Wandering Ballymun

Thursday was to be the day that David and I, with the help of his friend of great magnanimity, Larry, were to go to Ulster. My family is from Ulster — specifically, County Fermanagh — and one of the big to-dos for the trip had always been to get to Enniskillen, if possible. Now it looked like this would be possible.

I got up that morning in advance of everyone else and got cleaned up. I spoke with Mary for a while before Dave got up. She offered me breakfast but I didn't want to put her out that early, with Dave not even up yet, so I politely declined. I imagined that she'd want some time to tend to Cara without having to worry about my comfort, so for that reason, and others, I excused myself to take a walk.

I'd actually wanted to just take a brisk morning wander in the immediate vicinity, just off on my own to sort of take it in. Unguided, unintended. Just looking around. It seemed like a nice way to pass some time before things really got rolling, so I set out from Ard Na Meala with the vague idea of heading north, then east to Ballymun Road, and then coming back from the proximity of the shopping centre.


This area of Ballymun is currently undergoing an urban renewal. There were, among other things, seven apartment buildings in Ballymun named after the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. From what I understand, low-rise townhouses are meant to replace the six towers that have been demolished.


I didn't do it. :)


Looked over by a four-legged Jackeen.


Not very illustrative, but I was amused by the odd sentiment: PEDESTRIANS KILL, and then the arrow. Obviously the original intent was to guide people like me to the street. Ballymun has a bit of a rough-edges reputation, though, so I'm glad I saw it broad daylight. :)


A wide-angle shot of some attractive (well, to me, anyway) apartments at the very north edge of my little sojourn. This was assembled from several shots using a freeware program called AutoStitch.


Heading east, I arrived at Ballymun Road and headed south. This view looks south towards the intersection where we were catching the bus (across the street) to head south to O'Connell Street and the city centre in general.


An election for the European Parliament was underway.


By the time I reached Ballymun Shopping Centre, I discovered I was indeed rather hungry. I started wondering if they had something familiar in the mall... a McDonald's, say, or Burger King, or even some "exotic" local fast food chain where I might snag something breakfastesque. Ballymun Shopping Centre is a strange kind of hybrid... it's not really an "indoor" mall; it's not really an exposed strip mall... it's more a sort of covered cluster of mingled strip malls reminiscent of a place I knew when I was very young. But wandering through it, I found nothing quite what I was after. So I went into SPAR. SPAR, I had correctly deduced, was a European convenience store chain. I ducked in for a quick look around at what was on offer, and was completely slack-jawed to find this:


If you're not Canadian, your immediate reaction will be, "yeah, so, and...?" If you are Canadian, you'll no doubt be as stunned as I was. Tim Hortons? In Dublin? I would have been amazed to see a kiosk like this in most places in the United States, let alone in Europe. But, as I learned on my return home, SPAR has made a deal with Tim Hortons to serve their coffee and donuts at several locations in Europe, and incredibly, one of them happens to be in Ballymun.

Tim Hortons, if you don't know, is a vast chain of coffee shops across Canada, and now making headway in the United States as well. It's named after a hockey player of the 1960s and 70s. Tim Horton played for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres (among other teams). Back then, NHL players didn't make anything like the money they make these days. The smart ones would set money aside and set themselves up in a business to retire on. That's what Tim Horton did, opening his first store in Hamilton, Ontario sometime in the mid-60s. Sadly, he was killed in a car accident on his way home from a game. But his chain took off; there are thousands of them across Canada now and it verges on a patriotic institution. Seeing it represented in Dublin was really a shock, and for a few moments, I was intensely aware that I was far from home, and the differences I'd been discounting became very real. Then it struck me that this was a symbol that those differences were, in fact, closing up. So was the Mars Bar I bought and ate on my way "home" to Ard Na Meala. :)

By then, everyone was up and around, and Cara and the cats, Sammy and Todd, were having a blast chasing bubbles around the garden.