A dangerous idea that almost makes sense

 I love music streaming, it has enabled me to visit so much more available, without the hassle of trailing round record shops, or buying albums on spec, like in the old days. I was recently trying to explain to my son how the small town I grew up in had 3-4 shops designated to selling only records. Well, first, he has little conception of what a record is, but the idea that everything ever recorded wasn’t instantly accessible was incomprehensible to him.

So tonight, I open up Spotify, find an algorithm-generated playlist, and the first two songs on it are the two that had bookended my first post about my illness, back in early February. It’s strange how these things happen, or maybe not.

“Grey November, I’ve been down since July”

How someone raised in a small town in Pennsylvania can write something so perfectly tailored for me is beyond me, but that’s music and art isn’t it? Regular readers (both of you, I’m grateful, really!) will be bored to tears of my lifelong obsession with U2, so we will have to see how things go with Taylor, but the early signs are good, and once she hits 40 I’m sure things will pick up even more. Her last two albums have been masterpieces in my view, some real melancholically-infused art, with just that small amount of optimism and hope to keep me clinging on.

I’ve had a small setback on the road to recovery, or rather the road to recovery is taking a slight detour into the marshes. Differential recovery has caused a problem with my right shoulder to add to the ongoing problems with the left. I could tell you all about it, but it’s tedious, a small setback, and we have a plan to get through the swamp and onto firmer ground. It’s just taking longer and the pace of recuperation has stalled. But I’ll get there.

In the meantime, we have October, and thanks to climate change, the trees are no longer stripped bare. But there is less light, Summer has gone, and the Spring seems a long way away. I never do well at this time of year, Lockdown 2 was horrible for me, far worse that 1 or 3, although as ever I caveat that with the usual comments about my relative good fortune. 

I’ve done my best to stop watching the news, it’s too depressing, and I’ve stopped posting on Facebook, mostly. Ironically I got 7/7 on the quiz on the BBC News website today for the first time ever, and I’ve been doing it for years. So it would seem there is no escape even if you try. Only one thing for it, I’ll have to run away.

On Sunday I’m going to attempt my first 200km ride since January, I’m counting no chickens so we will see how it goes. It’s a mark of real progress to even contemplate it, even if I can’t reach the top of the fridge or carry a suitcase to the car. But where there’s a dynamo and a power meter there’s a way. In any case, it’s the only antidote right now, that green hill not so far away. 

How it started, how it’s going

It’s almost exactly 26 weeks, to the hour, that my right triceps muscle was gripped by a sudden and very painful clenching pain. That was the start of my attack of brachial neuritis, which has dominated a lot of my thoughts, emotions and actions this year. Since getting back on the bike at the start of June my mood has naturally lifted tremendously in some respects, no doubt boosted by my best friends serotonin, dopamine and various endorphins. I’ve come a very long way since January.

Today I went back to my physiotherapist to discover officially that my left supraspinatus  is firing again. I knew this already as my left arm has become a bit more mobile. My performance figures on my bike are still miles off where they were in December and way off my best, but they have leapt forward since the start of June. So whilst I’ve a long road ahead still, the trajectory is accelerating. Good news.

Sadly I won’t be going on a cycling trip this year, at least I don’t think I will be. With my rate of improvement, I’m pretty confident that I would have been good enough on the bike to ride confidently and enjoyably around the Cevennes and surrounding areas in early September as had been planned. Given my double-vaccinated status it would not have taken much to get into France, and I’m reasonably confident the requirement to quarantine on my return would have been lifted by the time we were due to go.

But of course pandemics are awfully complicated things to navigate around. Much as I wanted to go, and would have been capable of going, it turned out not to be possible as my existing riding partner decided to drop out. Unfortunately it was a bit too late in the day to find another willing and sane soul to take his place, so it was best all round to cancel and plan for next year.  More on that next time I hope as preliminary plans can begin to firm up, once a few other local difficulties are out of the way.

