The first thing you notice about The Sunflower in the big green cage guarding the front door. It looks like something you could go diving with sharks in. I was not 100% certain why it was there, but given that we are in Belfast I had a decent idea.
The last Belfast pub I was recommended was The Crown Liquor Saloon, which is a Victorian masterpiece decorated with beautiful tiling, stained glass and crafted wooden booths to allow ladies to ‘enjoy some privacy.’ I was half expecting the same sort of thing, but The Sunflower was a much more informal affair.
Having previously been known as The Avenue and The Tavern, the pub has apparently been on this spot since the late 1800s. Despite this, it feels as though time stopped in The Sunflower right around 1976, when the vibe around these parts will have been a bit different to how it is today.
There’s work by local artists on the walls, a market in the outdoor bit which today is dedicated to all things Palestine, and the bearded barman is involved in a heated discussion about The Cranberries. ‘This is my kind of place’, I think as I shuffle up to the bar. If only I could get a seat in the corner so I really take it in. A couple of people leave and we are about to move in before a man in his 50s intervenes. ’We have been waiting on those seats,’ he says with that muscular Northern Irish twang that sounds like he is asking a question and answering it at the same time.
A few minutes later a guy who has been sat in the corner with his pal comes up to whisper something to us. ‘We’ll be leaving in a minute…’ he explains, ‘why don’t yous come sit with us and then you can have the seats.’ A stellar idea. We chat with them for a bit longer and then find ourselves with a great spot by the door.
There is time to kill before we are meeting up with people for dinner and the thing I want to do the most is watch the Liverpool game, which is untelevised because of the UK 3pm football blackout. Not wanting to look like a digitally addicted brat, I take out a Jack London book and hide my phone behind it to sneakily watch the game. This has the opposite effect I wanted it to.
‘This guy is pretending to read a book and he’s watching the bloody football on his phone!’ The woman who has rumbled me is part of a group of three who are working their way through bottles of rose. The ice now broken, my new friend now proceeds onto relationship advice. ‘She’s lovely looking, her..’ she says of my date. ‘You should put a ring on her finger.’
‘If she plays her cards right…’ I shoot back cheekily. This was a mistake.
‘Listen to this, fucker. Play her cards right indeed!’ She turns to point at me directly. ‘You want kneecapped, son.’ Now this is the kind of Belfast experience I was looking for! Threatened with a kneecapping by a woman in her sixties and it is not even tea time.
This lady, it turns out, is a care worker who looks after children and adults with serious learning disabilities. She has been coming to this pub for years. ‘Even when we were underage, we’d try to sneak into the cage and hope nobody noticed us,’ she reminisces with a warm smile. Now's my chance to ask about this cage and the answer does not disappoint.
‘Oh, it’s because of all of that fucking shite…’ she says with real venom. I think ‘all of that fucking shite’ is the most perfect way to describe everything in Britain’s colonial past, and present for that matter. The woman wants to talk more about her job though.
‘I love them, really…’ she is saying of the people she cares for. ‘There’s are so funny, they brighten my life.’
‘I was talking to this one girl, Janette, and I says to her, “Do you love me Janette”?’
‘Janette turns round to me and says “Love ye? I don’t even fecking like ye!”’
SUNFLOWER PUBLIC HOUSE, 65 Union Street, Belfast, BT1 2JG, Northern Ireland
Bonus material - My date, not being from this part of the world. Did not know that kneecapping is a particular gangland punishment that was very popular for a while. ‘I thought it just meant a humiliation,’ she explained ‘like “bringing someone down to their knees”’. Technically, I suppose, she is not wrong.