Did you ever get the feeling that the little old sick counties which dominated the headlines for so long no longer count in the big world of July 2003?
A top Fleet Street reporter phones his news desk from his Belfast hotel.
A voice at the other end asks: "Well what've you got? It had better be good."
"You know that Drumcree story?"
"Oh Lord, not that again! That's been going on for years!"
"Well this is new. It's about a deal that isn't a deal involving an archbishop and your man Powell, chief of staff in Downing Street."
"Sounds pretty thin. What else?"
"Well, this is about wigs on the green. The three Unionist rebels against Trimble, the joint Nobel Prize winner, say they are having the law on him. They want a judge to tell Trimble that he can't kick them out."
"What have the courts got to do with this row? Anyhow let's have their names so we can look up their mugshots."
"Here they are – Donaldson, Smyth and Burnside."
Newsroom man chuckles. "Sounds like a shady firm of attorneys." Reporter: "Not really. One of them is a clergyman who sometimes appears without his dog collar."
News desk: "What a wonderful world over there in Ulster – Paisley and all those dog collars. Didn't they used to say the RCs were priest-ridden?
"But sorry old boy, not much room for that old stuff. Might fit in a few pars in a back page.
"We're up to our necks in foxhounds, town versus country and the men in red coats threatening sabotage on a large scale if they decide on an all-out ban on hunting.
"But that's not all. There's the ongoing story about Tony's man at No10... Campbell.
"Almost everyone wants him sacked, bagpipes and all, but he won't go or Tony won't let him because if he ever writes his memoirs the inside story would set Westminster alight.
"So you can see Ulster is now just small beer."
Reporter: "Ah well, sorry to trouble you.
And to think that this used to be called the 'silly season'. Loch Ness monsters and all that jazz!"
News desk: "Ah yes, those were the days.
Now Ulster is the silly season and all its monsters are running around on the loose."
This is what is called a phantasm, a visual illusion, but it could be true.
The truth is that Westminster was really ablaze over the House of Commons decision by a big majority to put an end to fox-hunting and to take on the House of Lords, which is expected to come down on the side of this cruel sport – once described as "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable".
Scotland has already moved against hunting but nobody mentioned Norn Iron, the killing fields where some unspeakables think nothing of gunning down not just foxes but human beings!
In the midst of all this bother about cruel sports, who should turn up at 10 Downing Street but ex-president Clinton, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen for talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss the latest smoke signals from our distressful country, the pain-in-the-neck 'marching season' and the afore-mentioned Drumcree.
With the sad news that poor old Harold Gracey, the Portadown Orange Grand Master, is no longer maintaining his long-time vigil outside Drumcree church but has landed in hospital.
A 'forgive and forget' gesture to a sick man from the Garvaghy Road residents might just prove a healing process in a poisonous scandal that has lasted too long...
Worth a try.
