From Northern Ireland’s Troubles to present-day Hong Kong, home is hard to define when society is divided

As a child, I used to think that Santa Claus lived in Hong Kong. The clue was written on the back of the plastic toys he left under the Christmas tree: “Made in Hong Kong”. Given that his postal address was the North Pole, this was puzzling but aspects of Christmas were often inexplicable.

My parents, for instance, moved house frequently yet Santa Claus always knew where we lived. Mysterious Hong Kong was part of the seasonal fairy tale. The rhyming words echoed Henny Penny and Chicken Licken and Goosey Loosey who thought the sky was falling.

One 1970s Christmas, the sky did fall in. We were then living in a tiny village, close to the border that divides Ireland into the North (British) and the South (Irish) although some of the South is more northerly than the North. As Santa Claus, my father could pull off magic but real life turned out to be harder. After years of promising we’d settle down, he’d got an architect to plan a house that was to be – the way he said it, you could hear the capitals – Our Home.

As the foundation stone was being laid, two Miraculous Medals were placed in it. I’ve often thought since about those Catholic emblems. You could say it was a miracle that we survived given that the house was built opposite a police station.

The first bomb was small, which was lucky as there was no warning. I was 12 and the eldest of four children, the youngest of whom was two. Each succeeding explosion grew bigger along with the police station, which built deflecting blast walls and searchlights.

Bombing campaigns were worse in the darker days of midwinter. That dot of a village wasn’t exactly Belfast or Derry but, still, you waited and waited. We rehearsed running across the fields at the back to the house. Sometimes the bombers announced a Christmas truce; that was like being stood down for a week.