If the walls could talk
From the Rialto to the Bound For Boston, to Ebrington Square and Claude's Cafe, here are some Derry memories told through a walk around the town.
I’m back on the streets of Derry, walking around the town I called home for the first 28 years of my life. Swapping ancient walls for rugged dales, I've lived in Yorkshire for the past seven years. I’ve just parked along the quayside, where the River Foyle flows for as far as the eye can see. They say the river was once home to around 149 US and Allied ships in the Second World War, decades before the city had to come to grips with a war of its own. It’s a dirty day and the scene that lies before me could easily be a black and white photograph, all colour has been extracted from the city today. I brave the torrential summer downpour, not much changes. Except it does. I notice the shiny glass front of a building that was derelict and boarded up the last time I saw it. It now houses a new street food restaurant. A city changes. When I lived here, the only street food I would have known was chips and curry sauce on Waterloo Street after one too many pints of stout in The Bound for Boston.
Number 29 Waterloo Street is no longer home to The Bound for Boston, a live music bar where many legendary battle of the bands competitions were fought out. Last orders were called for the final time ten years ago. Phil Coulter once sang “there was music there in the Derry air.” There was no shortage of music in those forgotten venues. The Rialto with its eye-catching hexagon shaped signage, spelling out R-I-A-L-T-O in postbox red. The sign poked out from the brown brick building on Market Street. Compact from the outside, deceiving the person on the street, inside it was like entering another world. A world of live music, the magic of the theatre, red seats and curtains, ushers in bow ties and waistcoats selling ice creams at the interval. It’s now a clothes shop. Then there was the Casbah on Orchard Street, the dive bar where the Undertones debuted Teenage Kicks. This writer is much too young to have been there in person. The Nerve Centre survives, a sweaty club on Magazine Street where I put on local gigs as a teenager. And The Playhouse Theatre that runs alongside the city’s walls is still there. This is where once, on the eve of the 12th of July, I got locked inside because a group of hooligans had gathered outside to throw petrol bombs at the front door. This is where I experienced live rock music for the first time. Music isn’t just in the air in Derry, it clings to every molecule of oxygen and the people there live and breathe it. There’s ghosts of songs in every building and on every street corner.
I make my way over the Peace Bridge, one of three bridges in the town. It’s the newest, opening in 2011, it joined the Craigavon and The Foyle Bridge. The Craigavon Bridge was where I first saw heavily armed British troops stopping traffic.
The Peace Bridge connects the cityside and waterside, the cityside traditionally being a nationalist area, and the waterside known as a largely unionist part of the city. On the East bank, the Peace Bridge opens out onto Ebrington Square, a former army parade ground. The space has been transformed, a swanky new hotel stands proudly in the centre of the square. There’s even an art installation that’s made up of 40 pairs of columns that change colours to a soundtrack of city sounds, uploaded by members of the public. There is music there.
Hungry for lunch, I wander back to the cityside and take a detour that leads me to the Tourist Information office. It’s separated from the Foyle by a dual carriageway and this was once the spot where my friends and I would gather on sunny Friday evenings. It’s here that we tasted our first sips of cider from bottles fraudulently sourced from the 720 off licence. I soon find myself at the bottom of Shipquay Street standing in the shadow of the Guildhall. I'm reminded of a tongue twister from my childhood, “Shipquay Street is a slippery street to slide on.” I’m heading for Claude’s Cafe, named after a solicitor who once used the premises as an office in a different time. “Say nothing til you see Claude” another well known Derryism. Claude’s is where I first performed publicly, singing songs and reading poetry. I thought there was music there.
As I tuck into my taco chicken panini, I wonder if I still have a place in this city. But how could I not? Every corner, every landmark, manmade and natural, holds some memory, song, or secret. This place is home. This place that’s seen a disproportionate amount of history unfold before it, both good and bad. If only the walls could talk.
