#Belfast Markets

[artchloeellis]

Photos from the first four markets I’ve attended so far this year! ✨

Ballyclare, Monkstown, Larne, and Carrickfergus. The last photo is of a bird that kept hovering around outside the Larne Market lol (apparently someone nearby feeds it regularly 😊🕊️)

Thank you again to my mum for being my market-buddy! 😁💖

[lordrahlprotects]

What a night

[silkmothstationery]

Like real pancakes, sea pancakes are highly stackable, although I wouldn't advise eating them.

These little guys will be for sale starting this Saturday at St Georges market in Belfast and after that I'll be putting them on this store! Follow my insta in the pinned post for more updates!

[goldenpinof]

how are you feeling about there being only 2 shows left?

anxious because we're still not sure if any of them are gonna be filmed. but also it's such a relief. 3 days and we're FREE

[itwebandcloud]

Discover IT WEB and CLOUD's new video marketing company in Belfast, offering tailored video marketing services to boost brand engagement and drive results. Explore innovative strategies and high-quality production that transform ideas into impactful visual content.

[merrybloomwrites]

Passing Contact - 1D x Reader

Summary: Y/N's not a fan of physical touch, but that changes when she meets the boys of One Direction.

Word Count: 860

AN: Welcome to the first of 9 weeks of ficlets! Come back every Monday for a little fic of Reader x One Direction! There will be 2 more Reader x full band, as well as a fic or two for each of the individual boys.

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From the beginning, the boys of One Direction were very comfortable being close to one another physically. Harry was the one to start the group hugs and big cuddle sessions on the couch, but eventually all five had grown used to it, and had even begun to initiate. Maybe it was being away from their homes and families, maybe it was the stress of the competition, but sharing physical touch was never weird between them. 

When One Direction was planning for their first ever tour, you’d auditioned to be their drummer, never thinking you’d hear back after submitting your reel to them. You were young, you were a girl, and you had no real experience touring on such a large scale. You later learned that all those things had counted against you, but then management realized it wouldn’t be the worst to have a young girl in the band. Something about being even more marketable, appealing to even more people.

Yes, you were there to catch the eye of teenage boys and make them fans. You don’t love that, but hey, you’re in the band. They wouldn’t have hired you if you couldn’t play, so you take it as a compliment.

Louis, Liam, Zayn, Niall and Harry quickly became your friends. You spent as much time with them as you could, often hanging in their dressing room instead of with the rest of the backing band. Within a month of tour, there had been rumors of you being in a relationship with each one of them. Of course, none of these rumors had any validity to them.

Not only were there rules in place forbidding you to date any of them, but the boys respected you as a band mate too much to make a move. They also noticed how you often shied away from any physical contact, so they always made sure to respect your personal space as well. Plus, you were all too exhausted from concerts nearly every day to even think about starting any kind of relationship.

The day after the first leg of the tour ended with a show in Belfast, the six of you made your way south again, to stay in a vacation house owned by Niall’s uncle. While you would have preferred a warm tropical destination rather than Ireland in January, no one was up to travel more than an hour at the moment. 

That first night everyone went to bed early, completely exhausted.

The second night, however, saw everyone well rested and ready to party. While you and Harry technically weren’t of age, that didn’t matter. The other four could easily supply the party with more alcohol than you could possibly consume.

You guys went through the many stages of partying, starting with the loud singing and laughter, followed by dancing on tables and thinking drinking games would be a good idea, finally ending with all of you piled together on the living room floor telling deep dark secrets. 

Which leads to you spilling more about your family life than you’d ever planned to tell, including how you basically raised yourself and learned how to play instruments to find a way out as soon as possible. You mentioned how you never really received physical comfort as a child and that’s why it feels so foreign to you now.

Of course you regretted your verbal diarrhea the next day, and you hoped maybe the boys had drank too much to remember.

But they did remember. And slowly, over the next few weeks, things began to shift. It started with Harry, as these things always did. He began wrapping his arm around you, lightly to give you space to move away, but you found yourself drifting closer instead. 

Next was Niall, always giving high fives and fist bumps, even the occasional hair ruffle. 

Then Liam began giving you piggy back rides around the venues, effortlessly carrying you around, his arms holding you tight to make sure he didn’t drop you.