This time of year is always always a bit tough to get through. The dead zone between the end of the Tour, and the start of the Football season. It was a mark of how far the Manx missile had come in a couple of short weeks that I was disappointed that he didn’t win on the Champs-Elysee. But then again, back in January I said to myself I didn’t care if I never rode a bike again, just make this pain stop. Hindsight and all that. To be fair, Cav surpassed all of our pre-Tour expectations, certainly proved us all wrong, so who would bet against him coming back and winning the Yellow jersey and the record on stage 1 in Denmark next June?

Foresight on the other hand, is much harder to get right. I had both my vaccines in my leg, I took a few soundings about whether it was the right thing to do, would it affect my brachial neuritis or set off other autoimmune conditions? In the end I decided that as well as being the right thing for my health, it was also the right thing in terms of my obligation to society.

The anti-vaxxers spout a load of guff about it affecting your DNA and so on, in the same way that 5G was spreading the virus back in 2020. That’s easily de-bunked with a bit of research and intelligence. But I also had to factor in the risks to my health, and the probability of another attack. But sometimes we all need to take a step back and make a decision that is just the right thing to do in the broadest sense, put aside our self-interest, our stupid principles and our narcissism. I struggle to understand why any sane person would not get vaccinated unless there were genuine medical reasons not to. 

Meanwhile the chief concern is trying to stay one step ahead of the Covid virus, whilst managing to get out and improve my fitness. I was unfortunate to be infected with Covid in March 2020, before variants had been invented. It was decidedly unpleasant, and (autoimmune conditions aside) I was then in very good cardiovascular health, was pretty fit at the time and had good defences against it. Although of course I’m not slim. But there is the risk of Long Covid, a real illness one of my wife’s family is unfortunate to now have, and none of know how it can affect us. It most definitely is not the flu, and with a pool of the unvaccinated, there is a strong chance of more vicious variants evolving.

I’m looking at our first game at home at the end of August and wondering if it will be safe to go. Fortunately it looks like only the double-vaccinated will be allowed in. As London Transport has also made the sensible decision to continue to enforce mask-wearing on the tube, travel to the ground can be safer as well. It’s still concerning that some idiots will blithely refuse to wear them on some kind of misguided point of principle, but hopefully a good dose of tutting will do for them. 

Anyway, if we are to believe the Government, all the numbers are trending down, and those sunlit uplands are well within reach. In this crazy world you never know what may happen next.

Of almost equal concern is the return of claret socks to our home kit. Just thinking about it boils my blood, everyone knows they should be white. Quite apart from tradition, we always play better when our kit has white socks. Last year our magical away kit, all stealth black, conferred super powers on the players and propelled us into Europe. So do not downplay how important these things are. Our home strip also has a little less blue in the sleeves than I’d normally consider acceptable, but as this is the year of concentrating on what is important, I’m prepared to do an Elsa.

Anyway, this shirt is supposed to be an homage to one that the club is calling retro, it’s a sign of how old I am that I consider it the recent past. Still, Paulo and all that. Just don’t mention the retro socks OK?

Lots to look back on, and lots to look forward to. It feels like a real turning point.

Renaissance man

 Comebacks, don’t you love them? 

As ever Mark Cavendish does it again. Of course this man is my cycling hero, not least for the reverence he treats the Tour de France. I remember standing at the top of the Col de Peyresourde in 2013 and being interviewed by a French journalist about our attitude to Team Sky (as was) and their dominance of the Tour that year. He was almost taken aback by our disdain for their metronomic approach, and surprised that I expressed the more romantic appeal of Cav, with his swashbuckling sprinting, and his struggles over the mountains to make the time cut. Go back to my posts in July 2013 for more.

