Regular readers of this column will know that I am from Newry and passionately believe in all things about the city, its history, its character and its citizens (well, most of them).

On my travels I love nothing better to rant and rave about Newry.

Last week a solitary Tall Ship berthed at the Albert Basin made me feel good. It seemed to make others feel good too.

When it comes to Belfast, I don’t feel quite as passionate.

I like its Victorian and Edwardian grandeur. I admire its ambition and to be fair, given what it has come through, I am in awe of its resilience.

Yet there is something about Belfast and it’s more than the mindset that demands the continued existence of peace walls. Maybe Stephen Rea is right: “It’s like an ugly child whom you love the most.”

As a city, Belfast has a colourful history and if some people could lift their vision high enough a wonderful future.

The Waterfront, the Opera House, Lanyon Place, City Hall, the Odyssey, Titanic Quarter, St Anne’s, the Merchant and even Stormont point to a city on the move.

Over the past number of days, the city played host to an exciting and impressive flotilla of Tall Ships.

Excuse the pun but this flagship event was a scene stealer.

However, some elements of the city’s media seemed intent to match the weather by deliberately seeking out storm clouds.

The naysayers and ranters found ready made forums through phone-in programmes, vox pops and letters pages.

That some Belfast journalists seemed to go out of their way to be underwhelmed by the event is symptomatic of a wider negative undercurrent or malaise within the Northern Ireland psyche. (Yes we suffer from it in Newry too but it’s mainly confined to those with underwhelming ambition for the city.)

While human nature may have become conditioned to liking nothing better than a good old gurn, man (and woman) was designed for greater things.

When the Pope Julius II invited Michelangelo to decorate the Sistine Chapel; he did not ask him to paint the floor for a very good reason. The glorious and awesome spectacle of the Sistine ceiling was intended to inspire; hard to do if you are constantly looking down at your feet!

The actor Alan Alda was invited to give an address at his daughter’s school and he said: “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once and in a while or the light won’t come in.”

Sometimes one gets the feeling that some people in Northern Ireland don’t want ‘the light to come in’. Better to wallow in the darkness under the past certainty of Ulster’s grey and dreary steeples than let the sun in.

Looking at Turner’s famous Sunset painting, a woman remarked to the painter, “Call that a sunset? I never saw a sunset like that.” To which the painter allegedly replied: “No madam but don’t you wish you had? Perhaps your world and mine is only mean because we are near sighted. Perhaps we missed the vision not because the vision is not there, but because we darken the window.”

It can be seen all too clearly in politics.

If the TUV had its way instead of 3d glasses, every citizen in Northern Ireland would be given black-out blinds!

No better place to prove lack of intelligence in the creationist argument about intelligent design than in the ranks of those supporting dissident republicans and bigoted loyalists. Living proof that evolution is still work in progress.

At times, Belfast can appear to have a love affair with negativity.

While the rest of the people in Northern Ireland must travel many miles on crumbling public transport to get work, in Belfast there are regular complaints about under-investment in parts of the city when a 10-minute bus ride can take someone who really wants to work from their doorstep to the shop-floor anywhere in the city limits.

Those who knock the Tall Ships event are the same type of people who want Stormont to fail.

Thankfully the majority of people enjoyed the Tall Ships event and an even greater majority want a shared and prosperous future.

The recent buzz about Belfast gives us a collective glimpse of a better vista.

The Tall Ships sailed into Belfast from all parts of the globe, as they sail out, perhaps it time to set our sights on their horizons and not at our feet.