How interesting that the only thing Paddy Dwyer from Donnybrook (Letters, December 18th) should have found fit to comment on in response to this column's criticisms of the President's hand-shake with a sectarian assassin and her triggering of a furious row between the churches - and all in a couple of days: we should be grateful that the Middle East didn't erupt into furious bloody war when she waved her magic bridge-building wand over it - are the many travails of my own life.
They are huge, I confess, at times almost unsupportable; but I never knew that out there in Donnybrook was a kindred soul who understands the anguish I go through when I cannot get a suitable claret or the right table in a restaurant.
We must be blood brothers, Paddy; but surely you noticed something else too in that column, did you not? That small, tiny detail which can hardly have escaped the attention of a person of such exquisite sensibility as yours? This Catholic President from North Belfast went to North Belfast and there met a Catholic sectarian assassin and cordially shook his hand. Paddy was more interested in my gourmandising - and I can hardly blame him, for you can hardly ever drag me away from the trough - than the main point of what I was saying.
Contentious issue
Listen, Paddy. Presidents are not elected to start controversies.
As it happens, what I regard as the far more contentious issue - gripping the mitt that butchered the people in the Bayardo Bar - seems to have escaped further comment; and that surprises me. But believe me, it will not have escaped notice on the Shankill Road, where they love a good grudge, and where for 25 years they have had ample opportunity to develop grudges - rather more, I suspect, than the citizens of Donnybrook.
Paddy recites a list of events in Mary McAleese's life which he seems to think makes her sensitive to other people's pain. We have heard a lot about how her family suffered, and the details change every time, though I notice Mountainview, where she grew up, is often magically transposed into the far sexier but very different Ardoyne. Simply, I don't know the truth about Mary McAleese's life - but I do know that very many people in the North have suffered from the Troubles. Most say little about it. Austin Currie was very discreet about the horrific ordeals he and his family had previously endured when he was running for the Presidency.
Suffering is a norm in that terrible place, Paddy.
View from Donnybrook
I'm not trying to pull rank here, Paddy old son, because I'm sure that you have lived life to its full and enthralling measure out there in Donnybrook, and I particularly don't wish to destroy your brilliantly accurate image of me growing larger by the minute at the restaurant of my choice, but I think maybe I should set the record straight. In my years in Belfast, 32 friends and acquaintances were killed in the Troubles. And four other people - two by gunfire, two by bombs - were killed standing beside me. And that is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what very many people in west and north Belfast would have experienced within a single year, never mind my seven.
And something else, Paddy: one had the devil of a job getting a seat at a good restaurant in those days. It was even worse in Beirut and Sarajevo, Paddy; my, how I shed the pounds.
What is the issue here, Paddy? It is not my gourmandising, nor the suffering of the President, but her sensitivity to other people's feelings - not the feelings of people with whom she agrees, but the feelings of those with whom she disagrees. Those people in the Bayardo Bar murdered by the IRA squad led by the man whose hand the President shook - how do they feel about the handshake? How would you feel, Paddy, if one improbable day some gunmen blew apart the bistro in Donnybrook where your teenage daughter was having a drink, and she was killed, just as two teenage girls were killed in the Bayardo? How would you feel about your President, without consulting anybody, going over and shaking the killer's hand 20 years later?
Furious row
Here, Paddy: would you say, brilliant? Or would you have other feelings? My money is on the latter. Presidents are paid colossal sums of money for the rest of their lives merely to show regard for feelings which are different to their own. My point is that Mary McAleese does not seem to know how to do this.
Look at how the two main churches - one of which I was raised in, the other for which I have a high regard - are now in the middle of a furious row because of her much-paraded lack of regard for Catholic teaching. As it happens, my feelings on inter-faith communion are similar to hers. However, many Catholic priests feel sincerely that it is wrong. Are their genuine feelings to be publicly rejected by a President who was not, that I can remember, elected to reform Catholic canon law?
Just think, Paddy: seven more years of this to go. By the way, old fellow, the port stands by you - and be so good as to pass the Stilton, would you? Pip pip.