But it is some comeback, even for him. Although I’d love to be 36 again, it’s not a young age for a professional cyclist. Those of you who have never ridden back-to back 100-mile days will find it hard to appreciate just how difficult that is, physically at least. But then Cavendish has been written off so many times over the years, and has proved his mental resilience is second to none. In the last five years he’s endured a broken scapula, the ravages of the Epstein-Barr virus, as well as missing the time cut of a mountain stage and being excluded from the Tour in 2018. His non-selection for the last two years has been accompanied by mental struggles as he fought his way back from the brink of retirement for another shot at the big time.

He was only selected this years because the other two sprinters on his team were injured. But that drive and will to succeed don’t go away do they? He may be more mellow, have a broader life perspective and all that, but the outpouring of emotion we saw as he crossed the finish line on Tuesday was vintage. Authenticity runs deep, and the relief, joy, euphoria and appreciation of what he’d done, came flooding out. He’s generous too, to his team-mates who worked so hard for him, but also to those who believed in him through the dark days. It’s so important that. In life there are people who will jump on your bandwagon when things are good or easy for them, but as soon as other plans take their fancy, well, they drop you like a stone don’t they? Often more than once if you let them.

Not content with winning a 31st stage, Mark Cavendish surprised no one by going and doing it again today in Chateauroux, a place he’s won twice before. I snapped this image from the TV footage, more measured celebrations amongst the team than on Tuesday, (they could hardly have been less!) but no less joyful.

My son gave me a wonderfully thoughtful present for Father’s Day, a quality silver pendant of a Green Man. It’s an ancient symbol whose origins date from before there was even any stupid notion of England, never mind a semi-constituted country intent on patting itself on the back every time it won an easy football match. I love football, or more specifically, I love West Ham, but winning a last-16 match is not yet an achievement.

Anyway, the symbol, if you haven’t already guessed, is about re-birth. I’ve always loved it and we have one on the gable end of our house, but now I have one around my neck too. Even the chain is hypo-allergenic. 

If you read the link above you can find examples all over the World, illustrating yet again the commonality of our experience and how universal these things are. Again. I bet even Daniel Camroux knew what it meant, in 17th century Occitan (now referred to as France). See how meaningless your labels are?

 I’m over the worst on my brachial neuritis as I said in my last post. But my arms are still only about 50% of what they were before it struck. But, I am re-born, a concept the Christians stole from the pagans, and they probably stole it from someone else. It all got co-opted into churches and now small silver pendants, bursting with with meaning. Because meaning, purpose and love are far more enduring than nations, tribes and petty tyrants. 

Truth is, none of us are outsiders. None of us are elites, or the downtrodden. We can trust, believe, follow the science or not, it’s a matter of choice in the end. We are not Boomers, or Generation X or Millennials or whatever other labels we allow clever marketing folk to pin on us. We are born, grow old, then die. We can do this together, or alone, another matter of choice. But sometimes, on the road to the Arrivee, we are given opportunities to be joyful, loving and even to be re-born. What’s your choice?

 

 

The last refuge

 I don’t think we are very good at supporting refugees in this country. Only last week there was a story in the news about how we had crowded lots of asylum seekers into an old military barracks, with the inevitable result that hundreds of them caught Covid. You only have to look at the tenor of debate, with discussions about who is “deserving” and who is a “migrant” to get the sense that the whole emphasis is on refugees proving they are genuine. This isn’t a new thing either. I listened to a podcast just last week where a woman told the story of how her Jewish parents were “lucky” to have had high-ranking connections within the British scientific establishment, allowing them to be granted safe haven in Britain and escape persecution from Nazi Germany.

Before you go all Daily Mail on me, and start thinking how generous we are, just consider how long it is since we have had a genuine crisis on our own little island, that necessitated large numbers of people fleeing from harm in genuine fear for their lives. I’ll wait.

The last genuine battle on our shores, if you discount the conflict in Ireland (which I have written about before), and being bombed from the air, or terrorist atrocities, or civil riots, was in 1746, the Battle of Culloden in the north of Scotland. The last rites of the Jacobite cause was played out on a heathland near Inverness, and was followed by a crackdown on the supporters of the exiled Stuart pretenders. Some of them left for America, or France,  and there was undoubtedly a cultural genocide of sorts, but it would barely have touched the cultural memory of the English.

