Alex Kane: The wounds are still raw, and reconciliation torturously slow

I turned 65 a couple of weeks ago (I know, you can’t believe it, I don’t look it, I must have a picture in the attic, is it too late to send me presents). 65 places me firmly in the last box you’re asked to tick for most form-filling; or, as I’ve realised, the first box on the shoal of plan-your-own-funeral bumph that is now thudding onto the floor under my letterbox.

Actually, I don’t mind one-foot-in-the-grave territory (it comes to all of us who reach this stage), because I’m reasonably fit and mostly coherent before late-afternoon; but I hate being reminded of my mortality every five minutes by insurance companies, stair-lift providers, pension salespeople (no, I don’t need another bloody free pen or gift card for Funerals-R-Us), walk-in bath installation leaflets, hearing-aid cold-callers (who clearly don’t understand irony when you ask them to speak up)) and lorry-loads of unsolicited--and impossible to block--texts about glasses, incontinence pants, laxatives and cruises down the Rhine with Alan Titchmarsh (for some reason those last two offers always arrive in the same post).

Regular readers will also know I’m an older dad, with a 21-year-old, a 10-year-old and a just-turned three-year-old. There’s actually nothing better than youngsters in the house to keep you active and on your toes; or willing to try things that commonsense might otherwise have told you to avoid. I went down a ski-slope for the first time in my 50s. I’ve tobogganed-backwards-down the gentle hills of Stormont. I’ve learned to swim and even gone on an ice-rink. I’ve zip-wired and climbed.

I spent most of Saturday in Tollymore forest park, playing in the river (yes, I got both feet soaked and had to grab a branch to stop me falling off a rock at one point). And I probably wouldn’t have done any of these things were it not for the fact that I wanted to share the fun with the children and leave memories for them to treasure.

I know it’s unlikely I’ll still be around when the younger two are in their early 20s, so they’re getting all the time I have to give them right now. My own dad died when I was 22, but left me with a vault stuffed with wonderful moments and advice; a vault I raid every day.

Like the rest of you I’ve spent the past eight months watching the Grim Reaper galloping around the world with a virus on the edge of his blade. At no point have I panicked--although I quite often find myself at a loss as to what advice from the government and scientists I’m supposed to prioritise--but I have been cautious.

Older people - people my age, in other words - seem to be in the high risk category: and while some of you may think I’m a woose, I’m more inclined to be steered by my own instinctive caution than by the grandstanding, ‘it’s all a scamdemic hoax run by aliens,’ from the likes of David Icke; or those who argue that a mask marks the end of liberty, yet who have worn seatbelts for decades without a word of protest.

Anyway, all of this has got me thinking about my own life and the challenges my children will be faced with, particularly when it comes to Northern Ireland. Those of you preparing to send me belated cards and bottles of champagne will have worked out that I was born in 1955. From 1956-62 there was an IRA border campaign. From 1970-July 1997 (when the second ceasefire was announced) there was a much bigger IRA campaign. That’s 33 years of IRA activity in my lifetime. Just over half my lifetime, in fact.

We now have the IRA in another form plotting and planning in the background. Elements within loyalist paramilitarism remain armed and active, albeit not on the scale of their activities from the early 70s.

According to a recent piece in the Economist, about a fifth of MI5 work is directed towards ‘Northern Irish terrorism’, which strikes me as an extraordinary statistic almost a quarter-of-a-century after the beginning of what is still referred to as the peace process. Wounds are still raw. Anger still runs deep. Reconciliation is torturously slow: indeed, I’m not even convinced it is moving at all.

The best my generation has come up with is stalemate. That progress is not to be dismissed, obviously, yet nor is it deserving of the praise still routinely heaped upon it by people who really should know better. Our politics here is still a mess and we are leaving huge amounts of our unclaimed baggage for our children to deal with: and, if experience is anything to go by, they may well add baggage of their own.

Yet here’s the thing. Whether it is Northern Ireland within the Union (and the political/geographical/constitutional shape of that Union may change anyway), or what was Northern Ireland within a new united Ireland, we need to find a better way of living, sharing and working together. My eldest is at university in England and will probably stay there. My niece is at a Scottish university and will also probably stay. Many of their friends have taken the same route. They sense the difference when they leave and really notice it when they come back for holidays.

Over and over and over again I hear politicians telling us that the peace process is all about our children. The children of 1998 are now in their 30s and 40s, many with children of their own. We may, thank goodness, not be ducking when we hear a car backfire, or shudder when we hear gunfire or explosions, but our politics and habits are much the same. We are better than that. We can do better than that. And maybe, just maybe, aging pessimists like myself need to learn to express their hopes and keep their fears to themselves.