Where Are We Now by Glenn Patterson

Author:Glenn Patterson [Patterson, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838931988
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

*

There was always a bit of a lull at the Records Office in the autumn when the cruise ships left and the tourist numbers dropped, though with every passing year – every new colour supplement feature and Lonely Planet accolade – the drop was a little less steep. The freelance researchers counted the days. Sure, the tourists ensured there was plenty of work to go around – to say nothing of the tips – but most of them if pressed would have told you they preferred having the place more or less to themselves and the time to pursue their own projects as the year wound slowly down.

So, of course, someone in the upper reaches had gone and had the bright idea this year of putting on a series of lunchtime lectures – ‘research showcases’ – to pull more people in.

Herbie and the other researchers gathered in the cafe to watch as Briony from HR – ‘Brisk Briony’, behind her back – wrote the dates of six consecutive Tuesdays on strips of paper, rolled them tight and tossed them into an empty Lavazza tin.

‘How do we decide who draws first?’ someone asked.

‘I point at you,’ Briony said. Briskly.

She pointed at Herbie third. He pulled out the date of the penultimate Tuesday, which happened also to be the penultimate Tuesday of November.

‘What do you want to call that?’ Briony asked. ‘“An Illustrated Guide to Tithe Applotments”?’

Pete cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you can already hear the stampeding feet… going the other way.’

Briony pointed at him. ‘Now you.’ He drew week three.

‘Ooh,’ said Lydia. ‘The Difficult Third Lecture.’

Pete rolled the paper into a ball and flicked it at her with his thumb. ‘Wee buns,’ he said.

The Deputy Lord Mayor arrived with her entourage on Coca-Cola-Zero-branded Belfast Bikes to launch the series and referred disconcertingly in her words of welcome to her great-grandfather’s experiences as a child evacuee following the Blitz of April 1941. Herbie missed the next couple of sentences as he tried to do the maths. Child meaning sixteen or under in ’41, born 1925 at the earliest, another two generations between him and her, making her… twenty-five? Tops? When he tuned in again, she was expanding on what she called the Next Iteration of the city’s development.

‘The council’s target is to double the value of tourism spend by 2030.’

(‘That’s ambitious,’ Lydia whispered, and flashed up the time on her phone, ‘it’s already 13.07.’) The cruise ships were all well and good, but too many visitors apparently were still coming in for a night and two days, a lightning raid up on the coach or train from Dublin, round the same handful of attractions before escaping South again. ‘We in the City Hall are working closely with the tourism sector to deliver world-class three- to five-day Belfast city breaks, but in the short term our goal is to persuade every visitor to stay just one more night.’ Someone behind Herbie crooned the last three words, Phil Collins style.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.