Welcome News Letter readers!

First of all, I thank the person who wrote the letter signed by Councillor Finlay for his free advertising of this blog.

Secondly, some points need to be made:
1. This blog was decommissioned in a complete, visible and verifiable way (remember that phrase?).

My first letter to the News Letter about the current sell out appeared in early November 2006. Since then I have been a frequent contributor to the letters’ page. Why Councillor Finlay would be “shocked” to see a letter from me is for him to explain. In fact members of my family have expressed shock if a single week passed without a contribution from me appearing in the News Letter.

2. I did not attack Councillor Johnson for “standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with the victims of the Poppy Day bombing. I asked two questions: 1. Did Mrs Foster rise her concerns with the man responsible for victims' issues since the St Andrews Agreement – Martin McGuinness? And 2. Why has Mrs Foster failed to respond to repeated calls to de-list the Maze thus removing any potential for a shrine to terror on the site? Neither of these questions were answered.

My earliest memory is the Poppy Day bombing and members of my family were injured.

3. Any letter I write to the News Letter is signed by me. Can the same be said about pro-agreement letters?

4. If Councillor Finlay thinks he is going to put an end to my contributions to the letters’ page he has another thing coming. And the first letter I write will be in response to him.

This blog is a dictatorship, not a democracy. Bare that in mind when making comments. No libellous comments will be published.

Last words

I have always sought to keep personal issues just that - personal - and never publish them on the internet. However, I wish to make an exception for this my last post.

The last month and a half has been very difficult for my family as my Grandfather has been sick. He took ill at the beginning of August and it was evident for the outset that the outlook, in a medical sense at least, was very bleak.

Grandad was very active and had been out cutting his hedge on Saturday. He also made it out to church twice on the Lord’s Day. However, on the Monday morning we received a phone call to say that he had taken ill during the night. We went up to see him right away and our immediately thought was that he had had a stroke. He was, in fact, suffering from an aggressive brain tumour.

This came as huge blow to the entire family. Grandad was regarded by all of us as “the wise man of the family”. It didn’t matter what you wanted to get done around the house Grandad was always the first one to be sent for. And with good reason - he had great common sense and was very gifted with his hands.

That is not to say that he was stupid in an intellectual sense. He frequently amazed the family by rhyming off long passages of Shakespeare and even when he was in hospital and heard me discuss what I was doing for my English MA he suddenly began to recite Keats’s Ode to Autumn.

But what most defined my Grandfather’s last few weeks was his faith. At no point did he question what was going on. In all his suffering, and at times he was in a great deal of pain, he never said “Why is this happening to me?”. There was a quiet resignation to the will of God which was remarked upon by all who saw him.

I was also struck by Grandad’s knowledge of the Bible. Every night my father would ask him if he wanted to have a passage read to him and every night, up until the last few, he wanted a different passage read.

The last week or so, however, Grandad asked that Isaiah 53 be read again and again. While others, quite understandably and legitimately, would have been taken up with their own suffering and trials my grandfather frequently spoke of his “suffering Saviour”.

The last time I spoke to him was Sunday morning. Rev Foster called in to see him before going to church and prayed with him. In the course of his prayer, Rev Foster quoted Proverbs 4:18 - “But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day”.

My father decided to include that verse in the death notice published in today’s News Letter. When she head Dad say that my step grandmother (Grandad’s first wife died of a brain haemorrhage) went and got a hymn book Grandad gave her when they married. Inscribed inside the front cover was Proverbs 4:18.

He will be buried from Kilskeery Free Presbyterian Church where he was an elder.