Loyalist Feuding, IRA Disarming, What
Difference Does It Make?
Difference Does It Make?
Part Two – An Unexpected Optimism
Sat by the window as the train leaves Ballymena station and
trundles on towards Belfast Central, if a fella’s got his eyes
proper tuned, he can see a cancerous past spread its legs and
give birth to a writhing, squealing infant future. Somewheres
along that glorious stretch the water breaks, the belly
trembles, the offspring crawls out squinting at the sun and the
parent chokes on its own bile.
The boarded-window estates, the flags been hanging for decades,
the murals and the scrawling cross the walls, they all get
fewer and further between, till next thing a man knows it’s the
shimmering Royal Mail building to the right, the motorways
stacked one on top the other, the high-rises, the reek of
commerce.
A cluster-bomb of contrasting emotions. Elation upon entering
the City, coupled with intense hatred for the soulless banshee
fuckers who let the estates out there end up in such a pitiful
condition in the first place. A man gets to thinking bout how
he can sympathise with the fellas headed out this way last
weekend with nothing more than a sketchy map and a couple
pistols.
32 armoured-van robberies in Northern Ireland this year
already, the radio lass announced a while back, and then it’s
The Rakes;
“22 grand job… in the city!”
Thank fuck the train service terminates at Great Victoria
Street, otherwise a man would be forced for to watch the whole
affair reach its ghastly conclusion; that kid who crawled out
the guts thirty miles ago, it grows up embittered and spiteful
and shitting and puking cross the country till it collapses
fourteen miles south a Dublin.
But right here, right in the centre of Belfast City, the kid’s
just reached its teens. It’s optimistic, it’s got ideals, you
can smell it amongst the skaters sat outside City Hall, you can
see it reflected in the puddles outside The Kremlin.
Couple miles away Stormont Castle grinds and groans and every
now and again a sound-bite slips out the cracks, words like
“Decommission” and “Disband” and “Progress”, shit dripping out
a withered, dying arsehole, and reporters crawling out
Strangford Lough on hands and knees fighting for a fistful.
Roomfuls of shuffling hell-spawn renegades arriving by police
escort, spending the day babbling irrelevant cock into each
other’s ears, and The Belfast Telegraph bounding from the
newsstands with talk of Adams Says “Perhaps”, Falls Down
Comatose In Pool Of Noxious Semen.
Who produced this semen? Pray god it wasn’t a Unionist!
Sometimes, just for a chuckle, a man might be tempted to let
loose a Real Issue amongst those detestable rogues just for to
see how the fuckers deal with it all, how the spines twist
round as they scramble for a hint of a note worth noting, those
beady half-eyes black with ambition.
And the headlines roar “Feuding… Agreement… Peace Talks… Disarm”
And the folks sat outside the City Hall, three hundred kids all
listening to different songs on the head-phones, if they could
be bothered, what they’d say would be “What?”
They need a hint to remind them why they were supposed to give
a fuck, and a man finds it hard to offer any sort of answer.
Who are these politicians, these spectres supposed to be
offering any sort of service to these youngsters? Who are these
dead-eyed hustlers? Hideous toothless crones staggering towards
the City Centre, barking in delirious tongues, hollering about
how they’re all set for to think about adopting ideals the
folks here adopted years ago, they fall to the pavements and
rot, they’re swept off fore the night’s out.
Two headed monstrosities biting at each other and met with
nothing but bemused glances.
Braying insensible creatures too fucked-up to notice
everybody's stopped listening, and it’d be a maniac who’d
suggest we’d be better off if we lent an ear after all this
time.
And yet outside of this tiny area in this fairly small City,
still these bastards are all there is.
No wonder a fella’s sat on the back doorstep at half four in
the morning, flicking cigarette ash to the wind and trying his
damndest to recall what got him feeling all optimistic a few
days ago. Something to do with Belfast. What the hell was it,
now?
Flickering recollections, a man the far side of a week-long gin
binge straining for to focus on a half-formed face, a statement
just a notch too low to pick up with any degree of confidence,
a fist swung in anger, but whose fist?
A kaleidoscopic haze of terrors;
Sin Fein and the DUP grabbing the most votes in the last
election; gun-running, dope-peddling, pimping maiming thugs
holding working class estates to ransom; hate-crimes
increasing, the White Nationalist Party dragging primate
knuckles cross any town desperate enough to offer them an ear;
backwards, egotistical scum hanging from every headline.
