Parsing the fine print of power-sharing is no sport for spectators - time to look elsewhere for signs of lasting peace. Speckled with the grime of the Troubles as much of life still is, growing normality is visible, writes Fionnuala O Connor.
Local soccer is struggling against its own worst legacy. And this week in Belfast all you had to do was lift up your eyes to the the encircling hills, greatest charm of a drab city.
For the first time in decades, the hills will soon be free. The National Trust - whose British origins now fail to make republicans bristle - has paid over €4 million, much of it from the Lottery, to put Black Mountain and Divis Mountain back into circulation.
The British Ministry of Defence gets most of the money, in return for leases bought almost half a century ago from farmers who apparently held deeds to a fair chunk of bog and heather and stream. There were sensitive transmitters to protect, and those were Cold War days.
As the 1960s darkened into the Troubles, it became clear that acres of boggy or brush-covered land, close to the city yet full of secret places, would suit paramilitary purposes. What regulations failed to put out of bounds, fear did. Most paths into the hills became desolate and unused.
Quarrying went on tearing long strips from the skyline from one angle. But for the most part the hills might as well have been miles further off, for all the contact the majority of citizens had with them.Yet legends of the Blitz recall people streaming up Cavehill and Divis at nightfall.
Generations looked to the hills as retreat, friendly wilderness, playground. This past long while, their juniors have grown up never knowing the escape on their doorstep.
For all the age-old tensions between Protestants and Catholics, there was shared pride in the hills, big back garden for lines of redbrick cramped up against Victorian mills. By next summer the National Trust aims to have pathways, signs and leaflets ready, though many will hope they don't overdo the prettifying. It will be enough to see the people of Belfast in their own hills again.
Opening the mountains is one measure of confidence that the war is over. Hard work and imagination meanwhile are at work on the far from beautiful game of Northern Ireland soccer. The plan for two friendlies in the new year between Linfield and Derry City is an optimistic step in a slow-moving strategy. But how could it be otherwise, when Glasgow Rangers-Celtic bitterness is mere froth on the brew of passion, prejudice and partition.
The Football Association of Ireland runs soccer in the Republic. The Irish Football Association runs soccer in the North. Explain those names to a novice.
Segregated towns, clubs in places one side or other thinks of as unfriendly if not hostile are underpinnings of a stubborn problem. Some Northern clubs will be identified with one side or other for years to come. Linfield's club ground of Windsor Park, also the Northern Ireland team's base, is in the heart of the loyalist Village. It was once a byword for sectarian and racist chanting during games but is now the centre of earnest reconstruction, and most of the main Northern teams are mixed now.
Derry City had to leave Northern soccer to survive because it was based at the Brandywell, on the edge of the Bogside. When Linfield last came to the Brandywell their supporters were blamed for causing trouble, but one of their buses was also attacked. The crunch came with riots inside and outside the grounds in the early 1970s: a bus belonging to Ballymena supporters was burned. The Brandywell became a no-go area for many teams.
When Northern Ireland's former captain, Neil Lennon, who also plays for Glasgow Celtic, withdrew permanently from the NI team after threats and abuse, the embarrassment shamed many. Northern Ireland's recent run of 13 games without a score was lowering, but merely a part of the struggle to draw soccer crowds North and South against the competition of televised games. Abuse from the terraces, in a new century, was more demoralising.
The IFA launched a "Football for All" initiative, and signed up 10 new supporters' clubs during the scoreless months. Tactics include having somebody with a megaphone in the noisiest end of the grounds to derail abuse with specially written songs. "We're not Brazil, we're Northern Ireland", is a suitably modest refrain.
A televised game last month against Austria, a respectable draw, showed a mini-match at half-time between young Down's Syndrome people against a "sea of green", much-
encouraged green curly wigs and giant foam hands.
If Brandywell and Windsor Park can behave next year, peace may indeed have put down roots.