See More Business is, by all accounts, a remarkable horse. On Monday he won the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park, 17 lengths ahead of the closest challenger. "Brilliant," said his jockey, Mick Fitgerald. "More impressive than Desert Orchid at his most imperious", commented the Guardian's racing correspondent.
We have another reason to remember See More Business. He won the race under the shadow of a bomb threat from the Continuity IRA. For a while there on Monday afternoon, we were brought face to face with the bad old days. It was an unnerving experience. There was the anonymous phone call to the BBC in Belfast, claiming that a bomb had been planted at the Surrey racecourse, where a crowd of 20,000 people was gathered, and that it would explode at 5 p.m. The management at Kempton Park agreed to evacuate the course, but not until See More Business had had the chance to strut his stuff. Ms Sue Ellen explained: "Everyone had come for the King George VI steeplechase and the horses were already in the paddock. It wasn't a question of putting two fingers up to terrorists. We just felt it was right to run the race and then get the public out."
Mercifully, there was no bomb. The call turned out to be a hoax threat, presumably from a dissident republican group. The attitudes of both the police and the Kempton Park management illustrate, as vividly as anything that has happened over the Christmas period, how much more confident people right across these islands are that peace in Northern Ireland is for real.
That is a perfectly proper reaction. This past year has been, in David Trimble's words, "a rollercoaster of a journey". The most recent developments have happened so fast that it is still difficult to take in all that has happened. New ministers in Northern Ireland try out their new jobs and their offices for size. They appear to be completely confident when they talk about the challenges facing agriculture, industrial development, education.
Peter Robinson describes how Northern Ireland's infrastructure has been neglected during the long years of direct rule, and pledges himself to remedy this. He is reported to have impressed his civil servants by the alacrity with which he has mastered his brief. Words used to describe him by his officials include "open, frank, courteous".
"Oh Brave New World, that has such people in't." No irony is intended here. For anyone who has covered Northern Ireland over the past three decades, who has become accustomed to the mistrust and bitterness and recriminations, these days and images have been deeply moving. We have only to look at what is happening in other parts of the world in the final days of the century, to give thanks. In Northern Ireland, against the heavy odds of history, politics and the commitment of politicians have won through.
And yet. In the midst of the euphoria, See More Business provided a salutary reminder that we have some way to go before we can take peace for granted. In a reluctantly sombre article in this newspaper on Tuesday, Frank Millar warned us of the dangers of complacency, and reminded us of the political fragility of David Trimble's position. The Ulster Unionist leader has demonstrated such courage, and has handled the setting up of new political structures with such admirable grace, that there is a serious danger of our taking his achievement for granted.
As the cavalcade of ministerial Mercedes glided into Armagh and every shade of pan-nationalist politician crowded the official photographs, there was a distinct feeling of smugness that the Northern problem had now been solved.
Very little was said about Trimble's vulnerability, not only in his own party, but among the broader unionist community. For the moment that community is prepared to tolerate the new order, but it remains deeply suspicious of Sinn Fein's commitment to peace. The appointment of Martin McGuinness, for all the new minister's charm and his efforts to reassure unionists, has provoked a visceral resentment.
The problem of decommissioning will not go away. For the overwhelming majority of ordinary, decent unionists it remains the key to confidence-building. They will not be satisfied by any fudge, however well-meaning, that may be proffered by Gen John de Chastelain. Sinn Fein continues to insist that there will be no handover of weapons, a position which is likely to cause serious problems to Peter Mandelson, who believes that Trimble has already been pushed to the limits and beyond.
On the other side, as Monday's bomb scare at Kempton Park reminded us, there are still dissident republican groups waiting in the wings. Their members believe, quite sincerely, that the whole Belfast Agreement is a betrayal. It is fashionable to brush them aside as having no support, but that has never in the past deterred young men and women who believe that it is an honourable ideal to strive, by whatever means, to drive the British presence from Ireland. Both the RUC and the Garda Siochana have said that these republican dissidents still pose a threat to peace. They point out that a small and determined group needs very few resources to cause devastating tragedy. In this case, too, the only effective response must be a political one. We still have to prove to young nationalists, particularly in the ghetto areas of the North, that the Belfast Agreement can bring about fundamental change.
We have to guard against complacency. Like everybody else, the images of Northern Ireland which I carry into the new millennium are of hope and ever so slightly cautious joy: the crowds at Stormont last summer gazing up at Pavarotti as the great tenor's voice floated effortlessly over Carson's statue, the Ulster rugby team's triumph in the European Cup at Lansdowne Road.
For once the red, white and blue painted faces represented celebration rather than threat. The posters carried by the fans bore the slogan "Ulster says Oui!" . Not a bad sentiment for the next thousand years.