Earliest Childhood Memories Part Three- Taxidermy in The Dead Face Shop (Delaney's Restaurant, Lombard Street)
/The third instalment of how my earliest childhood memories seem to have guided my likes and loves in life. I blogged about my earliest ever memory being of a collection of garden gnomes on the Castlereagh Road, and how I'm fascinated by exterior features used as interior walls, thanks to many toddler aged visits to Summerland in the Isle of Man.
The third iteration of my toddler years spookily influencing my later life isn't so much a memory, as I don't remember the tales my parents recount now, but it involves Delaney's Restaurant in Lombard Street, Belfast.
Delaney's still stood there until a few years ago, when it was gutted and turned into a souless Caffè Nero.
My Mum and Granny would take me to Delaney's when I was still only three or four years old, and if you ever set foot in the dimly lit, mysterious eatery you'll have noticed one thing above all others- the massive amount of taxidermy.
Back then it would be my favourite place to eat, because of the taxidermy. I would refer to it as 'The Dead Face Shop', as I would eat my broth under the watch of the stuffed head of a buffalo, elk and other beasts.
In my 20s I spent a few years working next door to Delaney's, in the fabulously kitsch independent boutique Liberty Blue.
Of course now taxidermy is part of my weird and wonderful home. I would have the large pieces Delaney's once had if I could, if I had the money. Myself, I have a fox mount, piranhas, a stoat and a selection of different birds. I would have loved to have owned a piece of the Delaney's collection. Maybe some how some day something will turn up for me to buy and it will all come full circle.