If you discount the two-day invasion by the French in Fishguard (really an extension of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen’s rebellion) in 1797, you have to go back to 1216 since there has been a genuine invasion of England. That was really a war of ruling elites, each set with landed interests all over Europe, and though their would have been collateral damage, it would not have touched the populace in the way modern wars do.

Oh, 1066 you say? The Norman yoke? Umm, that is nearly a thousand years ago, and of course the native nobility were dispossessed at the time, and the nature of our laws and culture were altered, but again it’s not in our cultural DNA anymore, too much has happened to dilute and wash away its societal impact.

In my opinion I think part of the reasons for our lack of compassion and empathy towards refugees is that we just don’t know what it is like or how it could possibly feel. Without experiencing something it’s very hard to know what it really is like, no matter how empathic you are. Readers and friends will be familiar with me making comments about my French ancestry and the fact that I have a remote link to Huguenots who fled the south of France in the 17th century.

My recent absence from riding has enabled me to delve into their history a bit more, and as well as drawing up that branch of my family tree, I have also read some academic histories of the period and the location. I had long-known that my ancestor, and 8x Great grandfather, Daniel Camroux left Nimes in 1685 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and settled in Berlin. His grandson Jean Simon Camroux and his wife, Susanne Devaux, subsequently came to London in the late 1740s.  Two generations later the family was giving its children English first names, and by the early 1800s were marrying outside the historic French community. My 3x Great Grandfather Thomas Andrew Camroux was one of the first official Police force established by Robert Peel, and you don’t get more English than that.

I had always imagined Daniel had left Nimes in search of religious liberty and tolerance, but I now suspect that is only part of the story. That intolerance had been building for decades in a time when religion was much more important in shaping your life than it is now in our secular culture in Britain. But with the official law changed, making it illegal to be a Protestant in France, open season was declared. Many villages in the area were eradicated, their inhabitants massacred, men, women and children all. Even those forced to convert at the end of the barrel of a gun were still denied jobs or suffered ongoing persecution. 

Twenty years later there was an uprising of local Protestants that had stayed, the Camisard revolt, desperate to assert their liberty and practice their religion without being murdered. As is the way of things there were atrocities committed by both sides, until a pragmatic peace was agreed. My relatives were long-gone from the area, but obviously I like to think there’s a bit of that resistance to authority in my DNA.

That inter-communal violence, murder and mayhem seems like it belongs to another world. But it’s the kind of thing that still happens the world over today, indeed it happened in the Balkans barely 30 years ago. It’s the fear of persecution, torture and death that forces people to make those desperate journeys in search of a better life. Trekking over the Alps to Switzerland and Germany in the 17th century is the equivalent of precarious boat trips across the channel today.

Given the speed with which I now know Daniel left I now feel it’s likely he was in fear for his life. Maybe his grandson was an economic migrant, but I’m sure London welcomed him into the community in Shoreditch, thankful for his skills and industry in what had become a thriving French community by 1750.

Lockdowns and pandemics permitting, one day I will visit Nimes from whence Daniel fled, as well as the hamlet of Goussargues where other Camroux came from in the 17th century. I also hope to go to the nearby village of Lussan, from where the family originated in the Middle Ages. I know I have up to 30% of my DNA from France, so I suspect there are other migrants or refugees lurking in the ancestry. There’s even some Spanish and Nordic in there too. Who knows what made them all travel from their place of origin.

I like living in Somerset, it’s quiet, peaceful, beautiful. But if one day some band of thugs, or heaven forbid, government soldiers, descended on Winscombe and started killing everyone, I’d like to think that some fellow humans, maybe from as far away as Minehead would take us in. Or maybe we’d have to flee to France or Ireland. You can’t imagine it can you, it couldn’t happen here, could it? 

