Dire straits

I don't recall ever being sunk in despair. Despair meaning that sense of complete hopelessness, helplessness, inability to escape from an awful predicament. That sense that whatever you do, you're not going to solve the dreadful mess you're in.

I'm very lucky. Other people experience despair on a regular basis, even a daily basis if they're extremely poor, heavily in debt, coping with a serious disability or suffering domestic violence.

I've been in tough situations where it was hard to see any way out, but I never sank into black despair. I always believed there was light at the end of the tunnel, things would get better, the crisis would pass.

Even when I lived in a spartan and freezing bedsit and couldn't afford anywhere really comfortable, and the landlord refused to do any necessary repairs, and my upstairs neighbour was a raucous alcoholic, I never lost hope that things would eventually improve. And they did.

Even when we were selling our London flat and moving to Belfast, and the prospective buyer went on stalling and delaying for months, and we seemed to be going nowhere, I never sank into despair (though I got pretty near it). We just kept pushing and prodding until finally the sale was completed and we were off.

But this is all utterly trivial compared to what others go through. I can't imagine the wrenching despair felt by those unlucky people caught in the catastrophic floods in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire - their homes and businesses ruined and their lives turned upside down. Or the despair felt by longstanding migrants to Britain who're suddenly told by the government they aren't welcome here and should leave the country. That's real, overwhelming despair.

I've been lucky so far. But despair may be just lying in wait.

Not a curmudgeon

Ten years ago I remarked that although elderly males are commonly depicted as grumpy old men, I had yet to become one and remained the cheerful, easy-going, philosophical person I had always been.

I'm pleased to report that remains the case and I haven't yet degenerated into the sort of surly, abusive curmudgeon people hastily cross the road to avoid.

I don't habitually rage and curse at stupid motorists, hate teenagers and sales assistants, fume at red tape and form-filling, attack dumbing down and falling standards, or despise anything invented in the last 20 years.

I don't accept the mantra that "everything's getting worse", "the country's going to the dogs", "everyone's so selfish nowadays", and all those other pessimistic pronouncements.

On the contrary, there's so much about life today that's inspiring and uplifting and stimulating. The endless possibilities of the internet for getting information, keeping in touch with people, sharing jokes, and looking for tradespeople. The cultural riches of art, music, books and films. All the new ideas and tastes brought by migrants from all over the world. The increasing political awareness of the young, worried about climate breakdown, authoritarian governments and their personal future.

When I'm lucky enough to have all that, why get worked up about a few sullen teenagers, offhand shop assistants or careless motorists? They're wee buns in the grand scheme of things, minor irritations to be noted and forgotten.

My father was one of the "everything's getting worse" brigade, convinced we were all going to hell in a handcart and thankful he wouldn't be alive much longer. I'm glad to say I couldn't agree less with the old misery guts.

Just think, without the internet I would never have met Simon's Cat.

Refugee hell

Like many others, I'm acutely aware of the growing global refugee crisis and the terrible images of desperate people being killed and injured in their attempts to reach a safe haven.

The recent picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi being washed up on a beach in Turkey - his brother and mother also died - has dramatically emphasised both the crisis and politicians' inability to get a grip on it.

The current British government, apparently oblivious to the country's proud record in absorbing thousands of refugees in previous decades, is being increasingly hostile to the present flood of refugees, seeking to batten down the hatches and turn them away.

Other countries like Germany have been far more sympathetic and welcoming and have taken in much larger numbers. They've recognised that those exhausted souls struggling through one country after another aren't spongers and scroungers but distraught human beings in dire need of help and resettlement.

But politicians aplenty trot out all the usual absurd excuses for giving them the brush-off. The country's already overcrowded. Public services can't cope. They'll be an endless burden. They're just chancers out to exploit us. They're all criminals and sex traffickers. They're a threat to the British way of life. And so on.

The aspiring Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper has suggested the UK could take at least 10,000 refugees on the basis of 10 families going to each large town.

