A Salute To Belfast

Great show yesterday kid. A great show which ignited a riot on a Malone road interface and had the residents of the Shankill and the Falls tut-tutting,
"Why don't those lazy, common people get off their backside and get a job?"
Tommy my cat, not to be confused with Biffo the bear, fixed me with a piercing, slit-eyed, yellow stare and said,
"I see Brian Cowan came over all tired and emotional."
"Leave Biffo alone," I yelled. "It's difficult to gather your thoughts when you've been huckle-bucking the night away."
Tommy gave a snigger and said,
"Perhaps dear Brian should restrict himself to Maine lemonade and minute waltzes."
"Brian has a difficult job," I said. "There are not many Prime Ministers who could take a thriving, buoyant economy and plunge it into penury and third world poverty."
"I'll drink to that!" said Tommy.
I settled back in my mortuary attendant's chair and began to embalm my face. Outside I could hear the little children playing street games,the hoarse yell of the herring man,the clatter of the knife-grinder's cart,the stealthy pitter-patter of the Tom-Kat missile salesman hawking his wares from door to door.
"BELFAST," I eulogised,"built near water so people could discard old shopping trolleys and drown sacks of pups and kittens."
"Hey, steady on," said Tommy.
"They don't do it now," I said. "Now that every home has a micro-wave."
Tommy peered at me and said,
"What are we? Belfasters or Belfastians?"
I rose to my feet, saluted a picture frame that is waiting for a picture of bonny, wee Lord Laird and yelled,
"WE ARE THE-PEOPLE!"
"What people?" said Tommy.
"The people who will not be hood-winked!" I yelled. "The people who will not have the wool pulled over their eyes.The people who once used to say-NO! and "part and parcel." We are the people who will not be sold a pig in a poke, or worship at the altar of the leprechaun. We are the people who know a crossroad when we see it and by thunder, we have seen many crossroads in our time."
"So we are-"special" people?" said Tommy.
"Indeed we are kid," I said. "Just go out and look at the big, high wall that separates the two "Special" schools the government put us into."
As I went outside to gloat, Tommy was on line trying to immigrate to Sudan or Afghanistan. Sometimes I think little Tommy is not hard enough, or gritty enough for-Belfast. You need-grit to live in Belfast. Belfast, is a-gritty town!
"Ring-a ring-a-rosy, snuff gets up your nosey
There comes Tubby Nolan, so we all fall down."
(Now get Thaddeus to tell us about his skipping rhymes with the girls)