You can of course retreat to your certainties and search for your quiet life. I’d always balked against that because I had a principled objection to it. But now, well it seems all very personal.

Just like my dreams

 I’m a little bit tired this week. Partly this is because I have been working without any meaningful break since Christmas. Partly it’s the ennui of  continuing to plough through a global pandemic and all the guano that brings. It’s also the ongoing saga of my brachial neuritis (17 weeks yesterday and counting)  and its concomitant prevention of bike-riding, which is now invading my nightly dreams, with all kinds of strange scenarios where I get back on my pride and joys.

You’re bored of all that though aren’t you? I know I certainly am. You want to hear something different. Maybe a little bit uplifting?

But whilst all those circumstances have contributed, the main cause of my mental fatigue this week is a massive come-down I’m experiencing. Back in 2018, hard to believe it was three years ago, I came back from the Cent Cols bike extravaganza in the Pyrenees and experienced the mother of all metaphysical crashes. One that plunged me into depths I’d not experienced for years, and it took me almost a year to recover. This one isn’t like that, but it is a comedown from euphoria, but I’m going to draw on the lessons of 2018-19 to make sure I look at things very differently. In fact, this time, it’s going to be a celebration. 

September 25th will mark my 50th anniversary as a West Ham fan (we beat Stoke at home 2-1, I remember flashes of the game, but most of all I remember the noise!). I hope that we have a European fixture close to that date, and that if we do, I’ll get tickets to go somewhere exotic, like Bucharest or Baku. It would be a fitting way to mark the longest relationship of my life. Like any couple, we have had our ups and downs (once per decade currently, 1978, 1989, 1992, 2003 and 2011), and times when we didn’t get on very well (my late teens to mid-twenties, when politics, music and other things became more important), but through it all we’ve stuck together.

I hope (and it is always that hope that kills you) that the bad times may finally be behind us, and as I approach old age a deeper more contented relationship will supersede some of the more tempestuous phases we’ve had. I mean, if you truly love someone, you can forgive them can’t you? The 2006 Cup Final is not forgotten, but I can look back on it now and see I learned so much from it, just as I did from all those rainy and dull nights together, when I wondered if the relationship was going anywhere.

But now we have someone at the helm who may just know what he is doing. If we can keep the good things on board (Rice, Soucek, Lingard, Coufal) and maintain the wonderful togetherness and joie de vivre that has existed for many of our games this season, who knows where our love could take us. Anyway, they know I’ll never leave them, and so what would be the point about grumbling about that when it’s a choice I freely made many decades ago.

So I’m not going to be down-hearted for once, or cynical, or even pessimistic. I’m going to draw some comfort from the great times we’ve had over the last 12 months, and look forward to more of them in the years to come. I adore Somerset, and Mrs Mendip Rouleur and Junior will always get first dibs on my affection. But these boys? The ones that came before and the ones that will come after? Well, I don’t profess to understand this relationship, it’s complicated, and it’s probably inexplicable to most of you as well. But on Sunday, when I saw that green pitch again, and those colours, that song  with the rest of the crowd singing it, people I don’t even know, well it finds places in my heart that no other thing or person can.

Come on you Irons!

“Yes I’m plodding on, thanks”

 I’ve put on 3kg in the last three months, I’m amazed it’s as few as that to be honest, as I’m back up to ridiculous levels of chocolate consumption But I have to face it, it’s added some timber, and although my fitness hasn’t fallen off a cliff, the constant tramping of the ways paths and lanes of the Winscombe Valley have only managed to slow the decline.

But it could have been a lot worse, and I’m hopeful that there’s a corner I can turn round very soon. I can feel strength returning to my arms. I do not know if it’s adaptation, I suspect it is, as most experts (remember them?) say nerve re-growth takes a minimum of 9 months. Which would be October. But I’m able to type once more, I have learned to write using a different action, and certain movements which were very awkward just a month ago, are becoming less so. That said, I know the critical phase is when nerves are reattaching themselves to the motor nerve-muscle endplate, where too vigorous action can re-sever the connections. I’ve been to square one and I’m not keen to go back there, so I am still taking no chances. 

