London for me, since I was a teenager, has always been an oasis. I first came to the city as a 16-year-old. My parents had met in London and married here before returning home to raise their family. My mother had always explained to me that the sectarianism of Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s was not to be found in London.

It was an important distinction, which most of my contemporaries growing up in Northern Ireland might not have heard or understood because Britain for us, after all, was what we saw on our streets. It was what we lived. I had assumed, up to the age of 16, that Britain broadly meant anti-Catholic, repression, discrimination and heavy militarisation.

For a teenager, London was freedom and a normal expression of Britain. Gradually, I came to see that Northern Ireland was the outlier. Each year, as soon as my school or university exams finished, I would take the first flight to London. It was freedom. I still have those feelings when I return home to London.

I call London an oasis because it was a place where I found a sense of belonging. A place of diversity and difference. A place where I could practise my faith without that becoming conflated with my nationality. London wasn’t a divided community, it was a community with so many parts. Everyone either fitted in or no one fitted in. Everyone was different.