Celebrate

Ignore the George Best mural and take a closer look at the bus shelter. New Year's Eve was celebrated in Belfast in much the same way as it is over the rest of the United Kingdom: by uprooting a tree and smashing it through glass. Sammy McIroy, Danny Blanchflower, Tommy Cassidy and Derek Dougan would have looked on disdain, if only they hadn't been painted over when Bestie snuffed it. Well, Derek Dougan wouldn't have seen it because blobs of cement were placed in his eyes for the temerity of suggesting a united Irish football team. As did George Best, but he escaped punishment because he was, y'know, special. Either that or his face was out of reach of the blobbers.

But there you go, another piece of this country's biography whitewashed from history, just like the unrecorded loyalist mural that lies under Georgie's shirt. An inevitable necessity I suppose. Eventually it'll be like nothing ever happened here, and we'll be just another backward region in the archipelago off the coast of Europe. This saddens and gladdens in equal measure, equilibrating a zero emotion; the correct way to feel about our stumbling progression to banality.