Zayn, the most quiet of the group, was often found hanging on the couch watching videos on his phone during downtime. You’d seek him out when the others were being too much. He slowly drifted closer to you as you watched his phone together, and eventually you found that you’d be pressed close together, often with his arm around your shoulders. 

Louis was the last, but definitely not the most subtle. By the time he caught on, he noticed how you were now accepting of these gentle touches, the reminders that there are people who care about you. So he went all in, hugging you at least once a day, resting his chin on your shoulder, even pressing quick kisses to the top of your head like you’d seen him do with his sisters.

Each of these little touches warmed you up inside, healed something you didn’t know was broken.

The first time you got pulled into a cuddle pile was unexpected, but not unwelcome. It was on that bed, surrounded by this group of boys you call your brothers, that you finally felt whole. And finally learned what familial love should feel like.

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Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed, and I can't wait to share the rest with you!

An: part 2 here!

[vintagehomecollection]

The veneered table in the dining room was bought at the Smithfield market in Belfast and carried home on the back of a cattle lorry. The tiles inset in the chimneypiece are by William de Morgan.

In an Irish House, 1988

[baeddel]

on the racist riots in Belfast

i made a post in 2021 titled "dispatch on the unrest in Belfast" (click) trying to provide some local-knowledge context for the sectarian riots in town. i have no such special knowledge to offer this time. it has been, to be honest, shocking to me how many people came to them and how well organized they were. we have seen an increasing prevalence of anti-immigrant racism in the north in recent years; graffiti saying "locals only" (simple meaning: "whites only") on council houses going to market has been reported on since 2014 (click, 2018 click, 2023 click), for example. and in 2022 the PSNI released a report stating that hate crimes of every kind, including racist hate crimes, had reached the highest of any year since they began counting in 2004/5 (click). according to the BBC as of 2014 "on average a racially motivated offence takes place at least once a day" in Belfast (click) and it has only risen since that. but it was obviously not organized at this scale before. my girlfriend remarked that this was the first time Northern Ireland has had a race riot and i think, assuming we treat sectarian riots as something else, that may be true? (the UK-wide 1919 race riots did not seem to affect Ireland from what i could find and anyway were a bit before partition; otherwise they are quite similar to what is happening today).

perhaps no further context is really possible to give; they are race riots and they are happening because of racism. nevertheless i will try and write down some things i've thought about it.

in the 2021 post i talked about the nature of the disorder, where if you looked at the footage mostly people stood on the pavement and watched while the professionals—loyalist paramilitaries—handled the direct action (hijacking and burning busses and such). that is because these demonstrations were organized by the paramilitaries and everyone must obey them. that is not the case here; the crowds attack people of colour and immigrants, their homes or businesses owned by them, wherever they can find them. if they were kicked out of one area they went somewhere else and did it there; or else they did it where they lived as on Sandy Row. so it seems to be genuinely spontaneous and not directed from above.

the paramilitaries claim they did not organize it (the Belfast Telegraph quote what they call a 'senior loyalist' saying "[w]e didn’t start this, we aren’t behind it" click—what a demonstrative article, by the way, the police asking the paramilitaries for help with population control!). they say that about everything, but i think i believe them this time for that reason. it doesn't look paramilitary. i suppose whoever organized it must be taking orders from England. however, we are aware of at least some involvement by paramilitaries. the rightists who travelled up from Ireland were identified by PSNI and Gardaí to be fraternizing with UDA men (click). blueshirts associating with loyalists is not really surprising but i am not sure it has happened before. PSNI also claim there is a "paramilitary element" within the racist riots but are reluctant to say they're behind them (click).

i have talked before about how loyalism has felt a bit of a transition from an armed struggle into something that looks like a popular movement, with demonstrations and direct action becoming the main source of spectacle. it's possible there is a gradual transition towards this point, where paramilitary hierarchy becomes secondary to a spontaneously organized reactionary movement.

