For years, I have been trying to succinctly and pithily answer the question ‘what’s happening in Northern Ireland?’ when my North American friends ask. As a teenager, it was during the later-era Troubles, before the GFA. Then, in the honeymoon period of the “peace dividend” that followed. Suddenly Brexit placed the cat back among the sectarian pigeons. More recently, amid the threats of a resumption in paramilitary violence amid the hullabaloo over Protocols and Frameworks.

In the middle of the pandemic, I picked up the late Irish Travel Writer Dervla Murphy’s book “A Place Apart” (written the year I was born). It provided context, and sent me seeking deeper answers than I felt I had even a basic grasp of about Northern Ireland’s future. I packed-up my bike, flew home and cycled ‘round Northern Ireland during the historic Stormont Assembly elections of 2022. I decided to write a book - which I have to admit, feels like an extraordinary act of vulnerability, and vanity.

I don’t know what form the final book will take - I’ve already had many ideas and encounters that keep it evolving. I know it will inevitably be rooted in our decision to leave during the Troubles, and thread through to what the future might hold for my home country. It will draw on themes of identity; what ‘home’ means; and, if, under what conditions, and ‘how’ there can be meaningful reconciliation…or any hope of a so-called “New” or “United” Ireland, through a seemingly-inevitable Border Poll.