Outside China China, Bangor

Drove up to Bangor on Friday to give a reading in the Aspects Literary Festival. I love driving, especially to gigs like this (not a regular event by any means). And I like the road to Belfast/Bangor, the way it calmly rises and falls through fields, housing estates, towns... I had an old Bob Dylan cassette: The Freewheeling... Every so often an image leapt from the sidelines: an oddly symmetrical lines of chimneys, birds lifting from a clump of trees in a neat diamond patten, immediately breaking then remaking itself. Approaching Bangor, I saw something which I hadn't time to capture (but I caught it on the way back to Dublin on Saturday): the of those advertisments for GOD that one sees in that part of the island.

They had put me up in The Royal, a hotel near the harbour, not far from the Heritage Centre where the events were being held. I enjoy hotels and guesthouses, almost as much as driving. I love the smells of cooking, polish and fresh sheets, the sense of intersecting lives, the civilised strangeness. The rooms may be boxy or dingy, but there is invariably something interesting, like the view from the window above. Who or what is he waiting for, for half an hour at least? For the restaurant to open? Does he work there, or is it a coincidence that he's (possibly) Chinese? I was told the food was good, and almost went for a meal here. But I opted for a place called Jeffers (The Boathouse) nearby, where I had a beautiful fillet of lamb. It hit the spot.

The reading, incidentally, was good fun, as was the Q&A session afterward. I met some good people and talked till late.