We could surely take many more than that if we really wanted to. If there was political will and human compassion - and even the Dunkirk Spirit - rather than sour-faced hostility. Of course public services are severely stretched. They have been for decades. But they could be expanded easily enough with a bit of ingenuity and determination instead of the usual helpless shrugs.

After all, migrants not only work in the public services themselves, they pay taxes that help to finance those services. So why not take a few more?

The "I'm all right, Jack" attitude of those comfortably-off politicians who won't lift a finger to help the less fortunate is quite sickening.

Pic: Aylan Kurdi's body is taken from the sea

Beleaguered island

Imagine you live on a pretty Mediterran-ean island with a population of 5000. Then imagine being overrun by 20,000 strangers fleeing misery and hardship in their home countries.

This is the situation in the Italian island of Lampedusa, in between Sicily, Libya and Tunisia. It's one of the closest sanctuaries for people running from the civil war in Libya and economic turmoil in Tunisia*.

Chaos has taken over the island, which simply can't cope with the new arrivals and now resembles a makeshift refugee camp.

Around 6000 of the migrants have been sleeping rough, and all of them are relying on the goodwill of Lampedusans and relief workers for food, medical care and other essentials.

Some of the Tunisian men were tricked into the journey by traffickers telling them Europe would welcome them. With so many people fleeing war and upheaval, the welcome has turned decidedly chilly.

The Italian authorities are belatedly taking steps to move the migrants elsewhere and restore order to Lampedusa, which is also expecting the usual surge of tourists during the summer.

The existence of so many troublespots around the world has led to an increasing tide of refugees wanting to leave shattered countries and find more settled and prosperous lives elsewhere.

Many of the countries they go to are struggling to cope with the influx, not helped by an increasingly xenophobic public and their own economic difficulties.

But countries doing relatively well have a moral duty to take in those from less fortunate countries and help them to re-establish themselves. Those who feel no such duty and think migrants should simply be sent back home and left to their fates are heartless to say the least.

There but for fortune go you and I.

* also Egyptians and Moroccans

Photocalls and peace walls

No, I'm not impervious to the tangled political process that goes on here in Northern Ireland, I just don't comment on it much because it's so predictably hidebound and static and progress towards the normal everyday politics of how to buy a house or how to get a decent job is so pitifully slow. The politicians just can't resist the engrained sectarian and nationalistic squabbling and point-scoring. Meanwhile the rest of us quietly fall asleep or start a new sudoku.

But I have to say my attention was fully engaged by the historic Ian Paisley/Gerry Adams get-together at Stormont, cautiously burying the hatchet and agreeing to share power from May 8. It's in the interests of our children, said Paisley.

The trouble is that on the ground children are still being taught by their parents to distrust the other lot*, so much so they don't even want them as friends. How can we ever have a normal society when this entrenched 'them and us' attitude is fostered in the cradle and shamelessly flaunted in such popular TV programmes as 'Give My Head Peace'?

The Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education is doing a great job encouraging mixed schooling but it's still just a drop in the ocean compared with what's needed. The politicians have to take a lead and show us they themselves are willing to suspend their endless suspicion and paranoia and welcome cultural and religious diversity. Then maybe instead of higher and higher peace walls in more and more neighbourhoods, we might start dismantling some of them.

But while the politicians are edging painfully towards a new era of mutual tolerance, a quite different social trend is also promoting diversity - the rising flow of migrants into Northern Ireland from all over the world. Be they Polish, Chinese, Bangladeshi or Parisian, they have one thing in common - they all come from societies where the bizarre tribal conflicts we are plagued with simply don't exist.

So they scratch their heads and wonder if we're all completely mad - and prompt us to rethink our own prejudices. Which may be why so many Northern Irish folk see migrants as a curse rather than a blessing. Personally I say, the more the merrier - why not shake us all up a bit?

* Note for out-of-Ulster visitors: Protestants or Catholics/Loyalists or Republicans