Six weeks ago, I had an accident. Or more precisely an “incident”.

I was outside a supermarket waiting for my wife. Off and on I had felt dizzy. All of a sudden. I collapsed fell to the pavement and banged my head. I passed out. When I regained consciousness, the overall feeling was one of embarrassment, helplessness and …..a very sore head.

Two lovely girls from the supermarket phoned for an ambulance and were debating my age. “we think he is in his 70s” they told the ambulance dispatcher. I wanted to protest. Well yes, I may be 71 but surely all reasonable people might look at me and say that I was in my early sixties.

So I was in hospital for a couple of days and treated really well. Scans revealed nothing and blood tests were mostly ok.

Age is NOT a number. We all know that cliché. But I think Age is a “zone”. I am 71 but I think at around 1pm on 29th September I was in a zone and the knock on the head has put me in a different zone. I am suddenly aware that I am by any standards ……..OLD and aware of my frailty.

It concentrates the mind.

This Blog has been neglected for two reasons. One is that I am writing a memoir…a grandiose term for recording a lot of anecdotes. History is made up of Footnotes…that’s what we are. And I am blessed or cursed with a good memory. Life was NOT about the Troubles. There was a life before August 1969 and a life after Good Friday 1998.

We had Church. We had Schools. We had neighbourhoods. We had jobs

We had Football and Television.

Most of all, we had families. That is the important bit.

The second reason that this Blog is neglected is that I was spending far too much time on Slugger O’Toole. I am naturally polite…at least I thought I was. But being polite on Slugger is a waste of time.

The LetsgetAlongerists who cling to the unlikely belief that the Troubles was all 50-50. We are all equally bad. That’s a mathematical analysis. And should not be tolerated by serious students of History and Politics.

Unionists and Nationalists think they are “right”. It is possible that one tribe is right and the other wrong. Again on Slugger, the bizarre need that unionists have to be “understood” and even “loved” is only worthy of derision.

I recall the sketch where comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb …dressed in WW2 German uniform considered the possibility that “we are the baddies…are we the baddies?”

Unionists…the nice liberal ones do not seem to have considered the possibility that in 800 years of Anglo-Irish history, we….the Irish are the goodies (who have on occasions done bad things) and the British are the baddies (who have on occasions done good things).

Anglo-Irish History and Norn Iron Politics is not exactly rocket science.

Of course this has not stopped people making it more complicated than it actually is. Did I read somewhere that the demographic inevitability of a Catholic nationalist majority and a successful border poll is being undermined by caged hamsters putting stuff in our tea to stop us breeding?