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Posted on November 16, 2006
Filed Under Outside Dublin, The North, chancers, customer service, nature, photography, restaurant, review, sea, transport, work | Leave a Comment

In Belfast today and, all in all, it wasn’t too bad. I dumped the car in a little carpark off the M1 Saintfield exit so I was chauffeured around for most of the day. Well, I am the boss afterall, and I’m worth it!! Only joking. I hit the Westlink at the right times so I wasn’t delayed too long. Even the A55 Outer Ring road was pretty free of traffic.

One of the places I had to visit was Hollywood. Or is it Holywood, I can never remember. Call it intuition (!) but I knew the schedule wouldn’t go to plan and I’ve have an hour to kill. So I brought my camera to take some photos in Belfast Lough Nature Reserve. The Nature Reserve is behind the City Airport. Various oil storage depots surround it. And a waste water treatment plant. Oh, and Ikea are building their Belfast store on top of an old dump!! And there’s a very large Army barracks just around the corner (depleted uranium for all!!). Still, I guess what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

This composite photo was taken ‘in’ the Nature Reserve looking out into Belfast Lough. It’s three photos stitched together. Here’s the original 7Mb stitched photo and also the flickr large photo.

I also got hit up for a pay rise by the ‘new guy’ who’s only on the job for maybe 20 days. This is one of the problems with blue collar workers – they all swap info on what they’re being paid. He reckons he worth 12% more because ‘Tommy is an loser’ doing the same job and he’s earning Â£–k more. Personally, I have a lot of sympathy for his situation but, business-wise, the wage was stated on the job advertisement so he knew what he was signing up for before he applied for the job. He didn’t do himself any favours when he said he’d ‘earn’ almost twice the money on the dole.

Lunch was weird but words fail me to describe how strange it was. I was trying to impress my guest so I chose to go to a particular part of Belfast’s Lisburn Road where there’s lots of nice gastro-pubs and cafes. Thankfully, I didn’t choose the cafe. My choice is now an ~~furniture shop~~ interior design boutique but what a cafe we lunched in. It was posh so I need scarcely mention that the menu was written in chalk on a blackboard. Being a vegetarian, nothing usually suits so I confused the ‘wee girl’ by ordering soup and a sandwich. I know I should call her a waitress or host but she didn’t know her panini’s from her baguettes. I nearly lost my temper as I tried to explain to her that I wanted my ‘salad’ inside the bread! Seriously, I had to use hand signals to explain the concept of ‘slice of bread/salad/slice of bread = sandwich‘.

As she was totting up the bill*, she placed a playing card (4 of hearts, I think) on the counter, kinda in front of me. After we swapped money and the change, I asked her if the card was for me. ‘Yes‘, she said, ‘so we know where to bring the food‘. Silently, I wondered if I was supposed to stick the playing card behind my ear? Or maybe clench it between my teeth in some sort of Freudian ‘I’m hungry, insert food here…‘.

I think we would have been better off going to Subway beside the City Hospital. At least in Subway, you can purchase a twelve inch Italian veggie delite!! …now with a free refill. …and now I really am joking!! Phnarr, Phnarr!!