it also fits into a pattern that i have talked about before (click, also here), which is that democracy in the north has undergone dramatic changes recently. whereas in the past the national conversation dominated politics, today ordinary issues of civil society are decisive. the DUP lost their monopoly on unionist voters because of how they handled COVID, the border, the cost of living and so forth—problems a normal political party is expected to solve, not a party holding down a sovereignty under siege as they were supposed to be—and that's why SF got the majority. immigration is one such 'normal' political issue, and racist violence breaks out in Belfast in a way that doesn't differ substantially to how it breaks out at the same time in a normal country like England.

speaking of the fracturing of the DUP, i felt that it was significant that we could name, as a precipitating event, the fracturing of the right wing parties in general. in the north of Ireland the DUP lost much of its support, but no single party could replace it; several unionist parties now leech its vote, while moderate unionists vote for Alliance. and in the recent election the Tories lost to Labour, but they also lost many seats to Reform. between SF and Labour we are in an era where for the first time in a long time the UK is governed by center left parties, meanwhile it is unclear what opposition has the mandate of the right-wing voter. this means that for a right wing person electoral party politics looks like an ambiguous, distant and unrewarding terrain of struggle. perhaps that is a background condition as to why racist propagandists have been able to mobilize so many people into joining these events.

something else that struck me as possibly a precipitating event is that for the better part of a year we've had extremely active and persistent organizing around Palestine in the UK, in terms of demonstrations, direct action and even in electoral politics (with several independent candidates who care about Gaza taking seats from Labour in the last election). thus, right-wing racists have seen news about pro-Palestine organizing almost every day for a long time. we know that here in the north when Palestinian flags are flown it isn't long before Israel flags are flown in response. i think it's possible to see the specifically anti-Islamic character of the riots as a kind of counter-revolution or reaction to Palestine.

those were the thoughts i had to share. on Friday 9th (today as i write this) there is a racist demonstration planned, as well as a counter-protest. the counter-protest is backed by NIPSA (a big NI union) as well as the Belfast City Council (! click), so perhaps it will be big. it starts at 4:30pm. stay safe.

[tmbgareok]

Big touring over the next three months! Australia! The UK and Ireland! US east coast! Best links at www.TMBG.com.

Hey everyone. John F. here. Normally, I would just speak this in a Vibe Report on YouTube, but there are too many important links here and too much granular information to not deliver it in text form! I want to bring everyone up to date on all these shows coming up, and the second shows that have been added where shows have sold out. 

We are in Australia starting in the beginning of October (!) and in the UK and Ireland in November (!) playing Flood shows where over the night we play all the songs off the LP. All of the shows are "an evening with" which means no opener/starts early, and we are joined by our 8-piece band. ADDED! 1 Oct Adelaide https://bit.ly/4aZS1eF 2 Oct Adelaide SOLD OUT 4 Oct Sydney SOLD OUT 5 Oct Sydney SOLD OUT ADDED! 7 Oct Brisbane https://bit.ly/qRl1At 8 Oct Brisbane https://bit.ly/3Li9hAD 10 Oct Melbourne https://bit.ly/s7Ez8q 11 Oct Melbourne SOLD OUT 13 Oct Perth SOLD OUT ADDED! 14 Oct Perth https://bit.ly/A3d5T

1 Nov Southampton https://bit.ly/PlQ92z 2 Nov Cambridge SOLD OUT 3 Nov London https://bit.ly/3UrQpDe 5 Nov Glasgow SOLD OUT 6 Nov Newcastle https://bit.ly/zZwQ8b 8 Nov Belfast https://bit.ly/3JUEEQV 9 Nov Dublin SOLD OUT 12 Nov Manchester SOLD OUT 13 Nov Leeds SOLD OUT 15 Nov Nottingham SOLD OUT 16 Nov Bristol SOLD OUT 17 Nov London SOLD OUT In December we'll be out with the Big Show Tour where we spotlight a different album each night of a stand. One show in each market will be a celebration of our John Henry album. That's 1 of 2 in Philly, 1 of 3 in DC, 1 of 1 in Brooklyn (!?!), and 1 of 2 in Boston! Which night will that happen? Time will tell...

