When Irish eyes are smiling

In a con­cer­ted effort to avoid examin­ing my navel quite so much — delight­ful though it is, and no doubt filled with the most deli­cious rem­nants of fluff (no, I haven’t tasted it, I prom­ise) — I am going to endeav­our, just occa­sion­ally, to cast my eyes bey­ond the four walls of my fifth floor flat and look at what’s hap­pen­ing in the world. Affairs of a cur­rent nature, if you will. News. Polit­ics. Soci­ety. Oh, you know — all that import­ant stuff. Think of me as a bar­gain base­ment Andrew Marr, but without the pro­trud­ing ears. Fur­ther­more, please note that since is my per­sonal corner of the evil inter­net empire, I shall report on such mat­ters in my own unique way — with a hefty dose of cyn­icism and a fair amount of bad taste. In other words, this is blog­ging like wot I some­times used to do back in them olden days, when I had far less hair than I do now.

It won’t last, of course. But at least I’m try­ing. Very trying.

So, it’s been an his­toric day in North­ern Ire­land. Oh, you remem­ber North­ern Ire­land — it’s the bit that juts out from the top right-hand corner of what is some­times clum­sily referred to as the ‘island of Ire­land’, which for longer than any­one cares to think about has been unable to decide whether it wants to join its neigh­bours on one side to drink Guin­ness and listen to fiddle-de-dee music whilst dan­cing a jig on the spot, or nestle into the wel­com­ing but slightly inebri­ated arms that await it over the Irish Sea, dock­ing in the port of Liv­er­pool to drink cheap and gassy bottled beer, eat Scouse and listen to bands of young men churn­ing out end­less rehashes of Mer­sey­beat. Calm down, calm down, la!

Yes, you recall it now, don’t you? For years dur­ing my child­hood, your child­hood, your par­ents’ child­hood and pos­sibly even your grand­par­ents’ child­hood too (though I may be exag­ger­at­ing for cheap effect with that last one), North­ern Ire­land would reg­u­larly fea­ture as the second story on every news pro­gramme. It took up almost per­man­ent own­er­ship of that pos­i­tion because the throw­ing of pet­rol bombs at army vehicles and those seem­ingly end­less march­ing sea­sons fea­tur­ing ram­pa­ging men in sashes and bowler hats were too much of a reg­u­lar occur­rence to be con­sidered the top head­line, yet were regarded as being rather too close to home to safely allow such events to be demoted to their right­ful place some­where below the latest civil­ian upris­ing in a far-flung for­eign out­post ruled over by a power-crazed tin­pot dictator.

(Please note that if I haven’t yet man­aged to offend your par­tic­u­lar corner of the United King­dom — or indeed your chosen corner of the globe — with a cheap region­al­ist ste­reo­type, don’t worry. I’ll get round to you even­tu­ally, I promise.)

Today, how­ever, has brought moment­ous news of such moment­ous­ness that is quite, quite moment­ous. The true romance tale that we thought would never come to pass has been revealed in all its glory. ‘Whis­per­ing’ Ian Pais­ley (Uni­on­ist, Prot­est­ant, shouty, a Rev­er­end) and Gerry Adams (Repub­lican, Cath­olic, beardy, who for some years couldn’t use his own voice on tele­vi­sion, being imper­son­ated instead by a squeaky glove pup­pet) have come out of the closet and declared that they are ‘an item’. It’s love, folks. It’s lurve.

Take a look at the pho­to­graph above and tell me that it doesn’t soften your stony heart. Tell me that you can’t spot the twinkle in Ian’s and Gerry’s moist eyes as they enjoy a romantic din­ner for two at Stor­mont. Tell me that you don’t secretly wish that they were actu­ally hold­ing hands. Bless. This pic­ture fills me with a def­in­ite warm and fuzzy feel­ing, so it does, to be sure, to be sure. (Please insert other typ­ic­ally irish phrases here which com­mu­nic­ate sim­ilar levels of vig­or­ously nod­ding agreement.)

From 8 May, Ian and Gerry will be ‘power-sharing’ in North­ern Ire­land. Power. Mmhmm. Growl. Grr. Naughty boys. To explain, ‘power-sharing’ is a little like a sexual rela­tion­ship based on prin­ciples of dom­in­a­tion and sub­mis­sion. Some­times Gerry will be on top, some­times Ian. Some­times Ian will give and Gerry will receive, other times vice versa. But in the true spirit of polit­ical co-operation and inter­ming­ling of bod­ily flu­ids, they will both clean up the mess afterwards.

Without wish­ing to express any doubts about this arrange­ment, I can ima­gine that some occa­sions in the future will undoubtedly find Ian — he of the power­ful voice that pings the pointer into the red on the decibel mon­itor, even when he’s whis­per­ing sweet noth­ings into Gerry’s ear — holler­ing “I’m in charge! I’m in charge! May God have mercy upon your soul!” For­tu­nately, how­ever, I’m sure that Gerry will know how to respond. He will merely stroke his ful­somely beardy chin in a thought­ful man­ner, give his power-sharing other half his fox­i­est narrow-eyed stare through his steamed-up spec­tacles, and remind the good Rev­er­end that he had bet­ter behave him­self or else ‘Mad’ Mar­tin McGuin­ness will be unleashed from his hiding-place in the ward­robe to admin­is­ter a sound spank­ing. Or a ‘pun­ish­ment beat­ing’, as I believe they’re called. Or maybe I don’t mean that at all. Maybe I just mean a thor­ough talking-to. Yes, a thor­ough talking-to, that’s right.

(In truth, I am get­ting a little scared now, so I would just like to reit­er­ate that this entry is in humour. Allegedly. It’s in jest. It is not to be taken ser­i­ously. Got that? Good. I like Irish people. All Irish people. Indeed, some of my best friends are Irish. Oh dear, this is still all going hor­ribly wrong, isn’t it? Er, what about if I tell you that I own three Pogues albums, most of the U2 back cata­logue and a greatest hits col­lec­tion by the Under­tones? Will that do? What fur­ther proof do you want of my innate one­ness with the Irish people? Well? Maybe I shouldn’t men­tion that I can’t stand Guinness.)

To con­clude, such a bal­ance of power can only be a Good Thing. A Good Thing rather than a Bad Idea. It paves the way for the future — a future where the gov­ernance of North­ern Ire­land always runs smoothly. Where peace and polit­ical co-operation reigns forever­more. Until the next time it doesn’t, of course.

Or to put it another way, and to flag­rantly appro­pri­ate then mis­quote the favour­ite catch­phrase of that sports com­ment­ator whose name I can never remem­ber: mark my words, they’ll be dan­cing in the ter­raced streets of the Falls and Shank­ill Roads tonight.