1970s.

That street, Cyprus Street, where Gerry Conlon one of the Guildford 4 also grew up, is now gone, along with St Peter’s School and most of the streets that made up the lower Falls Road.

The streetscape, and much more, of the lower Falls began to change in the 1980s; all the terrace houses built for the mill workers are mostly gone except in small pockets here and there.

Taken during the mid 1990s at Clonard, lower Falls when whole rows of terrace housing was levelled to make way for new housing

This next pic is for Tawdrey and shows another loss – the Glen Road cottages.

Knocked down in the mid 1990s

While things have certainly been gained, a lot has been lost, but sure isn’t that change.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs flickr