Taking a Belfast black taxi tour is rather like reading a ‘how-to’ guide on conflict resolution from start to finish in an hour. My driver explains (in some form of the English language) each vibrant mural that we pass – from 20 foot tall football players and musicians to gun-clad soldiers. We travel past numerous red, white and blue painted curbs, lampposts and flags until the ‘Peace Wall’ looms like the bow of the Titanic, only with slightly less grandeur. The Wall, decorated with barbed wire, paintings and famous signatures, breaks at a stern set of gates at which another identical black taxi is waiting.

Stepping out into no man’s land we approach our new driver in a style deserving a stirring Hans Zimmer soundtrack. My Catholic guide respectfully shakes hands with his Protestant counterpart and I carry on my tour on the other side of the Wall, through an almost familiar green, white and orange landscape.

This ‘handover handshake’ between my two Christian taxi drivers in Northern Ireland means nothing – and yet, also, everything. It shows that reconciliation is possible.  That is the point at which I want to start.

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