I walk every day. I aim for six miles. I rarely walk less than that, and some days I manage more.

Nearly every day when I’m walking, I get what I think of as a SITH. That will be a familiar term, should Darth Vader mean anything to you. Now, I am a nerd, right enough, but I’m no longer of the dark side. The SITH, in this context, is a Song In The Head. Do you ever get that? A song that randomly appears in your head with no good rhyme or reason as to how it got there? Perhaps you sing it out loud, repeatedly, for the rest of the day? Anyway, as I said, I do, nearly every day. Today it was Birdhouse In Your Soul. If I have managed to plant that in your head, you’re welcome. Sing along. I know you’re thinking, ‘I’m the only bee in your bonnet’, but ‘bluebird of friendliness like guardian angels its always near’ are the lyrics the rest is built upon. Think about it.

On 3 August, 2020, John Hume died. A major contributor to the relative peace that Northern Ireland has experienced since 1998, he was an important figure in Irish and British politics who worked tirelessly to improve the economy, society and culture in his native town and beyond; and, he largely succeeded. Those are more unusual credentials in a politician than they should be.

My SITH on that day was ‘What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding?’. Do you know it? A song from my youth, it is a caustically clever piece of lyrical genius by Nick Lowe that became familiar to me in 1978 when it was recorded and sung by Declan Patrick McManus, front man of Elvis Costello and The Attractions. The song has a familiar jingle which I’m sure a lot of people know. They will perhaps have sung along without paying much attention to the lyrics. Being a writer, I love lyrics, especially lyrics like this:

As I walk through

This wicked world

Searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity

I ask myself

Is all hope lost?

Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,

There’s one thing I wanna know

What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding?

The words of a song when written down, when you have to read them instead of listen or sing along, are starker somehow. How much attention do you usually pay to the lyrics of songs you listen to or even sing along with? Are you more of a jingle person perhaps? I’ve noticed that when I try to tell someone about a Bob Dylan song (I read books of Dylan’s lyrics far more than I listen to him) and how brilliant it is, the response can range from ‘that’s a load of shite’, to ‘sure you canny dance to that’. They just don’t get Bob’s shine. Fair points that I wouldn’t dream of arguing with. I understand, you see.

Since you ask, NOTHING is funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding, Nick Lowe. NOTHING. The world has an abundant lack of all three. The world vilifies any lights that appear in the darkness of insanity. Sometimes it shoots them or crucifies them. It can indeed be tempting to think all hope is lost. That there’s only pain, hatred and misery in this wicked world, but it’s not a nice way to think. Neither is thinking you’re right all the time.

I haven’t watched TV for years. Maybe because I’m a reader. Maybe because I’m hypersensitive. The TV is just noise to me, without worthy content; an aggressive way of getting knowledge through a mainstream medium that is biased and unreliable. [By the way, have you noticed that during the current crisis (Covid-19 in case you’re wondering) the mainstream media seem to be doing a little better than usual in getting the information out there? I haven’t fully figured out why this might be, but I’ll likely let you know if I do.]

On the day that John Hume died, I came home as usual, Elvis Costello still playing at full volume in the head and sat down, as I tend to, with a bowl of porridge (I suspect I’m probably 90, but everyone should eat porridge every day, preferably after walking) and browsed some news websites. Of course, with news like that, you can imagine they were full of it. Tripping over each other to create the perfect succinctness, and largely failing. How can you be succinct about 83 years of life, when at least half of it was lived through political bloody conflict and personal declining health? You can’t.

Thirty years of brutal conflict, 3,500 people dead and over 35,000 injured and we can still get up in the morning and treat the peace like it’s always been there; like it’s not something that needs cherished and attended to daily. Where is all the peace, love and understanding? Ah, sure it’s all a bit of crack. Well, no, actually, it isn’t. It’s not funny at all.

As a small-town working-class girl who grew up in a Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist household, John Hume was never a significant person in my life other than my ma ranting a bit at the news if he was on talking. I learned the lessons of ‘themmuns’ well at my mother’s knee.

