We like to think that despite the current “hubble-bubble, swarm and chaos” across the world, there are at least some comfortintg certainties in life that we can cling to. No?

That phrase from Virginia Woolf is used by the Belfast poet, Gail McConnell, in a new book, entitled ‘Impermanence’.

The book features a series of essays by 12 of today’s Irish writers at a momentous time in our history against a backdrop of Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the centenary of Partition in Ireland.

Indeed, co-editor Neil Hegarty also explains that inspiration for the book also came when he was in Paris and witnessed the burning of the iconic 1,000-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral.

Nothing, it seems, lasts forever.

Hegarty – now living in Dublin – was born and brought up in Derry and in his essay he refers to the beauty of the Foyle.

Even the spectacular landscape, he says, has changed over time and describing one particular scene now, he says: “It looks permanent, doesn’t it? But I know in years to come, this landscape, a nature reserve today, will in all probability be abandoned to the sea, the whole expanse turned over to salt marsh, maybe.”

It’s a sobering thought for us in this part of the world to think that even our beautiful landscape of the Erne, a constant in our lives, will be altered by climate change.

In her essay, Gail McConnell, whose prison officer father was murdered when she was three, considers ways of surviving loss and harm and how even creatures of the darkness and the deep develop strategies of survival and move on.

I found the essays engaging and challenging, and as I considered the way the forces of nature’s landscape and creature adapt all the time, the big question emerges: is anything permanent any more?

Well, the cynic might suggest that at least the one thing that never changes is politics in Northern Ireland. Like the hamster on the wheel, it keeps on spinning and gets nowhere.

Was there ever a more depressing illustration of the rut we’re in than TUV leader Jim Allister telling the Assembly that the old catchcry, “No surrender”, was still relevant today ... a slogan that dates back to the Seige of Derry in 1689.

It’s a big world, ever-changing out there, yet there are those who live among us who want to hold us back in the restrictive strait-jacket of the past.

What a message to our bright young people.

The past is still with us and if we needed to be reminded that some people want to go back to a glorious past that never was, the one-seat wonder provided it.

Outside the Stormont bubble, people are suffering. People in pain on hospital waiting lists, families who can’t afford to eat, older people who can’t afford to put the heating on, and no sign of a decent increase in pensions or wages as the cost of oil, gas and electricity soars. And more.

Listing the many problems in health facing many of our people almost becomes a futile exercise now.

And yet, despite it all, it would seem that questions of identity are more important to those with the responsibility to take decisions that should make our lives better.

Let’s all wrap ourselves in a flag to keep warm, eh?  But the Protocol, but the Protocol ...
Identity is undoubtedly important to many people, but is it so important that all other life is sidelined?

The farce at Stormont was only made worse by the mishandling of events by the Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris’s insistence that there is going to be an election.

As we approach pantomime season, it was “Oh yes there is” to “oh no there isn’t”; at least not yet. 

This Westminster mob has taken impermanence to a whole new level and there are regular changes and u-turns.

Though it would seem that somebody behind the scenes has told the Secretary of State to wise up about an election that nobody wants (at least, that’s the position as I write this).

We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. The Sunday Times’ chief political commentator Tim Shipman says that he’s been told there are “talks about talks” and that there is the possibility of a pragmatic deal before Christmas.

Presumably they’re suggesting something that would allow the DUP off the hook and get them back into Stormont. There are problems with this, of course.

On one side, getting something agreed with the EU to avoid a trade war is problematic, and on the other, it’s hard to imagine anything that smacks of compromise will satisfy Allister, Bryson and the lobbyists who want total victory and the abolition of the Protocol.

I get that there are genuine Unionist fears about the Protocol, albeit hyped up by some, and I do think at some point a resolution will be found.

The question for Unionists is what is the alternative?

The end of the Assembly would mean Direct Rule from Westminster, by the party of Chris Heaton-Harris.

Yet those within Unionism who never wanted the Good Friday Agreement in the first place are so intent on unpicking it that they’re obsessed with the destruction of power-sharing, no matter the cost. 

Many commentators are openly expressing doubts if the Assembly will ever get up and running again, or at least for a very long time. 

We need to be careful; as Joni Mitchell sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

There’s a certain irony in the party which states as its aim that they want to create a better Northern Ireland for all being the very ones creating uncertainty and instability.

You can understand people’s frustration and the lack of appetite for devolved government is waning by the day.

With Stormont’s track on-off record over 24 years (even when the UUP and SDLP were at the head of government), we have to recognise that even if we get over the hump of the Protocol, we’ll all be wondering: what next?

At the heart of it is the fact that we’re still in conflict politics. There are too many who still don’t want to share power – or indeed, even society – with ‘themuns’.

So the spiral continues, and we wonder where it will take us. 

The Good Friday Agreement wasn’t an end in itself, it was a means of allowing everyone to have their own identity, to be what they want to be, to share this place with others and to find common ground in moving forward.

It was an unbelievable opportunity to allow everyone to have a stake in society and to make this a better place.

And we’re wasting it. 

In her essay in ‘Impermanence’, Gail McConnell writes about the octopus in the deep: “If attacked and entangled by a predator, she performs a magical act: an act of adaptation, escape and self-preservation. She self-severs the entangled limb and simply swims away. She lets go a part of herself to stay alive.”

It seems remarkable that a creature from the deep which has a natural instinct to adapt and move on should teach us the lesson that a vision for the future sometimes means leaving something behind that once was incredibly important. 

Hopefully, we can learn before we’re all sunk.