12.5 Philadelphia SOLD OUT 12.6 Philadelphia SOLD OUT 12.7 Washington DC SOLD OUT 12.8 Washington DC SOLD OUT 12.9 Washington DC SOLD OUT 12.13 Brooklyn https://bit.ly/TMBG121324 12.14 Boston 1 https://bit.ly/TMBG121424 12.15 Boston 2 https://bit.ly/TMBG121524 AN IMPORTANT NOTE FOR FOLKS WHO BOUGHT TICKETS LAST YEAR –– THESE RESCHEDULED SHOWS ARE FOR YOU!

Australia and British Isle ticket holders: your current tickets are valid for these new dates. Be sure to have your ticket confirmation email AND update your personal calendars NOW to avoid confusion later. In cities where we play multiple nights (Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, London), your ticket’s original date MUST match the new rescheduled date. These shows are mostly sold out, and that guy at the door won’t take tickets for other nights.

SO BE SURE TO MATCH YOUR TICKET TO THE SPECIFIC RESCHEDULED SHOW. (Many of these shows have also sold out, and additional shows have been added so CHECK THE DATE ON YOUR TICKET and match it to this very complete bit of information.)

Adelaide! The show booked originally on 8/10/23 is now on the 2nd of October

Sydney! The show booked originally on 6/10/23 is now on the 4th of October

Sydney! The show booked originally on 14/10/23 is now on the 5th of October

Brisbane! The show booked originally on 4/10/23 is now on the 7th of October 

Brisbane! The show booked originally on 5/10/23 is now on the 8th of October 

Melbourne! The show booked originally on 15/10/23 is now on the 10th of October 

Melbourne ! The show booked originally on 7/10/23 is now on the 11th of October 

Perth! The show booked originally on 11/10/23 is now on the 13th of October

London! The show booked originally on 5/11/23 is now on the 3rd of November London! The show booked originally on 18/11/23 is now on the 17th of November

[artchloeellis]

Finally uploading the pics from the last market I attended – Bangor Elim Church Craft Fair on the 29th April, thank you again to everyone who came along and to those who purchased from me! 😁

Uploads have been a bit delayed recently because I’ve been moving files around for storage space, so I’ll get some posts uploaded soon as I have new art to share and more products I’ve been working on too (thank you for your patience!) 🙂✨

[sgiandubh]

Not your previous anon, so don't impel me. 😉

Interesting that you believe C to be a "very, very good actress" but S is a "gifted actor".

From what I've seen of both, I think that C was blessed with innate talent and her versatility is eye-catching.

S is good but not memorable. He doesn't command the screen. And, I say this after watching most of his projects. Outside OL, he hasn't impressed. To me, he's himself in all. Same facial tics that we've noticed since S1. After Suspect, I had little hope for TCND because the same director was in charge. Unfortunately I was right. S was no better than before. I'd advise him not to work with Dries Vos anymore. He's awful. At this point I'm not sure it's just the inferior roles S takes but that it has more to do with his limited acting abilities. After 10 years I hoped for better.

Dear Not Memorable Anon,

How ironic. A very recent comment I had the imprudence to post in one of my threads, basically wishing for 'more complex roles ' for S immediately attracted me an insult from someone (it does not matter who, but a shipper or rather a fencer, I should say), who thought I was a 'brainless moron'. I still do not understand why and I did explain what I meant.

I see great potential in S and you seem to forget the grueling schedule they have because of OL, forcing them to refuse a lot of pitched projects. Her choices were probably better oriented, bearing in mind that I only saw her in Belfast, outside OL, and was underwhelmed with the whole movie, but enthusiastic enough with her. As for him, let's say that When the Starlight Ends was a tragic BS all the way, but also a wonderful, totally disinterested gesture of kindness towards a personal friend. The rest, I am not interested to see and I still wish for that breakthrough movie project allowing him to: a) emancipate his image from (yes, fellow insulting blogger!) the very complex OL/JAMMF formula and b) explore something else than action movies with lots of muscle. TCND was not that bad, but not nearly good enough. Yet, he is still around and he works and people watched him. All these are very good news for a very volatile market, post strike. Oh, and I almost forgot about Love Again - haven't seen it and I suspect it is forgettable.

