It was only six words. But in Northern Ireland they brought back bitter memories. In late January they suddenly appeared in white capitol letters on a gray wall at the entrance to the Port of Larne: “All border posts are star targets” – all border control officers are targets. A sure danger.

Two weeks later, the words are gone. They were doing a hasty whitewash. Now there is a ocher square on only one brown wall. However, someone else sprayed two crosshairs on them. aim. once again.

“Crazy, isn’t it?” Says a white woman who works next door in a light container of “breakfast and burger bars”. She then laughs, “typically Northern Ireland,” before disappearing again into a cloud of fat destroying.

It is a snowy day in Larne. And not because of the wind blowing over the North Channel from Scotland just 30 kilometers away. Suddenly, the small town of 18,000 is at the center of a political dispute that is new and ancient at the same time – and which has the reopening of badly healed wounds in Northern Ireland. If that were the case, the Brexit arguments of London and Brussels would have failed simultaneously.