As the year edges toward Christmas, I find myself thinking about gifts, shopping lists, and the small rituals that shape the season. And as often happens, one memory tugs another behind it, and I’m brought back to Christmas shopping in Belfast in the “long ago” when I was young, a time when the everyday act of buying wrapping paper required a kind of quiet patience.
Northern Ireland was still deep in what we euphemistically called The Troubles. Everyone, it seemed, had a reason to hate, and no-one had a reason to love. Loving the “Others” wasn’t just discouraged; it came with risks. To step into a crowded place was to acknowledge a certain level of danger and go anyway, but be suspicious of badly parked cars.
Shopping began at the “search gates,” where security forces meticulously checked bags and patted you down. You didn’t carry anything electrical , even something as simple as a transistor radio; or it would be taken apart on the spot, the “Sony Walkman was some years away thank goodness”. Paramilitaries had hidden timers and incendiary devices in such things, so suspicion became the default. Every shop had its own civilian searches, so even once you made it past the official gatekeepers, you were searched again at every doorway. A simple errand, a birthday card, a bit of ribbon, a roll of wrapping paper , meant being searched at least five times.
And yet somehow, this all became normal. In Coleraine, where I grew up, the town centre was pedestrianized , not for charm or convenience, but to reduce the risk of car bombs. We carried on, weaving our lives around the oddness until it felt ordinary. Humans are adaptable like that; we make space for the strange until it no longer feels strange.
What strikes me now is not the memory of those searches, but the contrast with the present. Yesterday, Val and I went shopping. We wandered in and out of shops, browsed shelves, chatted idly and not once were we stopped or searched. No gates, no pat-downs, no suspicious glances. Just a day out, simple and unremarkable.
And yet, in its simplicity, remarkable.
It is a testament to how far we have come in Northern Ireland that the extraordinary precautions of the past have faded into memory, replaced by the quiet freedom of moving through the world without fear. The absence of something the search gates, the tension, the constant vigilance is its own kind of blessing.
Sometimes peace is loud and triumphant. And sometimes it’s this: a morning spent shopping, un-searched, unnoticed, and wonderfully, profoundly ordinary.