If the music is too loud, you're too old. And if you remember when Northern Ireland was a peaceful and stable society, then you're really ancient.

Some of us can remember when Belfast was a place for shopping and for seeing films that were banned in Dublin, where I did my growing-up. Belfast was as peaceful as Finchley.

Now, after nearly 30 years of violence, the possibility of peace looms again. Is it a mirage conjured up in the dust and heat of conflict, or is there really a chance normal life can be created in Northern Ireland?

The next two months may not provide all the answers, but we should at least get some clues. The British and Irish governments and most of the political parties here have agreed a peace package. It came after a marathon negotiating session where Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern went without their night's sleep while the world's media shivered outside in wooden huts in the snow.

That package, called the Belfast Agreement, goes to referendum in both parts of Ireland on May 22nd. When the result of that vote comes in, at least we will know if the majority of the people want peace and see this agreement as the best way of achieving it.

Most experts and the opinion polls say at this - admittedly early - stage that the Agreement will get majority support in the two referendums.

If so, there will be elections to a new Northern Ireland Assembly at the end of June - and nobody is predicting the results of that just yet.

There is an anxiety that the unionist population might make an "eachway bet" by voting for the establishment of a new parliament in the referendum but opting for "hard-liners" to sit in that parliament.

That would dismay liberal and moderate opinion but it would certainly not be a major surprise in Northern Ireland politics, which has long operated on the principle of "one step forward, two steps back".

As a backdrop to political events, there is the onset of the marching season - when members of the Orange Order and similar bodies seek to exercise their right to "walk the Queen's Highway" throughout Northern Ireland.

In a small but explosive number of cases, this right comes into conflict with the rights of nationalist residents to be left to live their lives in peace without being subjected to what they see as unionist domination.

The outcome of the referendums and the elections will affect the temperature of the marching season, which gets under way in earnest at the end of June, just after the proposed elections.

If peace and love break out in the polling booths, then that spirit of goodwill just might carry over onto the street - with explosive situations being defused by politicians who have at long last learned how to work together for the benefit of the whole community.

At this stage, that seems like a pipe-dream to journalists like me who haven't known a peaceful Northern Ireland for almost three decades. Maybe it's time, as John F. Kennedy said, to pass the torch to a new generation - and allow young people like yourselves to sort out the problems that baffled your parents.