I was idly contemplating the passing of Martin McGuinness when it came to me how much his

existence resembled the famous Dublin drink that his own name so nearly replicates.

In his life's glass was poured the black swirling mixture of the horror of the bombings and

shootings that butchered and brutalised so many lives; of the terror at the knock at the door,

the bundled body into a car and the victim made to disappear in some desperate lonely spot.

And as the level rose in that life's glass, there appeared the sudden clarity of white barm - a

balm too - that covered and hid from sight the black tortuous swirl beneath its shade of peace

and made all that had poured before somehow palatable and ready to taste, rising above but

produced and always flavoured by what lay just beneath.

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