I have no traditional religious belief now. I never had as far as Protestantism is concerned, being sent grudgingly to Sunday School with no real context in which to understand it. If I have a political affiliation – and I’m holding declining hope that one day we might be ready for anarchy – then it’s Green, tending towards environmental issues, rights issues, equality. I have an academic interest in ecology which makes me think there’s something that is rooted in the earth that unites us all. My culture, such as it is (I drink my coffee black, filtered, full stop and haven’t been to the theatre for many years) resides in the arts. Culture links human communities to the past and helps them to live in the present in a much richer way. But it is worth understanding that its root word is ‘cult’. That indicates a kind of insularity which immediately marks us apart from someone who doesn’t share in that culture. Nature isn’t so divisive.

Ecology recognises no political or geographical borders or religious divisions. The ecological thought looks instead to the things which unite us. In Northern Ireland, that can be hard to do, but Robert McLiam Wilson manages to sum it up very well in his satirical novel, Eureka Street:

The tragedy was the Northern Ireland (Scottish) Protestants thought themselves like the British. Northern Ireland (Irish) Catholics thought themselves like Eireans (proper Irish). The comedy was that any once-strong difference had long melted away they resembled no one now so much as they resembled each other. The world saw this and mostly wondered, but round these parts folk were blind.

That’s not very funny either. Being blind.

We’re lucky really. We live in a (relatively) free world of great privilege. Most of us don’t have to worry about the roof over our heads or to think about how we’re going to feed ourselves. Many of us are blessed with people who love us, people who support us and who will always be there for us. But yet, so many of us keep our understanding at the level of ‘difference’, never giving a single thought to the fact that whether we’re black, white, green, orange, gay, straight, transsexual, transgender, or so on, we all bleed the same colour. We all know the pain that comes from that great separator, death. We all know what it’s like to miss someone. Because, hopefully, we all have known the kind of love that isn’t funny.

For all of McLiam Wilson’s more witty statements, sometimes he does articulate a universal truth when he suggests it is important, “to be open to difference, to see that the Other can be enriching, rather than something to be distrusted or abominated or brought under control or colonised.” That’s love too, isn’t it?

John Hume’s funeral was a sedate, respectful, socially-distanced affair. Notably, in a break with tradition, he went to his rest in a wicker coffin. Befitting a state occasion, but actually more of a family affair, his send off was in stark contrast to the show of ‘strength’ mustered weeks previously to say goodbye to IRA man, Bobby Storey. No such respect was shown there for the necessary imposition we’re all under from Covid-19. Republicanism is surely a strange bedfellow for peace. If they all roll over, I hope it’s not the one that falls out.

I thought John Hume Junior’s tribute to his father was eloquent and heart felt and spoke of the peace, love and understanding that is so important to every one of us who share this piece of earth:

If dad were here today, in the fullness of his health, witnessing the current tensions in the world, he wouldn’t waste the opportunity to say a few words himself. He’d talk about our common humanity, the need to respect diversity and difference, to protect and deepen democracy, to value education and to place non-violence at the core of everything … at this time of planetary fragility, more than ever, he would be urging that we move beyond our flag-based identities, and recognise the need to protect our common home.

We have to think bigger really. Outside the box. As if there is no box. “Where are the strong … who are the trusted … where is the harmony?”

When it comes to leaders of peace sometimes, but not always, the religious stand a better chance of surviving the world’s vilification and bullets. The Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual leader with links to Derry/Londonderry via his patronage of Children in Crossfire, also paid tribute to John Hume:

Although my fellow Nobel laureate is no longer with us, his message about peace and non violence in the resolution of conflict, no matter how protracted or difficult it may seem to be, will long survive him.

There’s a habit we have in Northern Ireland. We forget. Peace sometimes makes us forget conflict; love sometimes makes us forget pain; and understanding sometimes makes us forget difference. We should NEVER, NEVER, NEVER forget that nothing is funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding. It’s the most serious business of all.