ACOMSDave

Community Journalist

The Glass Boat by Alison Ward – a gay book review

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The Glass BoatThe Glass Boat is a fairy story.  No, not the way you think I mean.  It’s the story of people who might exist, of events that could happen.  It is, in short, somewhat magical.

An old wharf building is to be pulled down and the site re-developed.  to the man who wants to do this it is only bricks and mortar, bo the woman to whom he entrusts the design work for his new edifice soon finds out otherwise.  It is a magic place, a place that brings her into contact with people who inhabit the same world as herself but not in the same way as she does.  they do it in a way that makes the wharf their world, using only bits and pieces of her world as and when they need them.  Dealing with the so-called real world is a problem for them, in that it intrudes on what they really want to do.

 

This is a magical book, with a magical story, written in the 1980s.  It entices you in, and you have to decide to continue with the journey or jump off.  Take a leap of faith and stay with the story – hopefully yo will be surprised as I was1

The Glass Boat

 

 

 

 

Information:

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Brilliance Books Ltd (26 Nov. 1983)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 96 pages

 

First published in Gay Star Issue No 16 held by the Linenhall Library

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1991 A Belfast Pride to be remembered!

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1991 A Belfast Pride to be remembered!1991 A Belfast Pride to be remembered!, happened.  An intrepid bunch of gays and lesbians marched through Belfast in the first Belfast Pride.  This was an auspicious day and has been rightly celebrated because it said we were more than just a court case (Jeffrey Dudgeon v the United Kingdom).  

In fact, we were and are!

But what people forget is that we didn’t just have a march (or in Belfast terms ‘a wee dander’), we also had a week of events. e.g.

 

  •  ‘Mixtures and Allsorts was in the Old Museum Arts Centre.  It was billed as a cabaret – we were required to bring our own refreshments – so we did! There was a vast range of performance styles:
  • large chunks of Martin Sherman’s ‘Bent’ done by the Gauntlet theatre group
  • The Confused Sisters juggled with flaming torches
  • Two women from Out and Out theatre company performed a dance, which was reminiscent of the beautifully choreographed love scenes from Desert Heart. 
  • Paul Johnston, of the Dublin-based mandance, did a beautiful, angular solo, described as being based on dreams
  • The Hole in the Wall gang (Eamon Freil, Hugh Jordan, and Brian Lynch) did various pieces, including some risque jokes.
  • The Queen’s University Drama Society produced an inverted parlour-farce
  • There was Mary Scarlett’s 20-year-old ‘Insight in the life of the”Heterosexual” (A married (male) couple trying to talk their rebellious son out of his obsession with …  wait for it … ‘het-ero-sex-ual-ity

All this was completed on a minuscule budget, and with the best-willed volunteers you could imagine.

For a first attempt, it was good, indeed it was brilliant and excellent, and obviously, the current Belfast Pride is radically different and has grown.  But what mustn’t be forgotten is that this first Belfast Pride came on the back of a historic judicial judgment in the Europe Courts which had been brought by Jeff Dudgeon with the support of so many individuals and groups throughout all of Great Britain and Ireland – from fundraisers in Liverpool, Manchester, London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Dublin, to people who distributed flyers and distributed them in venues everywhere.

1991 A Belfast Pride to be remembered! 1991 A Belfast Pride to be remembered!

 

Belfast Pride is our pride – but remember we still have to continue and show who we are, and therefore what we are marching for yearly.

 

The full write-up of the first Belfast Pride can be found in the Linenhall Library archives, where copies of all the Gay Star, update, and upstart magazines have been placed for research.

 

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