Where the fuck was that light again?
It rose from the tongue of a girl with an accent I can’t place.
In the back room of a bar on York Street, she’s been telling me
how anyone who thinks that the Good Friday agreement, that The
Assembly, might be some sign of progression, how those folks
are beyond her comprehension.
She’s talking about how The Assembly needs sectarianism to
exist, how it’s dependant on there being Republican parties and
Loyalist parties, it doesn’t acknowledge any political movement
outside of those concerned with self-serving barbaric bullshit.
But she smiles, and she takes a drink before leaning over, all
conspiratorial. “But the wonderful thing about it all, is that
it keeps those cunts preoccupied so as the rest of us can get a
message through.”
“Look how many folks were here for the anti-war rallies, look
how many folks in Belfast are involved in Amnesty
International, look how many teenagers are involved in
Socialist Youth.”
Somewhere around that last sentence, I think I can trace the
swelling of that optimism back to somewheres around those
syllables.
“Let the loyalists blow each other fuckless, let the IRA
squabble amongst themselves. They’re half-arsed gangster thugs
operating under some ridiculous presumption of nobility. Folks
are moving on, and whether they have guns or whether they
don't, those fuckers play no part in it.”
And a voice says “That’s all well and good here in this street
in this city, but my God, girl, someone had to vote for those
cretins. Yeah, Belfast Centre is gleaming at the minute, but
let me tell you, it’s a hella lot different a few miles down
the road.”
And it is.
But sometimes a man just has to take a moment for to stand in
the rain outside a night-club, two fellas with hands down each
other’s trousers just across the road, three gloriously
debauched youths to the right sniffing glue and singing “They
all get them out, for the boys in the band”, and maybe if the
mood’s in order and the chat’s in fine nick, maybe he can allow
himself a thought along the lines of “It may be well hidden,
and maybe the dinosaurs are still making the most noise, but
this city has changed, this country is changing, the
consciousness is shifting, however slowly, towards something
approaching rational, something approaching global.”
The fella in the toilets upstairs in The Front Page, he thinks
as much. Chewing his lips raw with that bizarre wordless
ecstasy mumble you can observe in most pub toilets on a
Saturday night, when he can string a sentence together it’s
something about “Wider perspectives” and “Fair Trade.”
Everyone knows the best conversations take place in tavern
toilets, everyone knows the really radical fuckers are to be
found in there, granted a serene platform from which to debate
and explore any and all manner of infamies. Away from the
crowds, away from the pounding speakers, folks are more
relaxed, they can be heard, no-one’s gonna interrupt, on
account of they dig the trail you’re fronting right now, on
account of even if they did disagree, they most likely got
their head tween someone’s thighs in the next cubicle.
Before he heads off on some spectacular nonsensical rant about
how he’s gonna hire five gypsies to follow him round Vienna, he
manages to say something along the lines of;
“Belfast, to me, see, to me, it’s like, Belfast is like someone
I used to hate waking up beside, and now it’s like, now I get
hard just thinkin’ bout it.”
A girl earlier on told me about how I shouldn’t worry, what
happens here spreads eventually, like some kind of ideological
Broadband. What we’ve got here, she says, you’ll have out there
soon enough.
Maybe at home the fellas in the scarves are still wandering
door-to-door selling disgusting hateful propaganda at a quid a
time to people too scared to say “No, actually I’d rather you
went and fucked yourself with a six-inch razor.”
Maybe a disconcerting percentage of teenagers are still being
coaxed towards the soulless hordes hiding behind some perverted
cause.
Maybe racist attacks are increasing, and are publicly condemned
by hypocritical bastards who privately curse every immigrant
they pass.
Maybe so, but there are more minds starting to question the
toxic retort they been fed since as far back as they remember.
More and more kids are turning on the ideals they accepted
without question, and are angry that such ideals were ever
offered in the first place.
More and more, the fella in the bar barking about “What Sinn
Fein / IRA don’t realise…” or “What the DUP need to accept
is…”, more and more that fella’s starting to look like Dylan’s
Ramona;
“But it grieves my heart, love,
To see you tryin’ to be a part of
A world that just don’t exist.
It’s all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe,
That sucks you into feelin’ like this.”
