Sea Time

“The tragedy was that Northern Ireland (Scottish) Protestants thought themselves like the British. Northern Ireland (Irish) Catholics thought themselves like Eireans (proper Irish). The comedy was that any once-strong difference had long melted away and they resembled each other. The world saw this and mostly wondered, but round these parts folk were blind.”

“It had struck Chuckie that the political conflict that had occurred during his entire adult life had been a lie. Iy was a war between an army that said it didn’t want to flight and a group of revolutionaries who claimed that they didn’t want to fight either. It had nothing to do with imperialism, self-determination or revolutionary  socialism. And these armies didn’t often kill each other. Usually they just killed whoever of the citizenry happened to be handy.”