TEMPTED TO RESIGN
I arrived at Stormont on Monday ready to announce that I was stepping aside as first minister of Northern Ireland for a short while. I didn't know what to expect, but assembly members gathered round and read a statement underlining their support for me as leader of the Democratic Unionist party.
It was heartening after a difficult weekend. In the aftermath of a loaded BBC documentary highlighting my wife Iris's affair with a 19-year-old cafe owner and making groundless allegations against me, I was tempted to resign. I told my party officers the easiest thing for me would be to leave the first minister's office and the party leadership. A letter from colleagues helped to change my mind.
Last weekend's newspapers took what was already a difficult story further and claimed Iris had had two more affairs. They identified somebody who is dead and an unnamed person, so in terms of defamation there was no risk, but I wish they would let me see the evidence. I have decisions to take about my future and Iris's future. We indicated we were going to try to make the marriage work, but that was on the basis that I knew everything. Clearly, if my wife had had a couple of affairs and had done some of the other things she was accused of, that would make the road much more difficult.
WE WERE HAPPY
Iris is in a residential facility and will be for some time. It's difficult to get answers from her about what happened, or perhaps it's more accurate to say you are always getting answers but she isn't in a state where you could rely on the answers you get.
I suspect the psychiatrists will want a lot more time to make assessments. The issue that comes to the forefront of my mind, probably selfishly, is how this could happen after 40 years of what anybody who was close to us would recognise as a good marriage. We were happy together, we had fun together, a close relationship in every way.
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I'm trying to find some rationale: her behaviour was so self-destructive; she was not just acting irrationally but taking risks, almost wanting to be found out. People know now she tried to kill herself last year. After that we found an unposted letter to the young man from Iris detailing everything. Was that a cry for help?
The papers are saying Iris is in Chamonix, skiing. I'm not sure where that story comes from. Perhaps our people have been testing to see who's leaking. There was only one place where Iris was ever going to be spending some weeks and that is where she is now.
McGUINNESS LENDS A HAND
Tuesday and Wednesday I spent working from home on the outskirts of Belfast. My Japanese koi carp were hibernating over winter at the bottom of the pond.
I've handed over some duties to Arlene Foster, my colleague, for up to six weeks, but maybe it will be only two. I'll see. People are asking what effect this will have on the political process, but I will continue to lead the negotiations with Martin McGuinness on the devolution of policing and justice. We are down to the last three issues. He kindly sent me text and voicemail messages and spoke to me privately. When I saw him he expressed sympathy and put out his hand. We'd never shaken hands before but I thought it would be wrong for me, in those circumstances, to do anything other than respond. That was a first.
My office has been inundated with interview requests, even from Hello!. I have lost about 33lb since this began in March. I run on the treadmill while watching television. Unless you were watching the TV you would be bored out of your skull.
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SALUTARY LESSON
My desk is full of cards and letters. I've had telephone calls, text messages, thousands of emails with encouragement, sympathy and support. The salutary lesson for me in all this is that we should never blacken a group of people, whether it be your political opponents, the press or people of various faiths. I have had hundreds of emails from people of nationalist background, from priests, from the Irish Republic, and a massive number, it goes into thousands, from people from a unionist background.
I have never had so many emails and I have probably never needed them more. I shouldn't say it's a surprise, but it has been a massive comfort at a difficult stage in my life.
As told to Liam Clarke