That being said, I hope you realize that all these opinions, mine and yours alike, are completely personal and subjective. On the other hand, any indicators measuring audience are exactly that: numbers and statistics. It's exactly like discussing a Jackson Pollock painting: you might think it's the cat's meow. However, I might also think it's someone who randomly kicked a bunch of cans with paint on a canvas. And then smeared everything with the demented energy of a 5 year old, left to his/her own devices:

So I am not going to impale you, Anon. My fellow, Vlad, here, might have, though:

Those guys were Ottoman envoys. It is a relief to be able to confirm, as a diplomat with a severe bout of insomnia, things did really change somewhat, since 1499.

Don't push your luck, though.

[silkmothstationery]

Like real pancakes, sea pancakes are highly stackable, although I wouldn't advise eating them.

These little guys will be for sale starting this Saturday at St Georges market in Belfast and after that I'll be putting them on this store! Follow my insta in the pinned post for more updates!

[samheughanswife]

Sam is not the messiah, he is a man with clay feet and a never ending case of foot in mouth.

Please stop with the excuses in DM defending, excusing an intelligent 43 year old man who is his own worst enemy.

First up I haven’t mentioned Caitriona because she is living the 2023 version of Greta Garbo.

She is silent on international relations du jour, thankfully. Has she learnt from being burnt previously, I doubt it. She just has zero interest in maintaining a SM presence.

I’m sure she has a private IG account where she shares her feelings on the dire state the 🌍 is currently facing. She is a woman with opinions and a social conscience. I would even go out on a limb and suggest this has been a period in which she settled into uninterrupted day to day motherhood. Post partum following L’s birth and the never ending Belfast promo had her ragged and exhausted. All that travel and living in different places with a babe would have not been easy. An enforced hiatus was a silver lining.

Caitriona has always shown she not a slave to socials unlike Sam.

I don’t believe he is subservient to his PR team. Maybe in the beginning but not now. He has agency and he can absolutely say no to strategies. The print media he appears in is a result of the fact that Sam is still decidedly C-list. He hasn’t been able to make it in FTHTSI (Financial Times), he hasn’t been able to get an interview the in NYT Saturday magazine ( even though he is a holder of a number one book cachet).

Same can be said for Condé Nast Traveller. No interest in a Brit actor with an alcohol side business to share his favorite place in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and the rest of the 🌍. To share his travel essentials, whether travelling for pleasure or for business. Sam and his agency just can’t attract that market. The readers, subscribers of these publications are not aware of him from film and television roles and SS is a niche market. Because his brand is a mess.

Sam is unable to be nuanced in interviews anymore. He used to be more erudite, but not anymore.

It’s all over the place. One minute wanting to be seen as more than a shirtless thirst trap actor on IG. But then constantly reverting to form, and then chastising those who question the thirst traps, they are now referred to as holiday photos 🙄.

Then there’s the endless addendum to puerile promo of MIK and Clanlands with GMcT. It’s sooo stale and they, he knows it. That promo relies on a sexualised element for Sam. What’s under my kilt? Remember I was commando on top of a mountain?

Gen Z don’t know or care about a relatively unknown 43 year old on a series that is always keeping the audience waiting and waiting. There is so much streaming choice. New viewers and casuals just loose interest. His OL haitus filler MIK is niche and ridiculously puerile. Old fashioned slapstick, it’s just for rusted on fans.

With a week to go for TCND to hit screens it will be interesting to see the direction of his socials and the accompanying press. Will it be rinse and repeat.

Sam can do better than this. I just don’t think he wants to.

[itwebandcloud]

Digital Marketing Company in Belfast, digital marketing experts in belfast, top digital marketing companies belfast, digital marketing specialists belfast, digital marketing agencies Belfast

[weaselandfriends]

You've talked before about struggling to give stories good description-blurbs. Do you have similar trouble with titles? If not, what techniques do you tend to use when devising story-titles?

Titles are easier as I consider them more strongly part of the artistic whole of a work, but I've still had some difficulty. For the Bavitz stories:

Fargo: Joke title. This was back before I had any expectation of success and was deliberately sabotaging myself with bad marketing. (Before Bavitz I posted a fic on a novelty account where I pretended to be a Chinese esports pro.) Fargo, the film, is a movie I dislike, and I thought it'd be funny to name a story Fargo and similarly not set the story in Fargo.

Modern Cannibals: In original drafts, my title for this was Soulstealer. In the long, five year process of writing the story, the title Modern Cannibals was beamed into my brain by celestial particle as I was walking around an ordinary Target store.

