So beyond Milltown and the Bus Depot where the buses go to bed…..A roundabout. A fork in the road. I go right. The Glen Road. The waste ground where Andersonstown Barracks stood looks too small. Plastered with Sinn Féin and broader republican stuff.On the right is the Gravediggers Arms (the semi official name for McEnaney’s Bar) and the shop where I used to get my hair cut fifty years ago when I had hair to cut. Relatives for Justice are here. It is kinda posh …..The primary school headmaster lived here. And James Kelly the journalist. There was a takeaway called Pig McNeillys very briefly here in the 1990s and it seemed a crass reference to an old time RUC man who maybe lived in the area. I think it was soon renamed. The old Alpine like chapel is on the right. It used to be scenic enough for weddings but it is falling apart and I am pleasantly surprised that there is a modern church…St Matthias in the grounds. Arizona Street which my father always said was named after 1912 when Arizona became the 48th state. And a Credit Union. Gransha shops and Gransha itself where SDLP MLA Desmond Gillespie lived and meetings were held there. We had protests outside …wives and parents of internees. But they were not slow about asking for help when they wanted it. The Glenowen where outside circa 1971, I was on my way to see T (my first girlfriend) and the British Army stopped me. They were unpleasant. Encountering the “Brits” was a lottery. Sometimes it was routine and sometimes scary. This was the latter. Being stopped, questioned, is emasculating. Sometimes it was all very hearts and minds and sometimes it was from the Frank Kitson Book of Counter Terrorism…intimidate the civilians.There are brave men in their 70s who answered back and got a rifle butt for so doing and they wear the scar as a badge of honour. They are almost forgiving of the Army…an occupational hazard of being 19 in 1971. Yet here am I unscarred…just a coward who is unforgiving of English men in their 70s who are now retired and living in Aldershot, Colchester and Catterick.On the other hand inside the Glenowen in 1981 and a band was playing Theres A Kinda Hush All Over the World Tonight” and I was holding someone close.Joseph Tumelty lived at this corner. If you have ever seen a British film from the 1950s , you have seen the actor playwright. Also once father in law of Sting, who some people like.The houses from the bus depot to Kennedy Way are posher than I remember. Right up to St Theresa’s Church, St Theresa’s Hall and St Theresa’s Primary School. I turn left into Bingnian/Bernagh and go past the house where T lived. I don’t suppose that 53 years later, this could be called stalking. There is one of those IRA memorials now…B Company Second Battalion. The junction of Bingnian/Bernagh with Glen Road is what we used to call the Terminus…two terminuseses (termini) in fact. The furthest point of Belfast Corporation (red) buses…Glen Road (via Falls Road #13) and Turf Lodge (via Grosvenor Road, Springfield Road and Monagh Road #9). Again…according to my father……red bus territory was confined to three miles radius from the City Hall. In the mid 1960s my family used to get #13 to this terminus and walk up the Glen Road, my parents looking at the new houses being built, checking on the progress and wondering which one we would get when our condemned house was knocked down. On the right hand side of Glen Road, there is a convent in spacious grounds and then some nice houses…Ayrfield, The houses are new to me but the name is not. Ayrfield references the mother (?) house of the Christian Brothers. One summer evening in 1971, I saw Wee Titch walking towards T and me. As the nickname suggests he was a diminutive man, solely employed to intimidate very young boys. I knew I was going to shout the word “Bxxtard” at him but as we passed, he said “Good evening” and I quick as lightening replied “good evening Brother”. Maybe the next time I see him, I will get more satisfaction. My old school, St Marys is next door. I feel nothing for it. We moved “up the road” to the new build in September 1968. My first year of A levels. It was still a building site and after a couple of post “Summer of Love” years where we did not have to wear uniforms, we were put back into uniform. There is a 15ft wall separating the laneway to the school from those Ayrfield houses. Back in 1968, this was my first experience of pupils DRIVING to school up that laneway. Maybe my first experience that the boys from St Peters Parish were different from the boys from St Brigids Parish. I actually spent most of 1968 on the beak, on the hike, playing truant, playing hookey and avoiding PE classes by hiding in the toilets. Unsurprisingly in September 1969 and less than a year from A levels, I just left school and got a job with Belfast Corporation. Worst mistake of my life. Thirty five gap years until I went to Queens University. Walking down that laneway for the last time