IT is hard to believe the ceasefire in Northern Ireland is 11 years old. Hard to believe, because people are still being threatened, beaten and forced out of their homes by terrorist factions.

Last weekend, in my home town of Strabane, family and friends could only stand and watch as 1,000 marchers paraded through the streets chanting "IRA! IRA!"

At the centre of it all were Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, surrounded by men in combats and berets. They were there to dedicate a memorial to a couple of young IRA men shot dead in the town more than 20 years ago. I knew one of them. He was young and naive and it was a pointless waste of a life.

We all thought we had moved on since then. Yet here Adams is, still giving rebel-rousing speeches, surrounded by what looks like his own private army, glorifying the useless and bloody struggle we are all trying to put behind us.

His party, facing accusations of money laundering and being implicated in an IRA bank robbery, is on the defensive.

Despite the atmosphere of fear and intimidation, everyone really wants to believe Adams when he says Sinn Fein has no links with terrorism or crime and there will be no return to war. We are all trying hard to preserve this fragile "peace".

In recent years, people all over the world have come to regard Adams as an international statesman. It is time he started to act like one. Getting rid of the heavies in combat gear would be a start.

A FASCINATING woman in her seventies phoned Radio 4's Home Truths programme this week to reveal how, at the end of her tether hand washing and drying towelling nappies in the 1950s, she came up with the ingenious idea of using the wadding in adult incontinent pads for her baby. But cutting them into a convenient nappy size was tough, leaving her with painful blisters.

She appealed to everyone, from the chemist's where she bought the wadding, to their suppliers, for help. Eventually, someone gave her the number for one of the top men at Proctor and Gamble. "I'm sure lots of other mothers would want them too," she said. He laughed: "No-one wants to buy something they're going to throw away."

And so, the original inventor of the disposable nappy was put in her place. I wonder how many other mothers have come up with brilliant ideas which they haven't been able to get off the ground because men in suits just don't get the point?

AT last, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly says that, from September, school dinners will have to meet minimum nutritional standards. But why has it taken a celebrity chef with a high profile TV programme to get the Government to sit up and take notice of what they have been feeding our children in school five days a week for the past seven years?

FOLLOWING my comments last week about children asking unexpected questions, a teacher contacted me with the story of an Indian musician who came in to play traditional Asian music to her primary school class. He followed this with an interesting talk and children were asked if they had any questions. A hand shot up: "What colour is your front door?" said the child.