So here we were, back in Belfast.  

There'd been an impressive exodus out of Newry station.  The Great and the Good were there; mainly 40 something women in camel coats, an inch of foundation, highlights, false lashes and boys in Peaky caps with red cheeks and the craic was good.
The train took us through a lullaby of hills to Portadown and then into the city.
St George's market was classy as ever but the Christmas market was shite.  Generic trash and sugarfest.  We zigzagged up and down the Entries; some were intentionally instagrammable and others were full of bins, psychotic Banksyesque murals and the ghosts of past prostitutes and murdered souls.  We sidled down to The Morning Star where I sat Mu down next to a Bushmills barrel under a dodgy alley heater.
Imagine a cubist painting.  Open the swing doors to the Morning Star and you have a cubist painting in sound. You open a door onto a world of men and horses, and Ulster accent.  Flan O'Brien quotes shout out of the walls beneath the busy bow tied baristas consoling the gathered that when their horse loses there's always a pint of plain.