‘A dog bowl. I’m telling you, you get your lunch in a f**king dog bowl. Hamburger, cheeseburger, curry chips, cheesey chips. You name it. If it clogs your arteries, you get it. For a fiver. In a dog bowl.’
Our taxi driver is off on one. Proper carried away he is, on the merits of a good-value lunch in the city centre. Mikey’s, apparently. I’ve somehow managed to live in this city for 20 years and remain ignorant as to its existence. Not any more. It’s next door to the Northern Whig which is all shut up at half ten of an evening because the city centre has been rendered a ghost town due to our dinosaur politicians, (so says our driver but I’m inclined to agree.) But of a weekend, Mikey’s is open til 4 or 5 in the morning, so revellers’ can line their tums and stave off the hangover. And then, they’re ‘up an at it’ again to keep the workforce fed on a Monday morning. I’ve got to try it. Watch out for pictures of me, SWB, eating from an aluminium dog bowl on Instagram, on a phone near you. Can barely contain myself….
‘Woof Woof,’ shouts our Foneacab driver as he drives off into the still-light evening, his right hand waving out the window. I’m telling you; Belfast, what a city. Would you live anywhere else?
