Fourth Sunday in Advent: Only one guarantee

We went to see Rise of the Guardians on Friday when the guys finished school for Christmas. Interesting movie. Prince Charming didn't read it as a secularisation of Easter, and I'm quite sure the suns didn't either. Anyway, on the way home Belfast Lough was so covered in mist that you wouldn't have known that there was a city at the end of it at all. So we decided, in true Rise of the Guardians philosophy, that if we couldn't see Belfast then no-one must believe in Belfast.

I was thinking about this when we all went to Ivory for lunch yesterday. We were out on the balcony that usually has fairly super views overe the city's skyline, but the same mist was shrouding all but the nearest buildings. Maybe nobody does believe in Belfast anymore, I thought. And right on cue a merry band of flag protesters appeared right beneath our feet.

On their way to the City Hall again, I suppose, at lunchtime on the last Saturday before Christmas. Nice afternoon for the riot police trailing along in their wake. No doubt they'll still mention Titanic Belfast and the Queen's handshake when they review 2012, but you can see where it will all end.

We took refuge in wine and wordsearches! Here in Strawberry Land we are shaken by recent events all around us, but also by a frightening toll of marriage breakdown with family and friends. As Advent draws to a close we are clinging to the job that the baby came to do.

We had gone to the Ivory for lunch because it was our fourteenth wedding anniversary- for which ivory is apparently the traditional gift. Not wanting to have dead elephant on a shelf, however, we all had a really lovely time in the restaurant high up in Victoria Square. We had a table between the fish tank and the screen showing Elf. The marriages in trouble around us have all clocked up more than our fourteen years. No guarantees in life, I do often say. Except one. Except one Prince of Peace.