Wee Rockets
I'm pleased to report that the full book is available now, without violence and at a more than reasonable price, from Allan Guthrie's Blasted Heath. Visit the company's Web site to hear Brennan read from Wee Rockets and to accompany him on a stroll through the story's West Belfast millieu.
© Peter Rozovsky 2011
Labels: Gerard Brennan, Ireland, Northern Ireland
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 8:49 PM
25 Comments:
You'll hear no nays from me to your yey. I will report back with details when I'm done reading.
Glad you didn't have to grab him by the gullet.
I'm raising my coffee cup to you, Pete! Carlsberg will come when I get off work at the end of this week.
Thank you.
gb
Kelly, there's too much violence in this world for me to have grabbed him by the gullet. I probably would have stopped at threats.
Gerard, I can remember when you'd drink a Carlsberg with lunch during the week. You've becine a responsible adult.
Peter, Ger,
Carlsberg, really?
Loved the wee rockets.
Yes, Gerard showed me the Real Belfast Experience: West Belfast, the Republican Museum, and a light lunch washed down by a Carlsberg in an airy pub furnished in blond wood.
Did you guys see the little promo trailer? You even get to see gb himself taking us all on a wee tour of the neighborhood. It's here.
Yep, the link I posted includes the tour. I know that view of the hills!
And I wonder who shot the video. Gerard calls the book a look at spide or chav culture. "Neds if you're from Scotland," he adds, appearing to glance off camera. At Allan Guthrie, perhaps?
Maybe he was just looking over his shoulder to make sure the neds weren't coming to beat him up.
...I think I may have been reading too much Irish crime fiction.
Maybe some exchange program allows neds, spides, and chavs free passage into one another's territory, the better to foster intercultural understanding.
Yeah--that would work...
The program could be called the Nedwork. Not sure how that would work outside Scotland. Or inside Scotland, for that matter.
In America, it would just sound like someone had a cold.
Not to anyone who read this.
Nicely spotted, sir. The camera man was indeed a Scottish chap. Kyle MacRae, the Blasted Heath social media expert. But I think I was on full alert as well, Seana. Can't be too alert. Paranoia is a survival tool.
my v-word is mottion, as in move!
gb
Ah, so you improvised the bit about neds. Very nice.
My v-word sounds like a letter from a sailor to his distant lover: dearfar
While I agree with Gerard that some paranoia is essential for survival, the suspiciousness engrained in some societies ensures that I have become very discerning when it comes to travel.
P a D, I think our man Gerard is too young to have lived through the worst of the Troubles. But I can well imagine habits of suspicion being ingrained in older inhabitants. Even in this age of Murals Tourism, I found the Peace Wall that runs between the Falls and Shankhill Roads in Belfast an unsettling sight.
If a wall can scare you, you are fortunate not to have visited the North of Ireland in the past.
"http://widgetinghour.blogspot.com/2012/01/shilly-shallying.html#links"
The wall was not scary as much as it was disquieting. Same for my first glimpse of Belfast as my bus pulled in from Dublin late in the afternoon: A big mural proclaiming that I was entering Loyalist Sandy Row.
But once I got out into the city, nothing scared me. Of course, I visited no notorious housing estates, not did I sing "God Save the Queen" of "The Fields of Athenry" in inappropriate places.
I'd go. But then, it wasn't part of my childhood frame of reference at all. Which is kind of funny given my Irish Catholic paternal side of the family. But they seemed to have saved most of their political spleen for this side of the Atlantic.
Though of this, there was plenty.
I did feel a bit of a chill at the mighty roar from the outdopor drinkers at the Glasgow Rangers Supporters Club on the Shankill Road.
I used try to keep my spirits up by joining in the forced good humour that is always a sign of being in a very unomfortable place.
It didn't really help much...
The outburst from the Rangers supporters was genuine, I think. A visitor, perhaps from Glasgow, on the open top deck of a double-decker tour bus yelled, "Go, Rangers!" as we rolled down the Shankill. I was sitting across the aisle from, situated so I could not see the men at the Rangers Supporters Club. That made their answering roar all the more startling.
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