My physio, who is great, has promised to assess the strength of my arms on June 4th, to see if I’m strong enough to do it again. You know, ride a bike on the road safely. Unless I can, and it doesn’t risk my recovery in the long-term, I won’t go there.

The gym being open helps, as I can do some weights on my legs and a few core exercises (I could do those at home but it feels very, very wrong to do ab crunches in the living room), as well as getting to grips with the Watt bike again. My FTP has been destroyed, and it wasn’t the biggest to start with. I shall enjoy watching the curve ascend again when the time comes. Hopefully accompanied by a descending weight curve.

For now, I’ll keep plodding along. There have been compensations and consolations. Namely I’ve got to see my local area like never before, had time to think, had space to listen to all kinds of podcasts, and found out where all the best trees are. Meanwhile, keeping me going in the real world, are my family, friends (particular shouts to Lord Down of Rodney Stoke - I still think we should make that podcast) and colleagues, who have been such a tremendous source of support and wonderment, alongside Taylor, Miley and the massive West Ham United (including West Ham clips on Twitter -although NSFW!) who unknowingly kept me going too. Excitingly I won seats in the ballot of season ticket holders to see a match in real life the Sunday after next. Just think - I get to moan at them in an actual stadium instead of in front of the TV!

I’ve also found some time to restart some of my Family tree research. Speaking of excitement, I have finally located the exact hamlet in the South of France that my French ancestors came from, alongside the nearby village where the valley was based in the 14th and 15th centuries. Hopefully it will not be long before I can actually go there.

I’ve also become incredibly, and probably unhealthily, interested in blue geraniums, bird feeders and collecting random U2 albums on the Internet. On this last, my brother is a very bad influence. What exactly am I supposed to do with my 10-year anniversary gatefold vinyl album of “No Line on the Horizon”. Sure, it’s a thing of beauty, but my house is already too full of stuff. How can I moan at the others when I too contribute to this pointless accumulation of the collectible creativity?

So here are my favourite pictures from the last couple of months, Spring, my favourite time of year. The time of rebirth and renewal. It has been for me. Whilst I’m not glad it’s all happened, I know it’s given me opportunities that I have enjoyed and would not swap for three months of grinding it out on a road bike. But I am a bit bored now, and whilst I love these opportunities, and I’ll not do anything stupid, I’d like to get back on the bike soon please, if you can arrange that for me.

Many thanks.

The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

 Back in 1922 when the great and the leaders of Ireland were debating whether to accept the terms of the Treaty their representatives had negotiated with the British Government, Michael Collins, hero of the independence movement, persuaded a majority of his colleagues that the treaty on offer gave the country “Freedom to achieve freedom”. Of course diehards in the Republican movement of the time, cried “sell-out” and refused to “collaborate” with the new Irish Free State. Gradually though the lure of power, and the bitterness of the Irish civil war faded, and one by one the dissenters entered mainstream Irish politics.

There was still a hardcore of dissidents though, keepers of the flame, and from time to time their efforts would flare into conflicts such as the during the Second World War, and the ineffective “border campaign” of the the late fifties and early sixties. To all intents and purposes, to the outside world at least, it seemed that the Irish question had been answered and violent conflict was at an end.

But of course the conditions for conflict, the culture of Ireland, in particular amongst the poor and downtrodden of the North, had never been more ripe for a flare up, and so it proved. From the late sixties to the mid-nineties over 3000 people were killed, as paramilitaries, the British Army and others descended into an internecine conflict of great brutality and savagery. I first met my wife in 1994, about six weeks before the first ceasefire in the so-called “Troubles”. I remember one of the first conversations I had with her was about her accent, I couldn’t place it, and it turned out she hailed from the north-western city whose very name symbolises the conflict that had raged for nearly 30 years.

