I’ve just re-discovered this column that I originally wrote for the Isle of Man Examiner. It’s caught my eye because (a) one of the ludicrously unlikely things I suggested has now (sort of) happened, and (b) I am ridiculously pleased with the pun I came up with at the end. At the time of writing however, the world is still waiting for the musical results of the reconciliation described.
Last Friday started as just another day. We all got up, put our socks on, and went about our usual schedule of Fridayishness. So far, so ho-hum.
By lunchtime, North and South Korea were apparently the best of friends, and ABBA had reformed. That’s what you call a busy morning.
As I scoffed my sandwiches, I watched social media sway and stagger under the deluge of tweets from Stockholm to Seoul.
What would be next? The White Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories declared that she tried to believe six impossible things before breakfast. I wondered if we could make it three highly unlikely reconciliations before teatime. Christopher Eccleston returning to Doctor Who? Liverpool and Man U fans declaring that as long as it’s a good game of football, it doesn’t matter who wins? Grace Archer coming back to Ambridge after sixty years in a Swiss clinic?
Here in the Isle of Man, we’re far too close-knit and good-natured to allow feuds to fester. Yes, OK, apart from that one……and that one. Very well then, we might allow the occasional tiff to rumble on for decades. Generally speaking though, if hatchet-burying ever becomes a Commonwealth Games event, we’d need a wheelbarrow to bring the medals home.
We do, however, like to look back on things consigned to history and wistfully sigh “I wish they’d bring that back”. Sometimes dreams can become reality, as the gradual re-awakening of the Queen’s Pier in Ramsey shows.
Other revivals are still on the drawing board. But if two countries that have officially been at war for nearly seventy years can take a step towards peace, and the most famously divorced couples of Scandinavia can go into a recording studio together, surely bringing back some old Manx attractions is possible.
If the clever-clogs who brokered harmony between the two Koreas have got some spare time, they might like to have a crack at bringing back the Douglas to Peel train line. Then perhaps they could rebuild White City Amusement Park as close to the original location as possible. Then for a last act of recreating the past, they could build a facsimile of the fondly-remembered smoky old boozer that stood in Strand Street for as long as anybody cares to recall.
Yes, that’s right – finally faking the Waterloo.
Mark Trevor Owen 