Chicago: Following the pattern of Fargo. Established a pattern I fear may be impossible to follow with a third installment: City name, famous movie name, and ends in -go. I can do city name and movie name (Philadelphia, Nashville, maybe Belfast, or Dallas or Atlanta if I branch to TV), and I can do movie and -go (Vertigo), but not all three unless I want to do something like... Key Largo (barely remembered 1948 film that isn't even a city, it's an island).

Cockatiel x Chameleon: I had this title before I had almost anything about the story. It simply came to me. The "x" format suggests fandom shipping, which is about as much as I understood about the romance genre back in 2015 when I came up with the idea and title.

Cleveland Quixotic: This was the most I struggled with a title. I went with a zillion options before I came up with this one. Required a lot of active brainstorming and trial and error. Honestly, if not for this title, I'd say the answer to your question is, "Coming up with titles is super easy, they just pop into my head." But this one was difficult.

When I Win the World Ends: I'll probably talk more about it when the story is finished, but my original working title for this story was Unbroken Line of History. When I Win came to me as part of a revision process whereby I shifted around some plot elements to put certain aspects of the story front and center.

[scotianostra]

On October 2nd 1931 Sir Thomas Lipton, grocer, tea merchant died.

While his father worked in a succession of poorly paid jobs, young Tommy Lipton’s siblings all died in infancy, leaving him as the family’s only son.

Tommy had to leave school aged 13, because his parents needed an extra income to make ends meet. He also attended night school at the Gorbals Youth School. In 1864, he signed up as a cabin boy on a steamer running between Glasgow and Belfast and seems to have been taken with crew-members’ stories about the United States, so in 1865, Thomas used his savings to pay for a passage to New York spending the next five years there travelling across the country.

During this time he held many different jobs, including work at a tobacco plantation in Virginia; as an accountant at a rice plantation in South Carolina; as a door-to-door salesman in New Orleans; as a farmhand in New Jersey; and as a grocery assistant in New York.

Thomas returned to Glasgow in 1870. After spending some time helping his parents at their shop, he established one of his own, Lipton’s Market, at 101 Stobcross Street in the Anderston area of the city. This proved highly successful and Lipton went on to establish a chain of shops, first in Glasgow and then across Scotland, before expanding to cover the whole of the UK over the next ten years.

Meanwhile, the demand for tea was increasing among the middle classes and in 1888, by which time Lipton had 300 stores, he set out to bypass the traditional lines of supply for tea by investing directly in tea plantations. The Lipton Tea brand he established offered good quality for low prices and proved hugely popular, expanding the market for tea to all parts of society and establishing it as the national drink of choice.

Lipton was a big fan of promotional stunts. When his first 20,000 tea chests arrived in Glasgow he put on a party, complete with a brass band and bagpipe parade. In 1893 Sir Thomas Lipton officially established the Thomas J Lipton Company, a tea packaging company based in Hoboken, New Jersey . He felt that tea should be a drink for everyone, not just the wealthy , so he strived to make packaging and shipping less expensive.

Instead of arriving in crates, Sir Thomas packaged his loose tea in multiple weight options. The tea was also standardised, so Lipton customers knew exactly what to expect.

Thomas Lipton developed a passion for yachting, between 1899 and 1930 Lipton challenged the American holders of the America’s Cup through the Royal Ulster Yacht Club five times with yachts he named Shamrock through Shamrock V. He never won the cup, but he was awarded a special trophy as “the best of all losers”. This may sound double-edged, but one effect of his efforts to win the cup was to make his name well known across the United States, and his tea very popular there.

Although Lipton, through his yachting, became a friend of royalty, as a self-made man he still had difficulty breaking into some corners of the highly stratified British society of the day. He was, for example, only accepted as a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron shortly before his death.

Lipton died at his home in north London in 1931. He left most of his wealth to his native city of Glasgow. His yachting trophies are now on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Sir Thomas Lipton was buried alongside his parents and siblings in Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis.

Liptons continues today as part of the multinational Unilever brands, their teas and other beverages still bear his name and are a world known brand, not bad for a young lad born in a Glasgow Tenement to Irish immigrants.