I don't know where the Swanee River is, but yet another private prediction of mine has just floated up it, to join the merry throng which have emanated from between my ears to make that same riparian journey. Perhaps that is why I do the National Lottery - I clearly am more likely to get it right when I depend on the random fall of numbers than when I attempt to use my brain, and unfailingly get it wrong.
For it had always been my conviction, and my security blanket, that terrorists would not deliberately kill a journalist, because the skies would fall in on them, the vaults would open, and the vengeance of the gods would fall upon their wretched brows. This was not just my conviction but also that of terrorists too; otherwise they would have sorted a couple of us out a long time ago.
Yet we were all wrong. Funny, that, isn't it, that what sustained us anti-terrorist hacks, and similarly deterred our enemies, was a belief in an utter chimera that existed in our brains alone and nowhere else? Yet the evidence before us for 30 years was that anyone and anything is dispensable if the political will to tackle terrorism is lacking. It was, it is.
Brighton bombers
That vanity should not have survived the murders of politicians such as Senator Paddy Wilson, Senator Billy Fox, Robert Bradford MP, Ian Gow MP, Airey Neave MP. It should not have survived the attempt by the Brighton bombers to wipe out the British Cabinet, or the mortar bomb attack on 10 Downing Street, or the bomb attack on the Mountbatten boating party - because if terrorists were prepared to eliminate the highest in the land, why should they not try to eliminate the lowest in the land, namely us? But our conceit prevented us asking that question, even as the circle of murder grew wider and wider.
Or maybe it was not conceit, but old-fashioned denial, a refusal to see the threat that was before us the entire time; and like a child in the dark, we closed our eyes and shouted on the top of our voices, "The bogeymen can't get us", though common sense should have told us: They can.
So murder stalked through the ranks of society, and the State did not take the measures which would tell terrorists they should live in utter fear of it. Take your pick. These are the turning points in the history of terrorism around which the history of terrorism did not turn. Dublin, May 1974, 25 dead. Birmingham, November 1974, 21 dead. Whitecross, 1976, 10 dead. La Mon House, 1978, 12 dead. Enniskillen, November 1987, 11 dead.
Nothing changed. No roofs fell in on terrorists. The Special Criminal Court in Dublin specialised in releasing known bombers and murderers on tiny documentary flaws, not for a retrial of the evidence, but for all time on those charges for which they were before the court. The lives, the liberty of their victims counted for nothing beside the querulously boastful vindication of minuscule laws.
Garda∅ murdered
So who lived in terror of whom, when we tried to batter the Provisional IRA to death with the goosedown of Green Street? And throughout, journalists thought they were safe. Why? If judges were given armed guards, if garda∅ could be murdered, if double-figure massacres could be perpetrated, if British diplomats could be assassinated and members of the British royal family blown up, why should we be exempt? Yet what united terrorists and hacks alike was the errononeous belief that an awesomely dreadful fate awaited those who harmed the lives of those within the Fourth Estate.
But even the stupidest of terrorists will ultimately understand the sweetness of the fruits of appeasement. Appeasement has seen chuckling, joking killers being given early and unconditional release from jail. Appeasement has allowed terrorists to run their areas with their iron laws and iron bars. Appeasement has seen terrorists welcomed into the very buildings in Downing Street where previously they had left their calling cards by means of mortars. Appeasement means that every terrorist who wants to kill knows that the punishment for murder, if any, will be very brief indeed.
Terrorists guessed that people who had risked their lives for the British state - men like Eamon Collins and Martin McGartland - were now expendable within the diseased ethos of the peace process, and they were right. Terrorists guessed they could attack children going to school, and they were right. They guessed that they could hurl bombs at policemen and shoot at them, and they were right. They guessed that such ceasefire violations would be unpunished by even a a hint of a revocation of the edicts which had freed prisoners before their time - and again, they were right.
Fate sealed
How long before terrorists worked out they could kill a journalist with impunity? Not long. Thus poor Martin O'Hagan's fate was sealed. And how grave the consequence? Not grave at all. No skies fell in, nor vault opened, nor lightning smote.
It was easy; all so very easy. Ah. So journalists may be killed after all.
Now, I for one know which side my bread is semtexed on. An Irishman's Diary will henceforth concern itself solely with children's verse, recipes for fruit scones, and tips for getting blackcurrant juice stains out of kiddy-clothes. Thus, in tomorrow 's column, Pigling Bland, seeking some tartlets and Ribena, goes to market; and while she's there with her wickerwork shopping basket, lickul ickle Pigling is blown to lickul ickle atoms.