A friend, who is a teacher in Derry, gave me a fascinating insight into the state of the Northern Ireland peace process. She was discussing options for third-level education with sixth-form pupils, with a view to filling out their applications to universities and other institutions.
One of the brightest students wanted to take a degree course in forensic science at a university in Britain, but with the firm intention of returning to Northern Ireland. My friend asked her what career opportunities would be open to her with such qualifications.
There was no hesitation in her reply. The girl plans to apply to join the new Northern Ireland Police Service with a view to working as a pathologist. She believes there will be great opportunities. Nor was she alone in expressing this view. Another pupil, who plans to read law at university, also sees the new police service as a serious option for a fulfilling career.
A number of things about their discussion struck my friend. Both of these young women come from a strongly republican part of Derry. Yet there was no mention of the current political problems over the implementation of the Patten Report. They were clearly confident the Northern Ireland Police Service will be in place by the time they are looking for jobs, and that it will be equally hospitable to nationalists and unionists. If anything, the fact they are both female and Catholic may give them a slight edge.
An enforced absence from any grassroots view of what is happening in Northern Ireland has meant I`ve been largely dependent on the media for my information. For reasons I well understand, the press and the broadcasting media tend to concentrate on the crisis of the day or week, the continuing arguments over such issues as decommissioning and policing.
A visit to Derry last weekend has brought home once again the sea change that is under way. It is difficult for people like myself, who lived close to the tragedy of 30 years of violence, to comprehend fully that there is a generation growing up who take the new order for granted. We should not really be surprised. It is almost seven years since the first IRA ceasefire and the political landscape has been transformed.
The process hasn't been pain free. Those who have suffered in the conflict and still mourn loved ones lost in the violence cannot forget. Many others, and not only in the unionist community, find it difficult to accept how much things have changed. But there is a deep desire to lay the past to rest. Its lessons must not be forgotten, but there has to be closure if people are to grasp the better future that is now on offer.
Sometimes, as with the sixth-form students described above, this process is almost unconscious. Many others are still struggling to come to terms with the past. At the Bloody Sunday Tribunal in Derry's Guildhall, the full resources of modern technology, funded by the British exchequer, are deployed to seek out the truth of what happened in the city almost 30 years ago.
It is a formidable exercise, with serried ranks of computers and large television screens showing how the victims were murdered. Some people have asked about the point of the tribunal, whether it is really worth the huge investment of money and time.
Listening to just a few of the witnesses give evidence about experiences which have haunted their lives, the point of the inquiry seems clear. It gives those who experienced the terror of Bloody Sunday the opportunity to give their version of what happened. But the rigorous search for the truth has another purpose, which is to enable the nationalist community to draw a line under a tragedy which has haunted the politics of Northern Ireland for 30 years.
The challenge of laying the past to rest is not easy. Writing here a few weeks ago, Ruth Dudley Edwards drew attention to the number of events and exhibitions planned to commemorate the republican hunger strikes, and how these are likely to cause deep anger to many in the unionist community. But if they can look beyond the murals and the marches, unionists should also draw comfort from the fact that this is also part of the process of placing the hunger strikes in a historical context, part of a war that is now over.
What the peace process has needed from the start is time, to allow the two communities to grow accustomed to living and working together and to be persuaded that the new institutions can work to their common advantage.
This is already happening. Much of the debate in the Assembly is taken up with the stuff of real politics - hospital waiting lists, funding for higher education, and so on. It has been fashionable to dismiss all this as boring but it beats the alternative hands down.
Ironically, it has taken the catastrophe of foot-and-mouth disease to point up the advantage of having local politicians to deal with local crises. There seems to be a genuine consensus that Brid Rodgers has "done extremely well", to quote David Trimble's words of praise, in her handling of the crisis. That she is a woman - and a Catholic - will not be lost on either community.