in 1969, I turned and gave the school a V sign. I have actually been back once…an open night as a potential parent. There is now a gate marked private at the top of the laneway so I turned back to Glen Road. I considered one last V sign for old times sake but it seemed vulgar for a man of my sophistication. Next door…What happened to Bass Carrington, the brewery. Back in the 1960s it looked big, glassy and new. Now it is a housing development. And whatever happened to the Cross and Passion Secondary School? It was new in the late 1960s. I recall green and gold skirts. The laneway to the site is rubbish strewn and there are locked gates. A man tells me that the school building is still up that lane but has not been used in years, Across the road is another school. Now designated as All Saints, I remember it as simply Glen Road CBS. And our Barrack Street school were all told to go there one Sunday to greet Cardinal William Conway. And we all cheered him because he was a past pupil. We only had the Cardinal and Joe Devlin MP as alumni. Now we have Gerry Adams, Mairtin O’Muilleoir, Paul Clark, Vincent Kearney and Martin McAleese (husband of Mary). The all weather running track at the school was one of my favourite spots in the 1970s. I could run forever. And yet it has bad memories. Prior to Christmas in 1963, the theatrical Speech and Drama teacher scooped first and second years to be in a Nativity play at St Marys Hall. and we rehearsed here on Glen Road. I was not chosen for any acting skills but rather I was short enough to be a Pharisees child. A pattern emerges. My parents……were passive. Whatever the school said was ok…..I could not draw breath but Art (over Science) was chosen for me. I did not want to be in a fancy new gymnasium but had no choice. I did not want to be ridiculed in a school nativity play. No choice. In fairness, the middle class parents knew how the system worked. Working class parents did not know. In some ways it takes more than a generation for many working class families to become truly middle class. There is a new (to me) church on Glen Road. Holy Spirit. But around Clonelly, Rosnareen, Ramoan and Tullymore……that’s where we used to watch the houses get built. And on Glen Road, another Credit Union and houses at “Briar View”. Surely a reference to the Green Briar, a bar and restaurant and oddly a golf driving range which was accessed thru a traveller encampment. And then…….is that the “Roddy”? The Roddy McCorley Visitor Centre and Bar and Restaurant. I was at a Christening celebration there about two years ago so no need to visit the small museum. Autographed aerial photograph of Long Kesh but at least one autograph should be airbrushed out. And autographed shirt from Armagh (women) prisoners. And other artefacts from the Troubles. And a garden outside dedicated to Cumann na mBan. It is the old story. Remembering and/or Remembrance. If the Republican community wants to remember in their own way, then that’s fair enough. The “middle ground” or what still remains of it would be appalled. In the old days Hannahstown Hill was countryside. Nearly got killed there in 1970s when my bicycle brakes failed and I went across traffic on Glen Road. Actually the hills above…Blackmountain and Divis. Apparently the early Catholic incomers to West Belfast settled on Falls Road because of the small fires lit on the mountainside to inform them of the location of a Mass Rock where services would be held in Penal times. The best known of these sites was about half way between Hannahstown and Glenavy. There is a church there called The Rock and still part of Hannahstown Parish where my cousin was priest in residence from mid 1960s until his death about eight years ago. He was also the chaplain at Long Kesh for many years. Indeed the parishes we now know as Twinbrook, Poleglass, Lenadoon were once all open fields and my cousin was instrumental in building churches and schools in the area. I turn down Suffolk Road and go past Donegal Celtic Football Club. It is pretty impressive. I could go down Suffolk Road to Stewartstown Road but I go through the Lenadoon estate. It is a zig zag maze of streets and not as nice as the older parts of the Andersonstown public housing. Odd to think that there was a time we actually wanted to be re-housed here. The whole area looks over-crowded and clearly when it was being built at the end of the 1960s, no planner considered that the tenants might own cars. In many ways Lenadoon holds bad memories for me. It was the place where the IRA ceasefire of summer 1972 occurred. Loyalists, republicans and British will proclaim differing views of how it all fell apart. I think it was the best chance we had to avoid another twenty plus years of violence. It could and should have been handled better Negotiating the maze of streets was not easy but as I was going downhill I knew I would end up on the Stewartstown Road and the glider back to the city centre.