New era in Northern Ireland: reminiscing about the old days

The above is doing the email rounds at the moment.

McGuinness: “So I shot him.”

Paisley: “Har, har, har, har.”

Or words to that effect.

Boy scores two hat-tricks

God Save Ireland was full of pride last night as he watched Son of God Save Ireland blast two hat-tricks in the Belfast Scouts League. He also notched up a brace in another game and a single goal in another.

All in all, his team played four games over the course of four hours to reach the Northern Ireland finals to be held in June. Watch this space.

Boy, are we lucky

Over the weekend we packed our nine year old off on his first Cubs camping experience. It lasted from fom Friday evening until Sunday afternoon and for us slightly anxious parents it was maybe the longest weekend of our lives.

Not that we needed to worry. On his first night, he didn’t get to sleep until 1.00am because ‘Johnny was singing karaoke’ in the tent. They also played moon and and stars with their torches on the side of the tent.

But that first night was very cold for May. So he and his tent mates got up at 5.30 on Saturday morning and played football until breakfast at 8.00am in an effort to keep warm.

The rest of the weekend revolved around skirmishing, water bombs, grass sledging and what-not. I’m not sure if he brushed his teeth much. We know he didn’t change his underwear. And he only changed his socks because the pair he was wearing got wet during a water activity.

So compare this innocent weekend’s camping with another story of a boy spending time away from home.

On BBC Radio 4 last week, the Book of the Week was A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

It’s a harrowing story, an astonishing tale of unrelenting horror and eventual redemption. Ishmael is just 12 years old when the rebel forces attack his village in Sierra Leone and he is separated from his family. He roams the forests trying to avoid the attention of the rebels who might recruit him. Near starvation and desperate to belong, he’s picked up by government forces. Eventually, a gun is placed in his hand and gradually he turns from a kid interested in mimicking hip-hop artists to a drugged-up killing machine, thirsty for vengeance against the rebels that wiped out his village.

Ishmael eventually escaped and went to live in the US where he graduated and wrote his story. But not before he had killed God knows how many people and had his childhood stolen.

And our chap? We took him to McDonald’s as a treat. He fell asleep on the way home.

U2 paint a history of rock n roll

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, please check out this slice of brilliance from director Gary Koepke. Apparently it involved 20 people on the editing side for over four months. Time well spent, I say.

For what died the sons of Roisin?

I’ve been very busy work-wise so it seems I’ve more than a little catching up to do blog-wise. So these are some of the things that struck me over the last while:

Let’s start with The Famous Northern Ireland Peace Process: Shortly after my last entry, the auspicious day arose, the day when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness came together to jointly take up the reins of First Minister and Deputy First Minister. For me, the most telling image on TV was that of old Mr Paisley of the DUP turning to shuffle back through the front door of Stormont while young Martin McGuinness of IRA/Sinn Fein gently laid a guiding and – massively – patronising hand on his back.

That annoyed me somewhat. Not just because it was a hypocritical piece of body language, but mainly because we went through a period of three and a half thousand dead to get to this stage of patting each other on the back.

Let’s face it, if this is where everyone wants to be, why did we not – for example – accept the Hume-SDLP vision much sooner? Because that’s what we now have, albeit packaged with significantly more pizazz. And that’s why the prospect of smiling photo-calls with beaming SF and DUP MLAs now annoys me. Not because of the power of their mandate, but because they’ve both callously switched the ‘Process’ on and off in the past.

Noticed a death anniversary notice in the local paper for an IRA man. Standing proudly by the words Oglaigh na hEireann were those other famous Republican words: You’ll Never Walk Alone. And instead of an Easter lily or some such iconic Republican graphic, was the gleaming crest of Liverpool Football Club.

Like Luke Kelly sang long ago, For What died the Sons of Roisin?

Carnival mood, smoke-free bars – could Belfast be getting better?

I come from Fermangh and despite the fact that I have lived in Belfast for about 30 years, I think I have always done so somewhat begrudgingly. It has meant that I have never given my all to the city. Indeed, I have always made determined efforts to escape it whenever possible – Fermanagh, Donegal, wherever.

But could I be changing? Am I mellowing, embracing the city a little more? I actually think I am and here are two instances when I felt a little more pride at being part of the city.

The first was on Tuesday night when we working on an edit until after midnight in a city-centre studio. Editing is a very slow process and there were frequent trips to the window to look out on the Donegall Square below. It was a warm evening and for the first time I had to admit that I could have been looking down on a Paris or Amsterdam scene: couples lazily walking hand in hand well after dark, people sipping beer at tables outside the hotel below us and a general feeling of ease and contentment.

The second was when I left work this evening in the Cathedral Quarter and felt a palpable buzz of excitement about the opening of the Quarter’s Arts Festival. I took the pic above as I rushed home, sorry that I couldn’t hang around and take a little more of it in.

I realise that this is only a snapshot but I’d like to be right about the mood change in the city. Maybe it’ll be tested come the weekend and the rain that’s forecast – then it’ll be back to dreary old Belfast again for a night. But I do hope that this new spirit won’t be dampened for very long.

Willie the rebel