Just back to this after a long weekend away with my family. Long walks with my wife, the boys and our dogs on the beach. A much needed break. Anyway, I see that this NI related thread has done its usual meandering.

Keith if I may I'd like to take up a point with you and it is to do with this statement of yours: "My last was in reply to Den who challenged that BS was even an IRA activist at all." Really, at what point did I remotely suggest that? That would indeed be an ubsurd thing for me to say. I've looked at my posts and can find nothing that I said that would support that statement. Unless you are talking about when I asked for your definition of your statement that Sands was a "very active volunteer". I asked for clarification because Sands spent most of the last nine years of his life locked up in the maze prison. Since we know that he died aged 27, that he joined the IRA aged 18 that would give him about six months of freedom give or take, between prison sentences. In that, he was actively involved in working with his local community Twinbrook, as a tenant association and youth club organizer during the period of his release after serving his first sentence he must have been very busy.

Guitar has made a number of references about birds in conjunction with Bobby Sands. He was a fairly keen amateur ornithologist as it happens. Something else people may not know about him is that he was not sectarian in his views, even after his much maligned treatment at the hands of loyalists. Sands was born in Rathcoole, a predominantly loyalist area of Belfast. He was a keen athlete and ran for a well known protestant club, "the Willowfield Temperance Harriers."

It would be nice if the proposed film were to focus on the events that shaped the life of Bobby Sands. In that way I think it would give us a much better insight into the man be became. Much can be gleaned from his writing if anyone took the trouble to read it. I know there are some pieces available online and many more in print.