My first trip over to meet her family was just after Christmas 1995, shortly after which that ceasefire collapsed into a further 18 months of killing and mayhem. I was told not to open my mouth in public, so as not to give my English accent away, believe me it was still a scary place to be. But over the years following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, things changed. Just as the leaders back in the twenties had entered politics, so the Irish Republicans viewed the GFA as an opportunity to work towards reunification over the long-term.

Of course there were more dissidents that promised to keep the literal battle alive, there were very few of them, they lacked community support and critically they lacked support of the moneyed Americans that had funded so much of the previous campaign. 

It appeared to outsiders that the peace was permanent. The outward signs were positive. I kept one of my older bikes over in Ireland for 7 or 8 years from 2010, and in that time as I rode around the roads I noticed how the once brightly-painted kerbstones had faded, and flags (always emblematic of the assertion of territory) became less common and more tatty.

My father-in-law took me to a game at Derry City one Friday night, and happily introduced me to all and sundry. He was a stalwart of the club, its unofficial historian, and knew just about everyone. Never had I felt more welcome at a football match at another ground other than my own.

 Friends often engaged in conversation with me, what was it all about, or what was the correct thing to say? But I couldn’t explain it. Partly because whilst I have as very good historical and contemporary knowledge of what is going on, and I’ve seen the impact of change over the years in changing some of the superficial attitudes, I knew that deep under the surface there were cultural currents running that had been in existence since the 16th century, if not before. It’s hard to explain that, it’s visceral.

But it didn’t seem matter, an accommodation and shared institutions had seemed to not make the divide and the history as important anymore. Initially war-weariness had driven the process of peace, but then a new generation, supposedly free of the old enmities had come to the fore, and it seemed we were into a new era. 

The Brexit happened. 

In 2019, after visiting for a family wedding, I blogged about how all those kerbstones had been painted again, and fresh new flags were flying in the hardline areas. Both sides were gearing up for something, even if they didn’t know what. There’s an old piece of management bollocks that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and it’s as true for communal conflict as it is for business performance.

What English people have consistently failed to realise is that the GFA, the peace process didn’t answer the Irish question or solve the conflict. Because there is no solving it. The relative sizes of Nationalist and Loyalist communities in the north (please note small “n”) are too similar for there ever to be a time when both sides would be happy. All you can hope for is to find a way to make the divide not matter.

The second thing English people do not understand is that Irish culture in general, and the culture of the north in particular, is a world away from British, and specifically English culture. Nor do most English know anything about the history of the last 100 years in the northern state, let alone the last 400 or 800 years of Anglo-Irish experience. Common membership of the EU, in particular the Customs Union and Single Market, were the structural framework that allowed the GFA to work. Without it, it will never work as intended, despite all the excuses of British politicians.

Nobody should be surprised at the upsurge of violence in Belfast, Derry and elsewhere. Nor is it enough to blame “criminal elements encouraging the youngsters”. On Friday I listened to two community workers from the loyalist community, erudite and educated people, explain that loyalist rioting was justified because Nationalist areas had all the new housing and jobs. It reminded me of a conversation I had way back with my Father in Law, also an erudite and educated man, about integrated education being the answer to long-term peace. “You see Guy”, he explained, “the Protestants would never agree to it”.

I bet hardly anyone in Britain who voted for Brexit thought about its impact on Ireland and the peace process. Even if they did, I suspect generally they wouldn’t have thought it important. Another “Project Fear” most likely. In any case that ship has sailed now so there’s no point banging on about it. But as I see those petrol bombs flying through the air, and see the water cannons being deployed, I know if won’t be long until the Army is being brought in to keep the peace. It’s all so depressingly familiar.

It’s not the end, by any means, of peace. But we are going to need a lot of fresh thinking, brave people and bold decisions. I hope our politicians can do what they have consistently failed to do for the last five years, and actually show some leadership.