I don't know whether this new year is going to be happy for me, but it is certainly going to be new. As soon as I get accommodation I'm going to live in Northern Ireland.
I'm going to go on writing the same kind of thing for this paper as I've done up to now, but from a slightly shifted perspective; at least, I assume the perspective will shift. I assume public affairs will look different from a spot in the island that isn't Dublin.
They'd look different if I were living a Michael Viney life in the countryside somewhere, so how much more when I'm actually in another jurisdiction and in the middle of cultures that for all their seeming familiarity are very different from mine? There isn't anywhere in the Republic, however hidden, that I wouldn't have some kind of grasp of after living there for a while.
But the North?
Although I've been there tens of times, I know almost nothing about it. I'm not at ease there. I've always felt a flush of relief recrossing the Border.
I know why I'm making this move, even though I don't know how to organise it. Needless to say, I didn't think up the idea myself. I doubt if one person in ten thousand, living a comfortable and busy life in southern Ireland, would dream of upping and moving north. But journalism is an interesting trade. Newspapers quickly fossilise if the people who direct them aren't exceptionally alert to change.
My editor talked to me about his sense that with the violence passing and a new political deal in the United Kingdom there's a process of fundamental change happening between both parts of the island. There is a demonstrable growth in contact, yet at the same time North and South are worlds still largely unknown to each other.
He talked about the what this newspaper did when the Soviet Union was suddenly there to be revealed to the world in 1987/'88. In a way, that was easy to handle, since there was no possible threat to ourselves from people so distant. What's more, readers were interested in everything about the former Soviet Union.
Northern Ireland is a greater challenge because it is so near; the people there live their lives much as we do, and many Southern people claim it bores them sick.
On the level of customs and instincts, values and mores, North and South are perhaps as lacking in understanding of each other as ourselves and the Russians. Yet Northerners are not exotic foreigners. Conor O'Clery can make getting a haircut in Moscow or dealing with the mosquitoes in Beijing interesting. But is anyone going to be interested in the detail of getting a haircut in Dungannon, or in what you do about a plague of flies in Kilkeel?
The Editor feels that there's an opportunity now (maybe, even, a responsibility) to bring the daily life of unremarkable people in the North into the understanding of the South. But how can that be done? And what possible difference can a few occasional words from one ordinary journalist make?
Yet where do you start changing the information available within a culture, or the tone of certain kinds of information, if not with small things? The extraordinary in Northern Ireland has been well served by journalism. But very few journalists that I can think of, from the South, has ever gone there just to be there.
Not to find anything in particular out, or become expert on anything, but just to be: and by being there, understand a little how things are seen from there, instead of reporting them as seen by a hit-and-run Southern visitor.
But what frightens me is that the effort might lead to nothing. I might move my clothes and books and the dog and the cat and make arrangements to live somewhere in Northern Ireland for - say - six months or a year. I'd go out to the shop in the morning for bread and it would be a Northern shop and Northern bread: I'd bring the dog for a Northern walk, I'd read the local papers, I'd watch local television; when I had to go suchand-such a place I'd be interested in local weather, the local security situation.
I'd get to know a few people - I hope - and they'd be Northern people. But what if that made no difference? What if I still instinctively read everything in a Southern way? What if I still assessed everything in terms of Southern interests?
If I fail to get under at least the outer layer of a Northern skin, will the failure be just mine or will it be representative?
Where to live? I sit here with a map of Northern Ireland, and conjure up the little I know about it. I don't want to live anywhere very extreme. I don't want to live in an apartment in Belfast like some young person in financial services. I don't want to live in one of those mega-rich villages in North Down. I don't want to live in Derry, because the Republic would feel too close. I'd like to live somewhere beautiful, beside a lake, or in an orchard, or near the sea, or down an old lane. (Who wouldn't?)
I'd like to try to be part of a community - a village, or a village within a town or a city. I obviously don't want to be shot in a pub. But I'd try anywhere. Would somebody out there like a nice discreet Irish Times journalist for a tenant?
There has always been great writing from the North about war and politics. But maybe the story that really matters now is right there in the thoughts and feelings of dog-walkers and people buying bread. What does it mean, after all, to say "the ordinary people want peace"? What silent acceptance piled on silent acceptance have allowed republican and unionist leaders to go to talks?
But also, leaving aside local issues, will all-island things, things like Princess Di's death or the BSE scare, look different viewed from Northern Ireland outwards? These questions are too big, it may strike you, to be answered in a commentary on the ordinary experience of living an ordinary domestic life. Maybe I'll only be able to write about very simple things. Everything will interest me, anyway: the problem is going to be making it interesting for you.
I may be going to get lost in a journalistic no-man's-land, but the decision is made. I'm looking for a home. In the meantime, I have to stay interested in the current obsessions of my time and place. So - on the subject of President McAleese's Communion-taking . . .