Thanks folks
Click Here For Part One – Soaked In Pessimism
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
trundles on towards Belfast Central, if a fella’s got his eyes
proper tuned, he can see a cancerous past spread its legs and
give birth to a writhing, squealing infant future. Somewheres
along that glorious stretch the water breaks, the belly
trembles, the offspring crawls out squinting at the sun and the
parent chokes on its own bile.
The boarded-window estates, the flags been hanging for decades,
the murals and the scrawling cross the walls, they all get
fewer and further between, till next thing a man knows it’s the
shimmering Royal Mail building to the right, the motorways
stacked one on top the other, the high-rises, the reek of
commerce.
A cluster-bomb of contrasting emotions. Elation upon entering
the City, coupled with intense hatred for the soulless banshee
fuckers who let the estates out there end up in such a pitiful
condition in the first place. A man gets to thinking bout how
he can sympathise with the fellas headed out this way last
weekend with nothing more than a sketchy map and a couple
pistols.
32 armoured-van robberies in Northern Ireland this year
already, the radio lass announced a while back, and then it’s
The Rakes;
“22 grand job… in the city!”
Thank fuck the train service terminates at Great Victoria
Street, otherwise a man would be forced for to watch the whole
affair reach its ghastly conclusion; that kid who crawled out
the guts thirty miles ago, it grows up embittered and spiteful
and shitting and puking cross the country till it collapses
fourteen miles south a Dublin.
But right here, right in the centre of Belfast City, the kid’s
just reached its teens. It’s optimistic, it’s got ideals, you
can smell it amongst the skaters sat outside City Hall, you can
see it reflected in the puddles outside The Kremlin.
Couple miles away Stormont Castle grinds and groans and every
now and again a sound-bite slips out the cracks, words like
“Decommission” and “Disband” and “Progress”, shit dripping out
a withered, dying arsehole, and reporters crawling out
Strangford Lough on hands and knees fighting for a fistful.
Roomfuls of shuffling hell-spawn renegades arriving by police
escort, spending the day babbling irrelevant cock into each
other’s ears, and The Belfast Telegraph bounding from the
newsstands with talk of Adams Says “Perhaps”, Falls Down
Comatose In Pool Of Noxious Semen.
Who produced this semen? Pray god it wasn’t a Unionist!
Sometimes, just for a chuckle, a man might be tempted to let
loose a Real Issue amongst those detestable rogues just for to
see how the fuckers deal with it all, how the spines twist
round as they scramble for a hint of a note worth noting, those
beady half-eyes black with ambition.
And the headlines roar “Feuding… Agreement… Peace Talks… Disarm”
And the folks sat outside the City Hall, three hundred kids all
listening to different songs on the head-phones, if they could
be bothered, what they’d say would be “What?”
They need a hint to remind them why they were supposed to give
a fuck, and a man finds it hard to offer any sort of answer.
Who are these politicians, these spectres supposed to be
offering any sort of service to these youngsters? Who are these
dead-eyed hustlers? Hideous toothless crones staggering towards
the City Centre, barking in delirious tongues, hollering about
how they’re all set for to think about adopting ideals the
folks here adopted years ago, they fall to the pavements and
rot, they’re swept off fore the night’s out.
Two headed monstrosities biting at each other and met with
nothing but bemused glances.
Braying insensible creatures too fucked-up to notice
everybody's stopped listening, and it’d be a maniac who’d
suggest we’d be better off if we lent an ear after all this
time.
And yet outside of this tiny area in this fairly small City,
still these bastards are all there is.
No wonder a fella’s sat on the back doorstep at half four in
the morning, flicking cigarette ash to the wind and trying his
damndest to recall what got him feeling all optimistic a few
days ago. Something to do with Belfast. What the hell was it,
now?
Flickering recollections, a man the far side of a week-long gin
binge straining for to focus on a half-formed face, a statement
just a notch too low to pick up with any degree of confidence,
a fist swung in anger, but whose fist?
A kaleidoscopic haze of terrors;
Sin Fein and the DUP grabbing the most votes in the last
election; gun-running, dope-peddling, pimping maiming thugs
holding working class estates to ransom; hate-crimes
increasing, the White Nationalist Party dragging primate
knuckles cross any town desperate enough to offer them an ear;
backwards, egotistical scum hanging from every headline.
