Whatever happened to the Luck of the Irish? For many months now the headlines have been screaming with nothing but unmitigated disasters in politics and sport, the latest when 80,000 Celtic supporters from here, there and everywhere, were left crying into their beer about what might have been in Seville.
It used to be common when things went wrong for the superstitious to wonder who put the 'scud' or 'blink' on us – in other words 'seek out some unlucky scapegoat to blame'.
Canvassing around among the stricken followers of politics and sport here it was not long before two names were slotted in as casting their black magic on events.
Trimble and Keano, an unlikely duo whose scowling faces have accompanied so much bad news lately!
After Keano left the Irish team in the lurch in the Far East nothing has gone right with them, followed up quickly with the Lansdowne Road Sassanach massacre of Ireland's Grand Slam expectations in the rugger code before 50,000 sadly disappointed supporters.
In the Irish News the headline to this event was 'No Light Relief in the World of Sport'. Too true as subsequent events were to prove.
We had high hopes of something to cheer about in the gloom here this week when Martin O'Neill's Glasgow Celtic and their worldwide fans seemed so confident of beating FC Porto and winning the Uefa cup... but it was all a dream cruelly dispelled in the last minutes of extra time by a sucker-punch against the odds.
If there is nothing to cheer about in sport, things are worse in the Norn Iron political arena where the dust has hardly settled on the wreckage caused by the explosion of the Stakeknife bombshell.
Stunned by the revelations, politicians of all parties and the ordinary public are moving warily as the tangled story of lies, damned lies and denials threatens to unfold still further.
At Westminster, government ministers – from the prime minister down – fear to speak of the murky world of the secret service which appears to be a law unto itself, above and beyond the control of the government of the day with an agenda of its own.
As far as Westminster is concerned, devolution is working steadily in Scotland and Wales but HMS Ulster Devolution lies stranded on a sandbank awaiting a tug from the Thames, too busy down there to hurry to the aid of the hapless crew and blundering Captain Trimble, now shown up as having little or no navigational skills.
The tiresome old colony over the Irish Sea, relegated to direct rule by absent ministers in London, is left to its own devices. Once more the warring tribes fight the battles of long ago.
Meantime Westminster prepares to fight its own civil war between the Little Englanders of the Daily Mail and The Sun over the euro and the pound.
They see the euro as the thin end of the wedge or the tragic end of England's sovereignty and control from a European state like the USA.
To further confuse the picture, Eurosceptics and Tories are gleefully flogging up in the tabloids the alleged antagonism on the European issue between Prime Minister Blair and his next door neighbour at No11 Downing Street, Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown.
With this running sore about to burst within weeks, naturally there is little time for the long running Ulster stage play The Auction at Killybuck – rivalling Charley's Aunt and The Mousetrap for longevity, but now playing to diminishing audiences.
Finally, as I write, it has just been announced that the long-awaited alternative to the Good Friday Agreement promised by Paisley's DUP is about to be unveiled in a few weeks.
It has long been accepted on all sides that there is no real alternative to the agreement but – although DUP spokesmen have insisted that there is – they have always been reluctant to say what possible alternative exists.
With the Stormont assembly election postponed to some vague date in the autumn, the DUP has decided that it can't wait and is now prepared to come clean with an alternative.
Preliminary blurbs say that the document, unkindly described by David McNarry – a Trimble aide – as a sequel to the umpteenth chapter of the DUP Doomsday book is entitled Towards a New Agreement.
It is said to go a long way towards building unionist unity and at the same time encompass a final settlement with the nationalists!
Sounds miraculous!
Paisley on the road to Damascus and Punt Robinson en route to Clontibret with an olive branch?
