Dick Grogan was in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972 and has sat through all 224 days of the Saville tribunal to date
As public inquiries go, Lord Widgery's into the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings was marvellous in its brevity and momentous in its impact. It lasted just 17 sitting days and the report was put on sale a month later by Her Majesty's Stationery Office priced at just 36½ (old) pence. The seething resentment it provoked helped to fuel 30 years of murder and mayhem.
This week the "new" Saville tribunal completed 224 sitting days, having heard 550 witnesses so far, but not yet one soldier, officer or IRA man. With costs climbing steadily towards the £100 million mark and a report not in prospect until 2004 at the earliest, it is devoutly to be hoped that it will all be worthwhile in the end.
Certainly elements of ennui and disillusion have crept in as the inquiry begins its third summer adjournment. Repeated legal appeals and challenges are hampering progress, documentary trails are petering out and paramilitary witnesses (certainly on the Provisional IRA side) coyly linger in the shadows.
The whole process, however, will be given an energy boost when the first of more than 200 military witness begin to give evidence. After tying up some loose ends at the Guildhall in Derry for the first three weeks in September, the inquiry moves lock, stock and barrel to the Methodist Central Hall at Westminster in the heart of London, where the soldiers and their officers will testify for almost a year.
Frustrating the aspiration of the Saville tribunal to conduct its hearings in total openness, the English Court of Appeal has ordered that all the military witnesses, except those senior officers whose names and faces are well known already, must be allowed anonymity and must be heard in London rather than Derry.
Although the soldiers came to Coleraine in 1972 to give evidence before Widgery, their application not to return to the North this time was granted by the appeal court. It held that they had reasonable grounds for fear about their safety, even 30 years on. Some soldiers - even individuals who have appeared openly on television programmes since Bloody Sunday - have demanded the further concession of being screened from the public and the victims' families. The legal wrangle spinning off from this seems far from over.
Even though the inquiry is intended to be non-adversarial and witnesses have a large degree of immunity from self-incrimination, the appearance of the key Bloody Sunday perpetrators - the so-called "shooters" - in the witness box will raise the tension and tempo sharply.
It will offer counsel representing victims' families an opportunity to rise above what has been up to now, in the view of many observers, a fairly desultory performance.
Some of those lawyers adopt an aggressive, even hectoring style that is no substitute for subtle and effective interrogation, and the chairman, Lord Saville, has plainly flagged his intention to act as a stern referee in the interests of fair play (although a number of civilian witnesses already "put through the wringer" would dispute this).
In London, too, it now appears likely (though a final ruling is pending) that the inquiry will hear the evidence of some of the most senior surviving British political leaders and civil servants of that period - a witness sector headed by Sir Edward Heath, former prime minister, and Lord Carrington, former defence secretary.
Although they will be pressed as hard - given their advanced age - as decency and the tribunal judges permit, there is no great optimism that the linkage of political accountability for the Bloody Sunday slaughter can be tied down as firmly and dramatically as the Derry community and the victims' families would wish.
The documentary evidence is limited and at best ambivalent. The appearances of former Stormont minister John Taylor and the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, this year added little to the core political narrative.
The military hierarchy on the ground on Bloody Sunday must bear the brunt of the most difficult questions. Operational responsibility for the entire disastrous escapade, its planning and execution, cannot be hived off.
It is inexplicable and alarming,however, that the inquiry still appears not to have been able to acquire key details such as the precise disposition of snipers and covert advance units, the nature and purpose of early morning armoured vehicle penetration of the Bogside, the full content of advance briefings and similar key matters.
One crucial detail upon which many await elucidation is the dramatic revelation by an expert civilian witness that he received information from an army officer years later that the so-called "secure" radio communications system allegedly used by the Parachute Regiment was, in fact, non-functional on the day.
Key officers asserted and Widgery accepted that the order to launch the so-called "arrest operation" was given over this network - if it was indeed inoperable or broken down at the time, that will expose a devastating flaw in the army's version of events.
The case that counsel for the soldiers strive to assemble has looked thin at times, particularly in regard to the ambitious theory that, while the acknowledged dead and wounded were innocent of wrongdoing, up to 30 "genuine" IRA gunmen and bombers were actually shot and their bodies spirited away.
More substantial is the piecemeal clarification that a number of people in or about the Bogside that fateful afternoon were indeed carrying guns and that some used them ineffectually in reaction to the British troops opening fire.
The six former Official IRA members who have, most observers concede, shown principle and courage by volunteering their testimony, should help the tribunal to clarify this aspect. Their evidence will not be heard until the second half of next year.
Later still, it is thought, the stand will be taken by Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, whose presence will predictably generate a tabloid and electronic media frenzy, in contrast to the erratic coverage of the inquiry's ongoing substance.
As the chairman pointed out just before this week's adjournment, paramilitary witnesses from the time have been reluctant to come forward, permitting counsel for soldiers to accuse the Derry community of a "conspiracy of silence".
It appears that Provisional IRA "veterans" of the time - some now holding down "respectable" jobs - are hoping to leave the burden of accounting for that organisation's activities on Bloody Sunday on Mr McGuinness's broad shoulders.
If that persists, however, it will leave the tribunal's findings, inevitability, with a certain credibility deficit, no matter how comprehensive its findings. The diffidence of former Provisionals as well, may unfortunately be set off against the extraordinary manoeuvring of MI5 and the British Ministry of Defence in relation to their undercover agents, paid sources and informers of the time.
Although there will be many humdrum days ahead as this legal behemoth lumbers on, there will also be days of drama, fascination and (perhaps a remote hope) even eloquent disputation.