Where the fuck was that light again?
It rose from the tongue of a girl with an accent I can’t place.
In the back room of a bar on York Street, she’s been telling me
how anyone who thinks that the Good Friday agreement, that The
Assembly, might be some sign of progression, how those folks
are beyond her comprehension.
She’s talking about how The Assembly needs sectarianism to
exist, how it’s dependant on there being Republican parties and
Loyalist parties, it doesn’t acknowledge any political movement
outside of those concerned with self-serving barbaric bullshit.
But she smiles, and she takes a drink before leaning over, all
conspiratorial. “But the wonderful thing about it all, is that
it keeps those cunts preoccupied so as the rest of us can get a
message through.”
“Look how many folks were here for the anti-war rallies, look
how many folks in Belfast are involved in Amnesty
International, look how many teenagers are involved in
Socialist Youth.”
Somewhere around that last sentence, I think I can trace the
swelling of that optimism back to somewheres around those
syllables.
“Let the loyalists blow each other fuckless, let the IRA
squabble amongst themselves. They’re half-arsed gangster thugs
operating under some ridiculous presumption of nobility. Folks
are moving on, and whether they have guns or whether they
don't, those fuckers play no part in it.”
And a voice says “That’s all well and good here in this street
in this city, but my God, girl, someone had to vote for those
cretins. Yeah, Belfast Centre is gleaming at the minute, but
let me tell you, it’s a hella lot different a few miles down
the road.”
And it is.
But sometimes a man just has to take a moment for to stand in
the rain outside a night-club, two fellas with hands down each
other’s trousers just across the road, three gloriously
debauched youths to the right sniffing glue and singing “They
all get them out, for the boys in the band”, and maybe if the
mood’s in order and the chat’s in fine nick, maybe he can allow
himself a thought along the lines of “It may be well hidden,
and maybe the dinosaurs are still making the most noise, but
this city has changed, this country is changing, the
consciousness is shifting, however slowly, towards something
approaching rational, something approaching global.”
The fella in the toilets upstairs in The Front Page, he thinks
as much. Chewing his lips raw with that bizarre wordless
ecstasy mumble you can observe in most pub toilets on a
Saturday night, when he can string a sentence together it’s
something about “Wider perspectives” and “Fair Trade.”
Everyone knows the best conversations take place in tavern
toilets, everyone knows the really radical fuckers are to be
found in there, granted a serene platform from which to debate
and explore any and all manner of infamies. Away from the
crowds, away from the pounding speakers, folks are more
relaxed, they can be heard, no-one’s gonna interrupt, on
account of they dig the trail you’re fronting right now, on
account of even if they did disagree, they most likely got
their head tween someone’s thighs in the next cubicle.
Before he heads off on some spectacular nonsensical rant about
how he’s gonna hire five gypsies to follow him round Vienna, he
manages to say something along the lines of;
“Belfast, to me, see, to me, it’s like, Belfast is like someone
I used to hate waking up beside, and now it’s like, now I get
hard just thinkin’ bout it.”
A girl earlier on told me about how I shouldn’t worry, what
happens here spreads eventually, like some kind of ideological
Broadband. What we’ve got here, she says, you’ll have out there
soon enough.
Maybe at home the fellas in the scarves are still wandering
door-to-door selling disgusting hateful propaganda at a quid a
time to people too scared to say “No, actually I’d rather you
went and fucked yourself with a six-inch razor.”
Maybe a disconcerting percentage of teenagers are still being
coaxed towards the soulless hordes hiding behind some perverted
cause.
Maybe racist attacks are increasing, and are publicly condemned
by hypocritical bastards who privately curse every immigrant
they pass.
Maybe so, but there are more minds starting to question the
toxic retort they been fed since as far back as they remember.
More and more kids are turning on the ideals they accepted
without question, and are angry that such ideals were ever
offered in the first place.
More and more, the fella in the bar barking about “What Sinn
Fein / IRA don’t realise…” or “What the DUP need to accept
is…”, more and more that fella’s starting to look like Dylan’s
Ramona;
“But it grieves my heart, love,
To see you tryin’ to be a part of
A world that just don’t exist.
It’s all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe,
That sucks you into feelin’ like this.”
Thanks folks
Click Here For Part One – Soaked In Pessimism
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
