Am I obliged?

Are you obliged to your family simply because they're your family? Is it peculiar to step away from them, even if they're having a hard time and need support?

I would say there's no obligation at all. You never asked to be part of that family in the first place, so you owe them nothing, except maybe appreciation for having brought you up well (if indeed they did).

You may get on famously with your family, so you're happy to support them in any way necessary. But if you don't get on with them, if there's constant tension and conflict and dislike, why should you feel obliged to do anything for them?

I didn't get on with my father, and I didn't get on that well with my mother. So I never felt obliged to them. I barely know my sister and brother in law as they're quite uncommunicative, so again I don't feel obliged to them. And why should they feel obliged to me?

There's still a general expectation that children will look after their elderly parents, but if you don't feel any bond with your parents, or they actively undermine you, why should they expect anything from you?

Those people who strongly dislike their parents but still feel they should support them and look after them are remarkable, but I could never have managed that.

I don't expect anyone to feel obliged to look after me in my dotage (except the NHS of course). If they feel the urge to do so, that's fine.

When grief surprises

There's no simple logic about who you grieve over and who you don't. You might expect that serious grief is reserved for our family members, especially parents and siblings. If you grieve for other people, it's not so intense, not so all-consuming.

But it doesn't necessarily work like that.

I had no major grief when my mother and father died, as I had never been very close to them. I'd been estranged from my father for 20 years, as you know, so there was no closeness there. I wasn't close to my mother either, as we were very different, thoroughly chalk and cheese, and though it was truly sad to see her gradual mental and physical decline, I didn't grieve for her.

I've actually grieved more, or at least been more emotionally affected, by the death of people outside my family - like public figures I admired and who died at an early age. So much potential unrealised, such a shocking waste.

I was very upset when John Lennon died. He had so many creative years ahead of him still, and suddenly he was gone. Likewise Amy Winehouse, who was so amazingly talented but who was struck down in her prime.

I was stunned when Martin Lamble, drummer with Fairport Convention, who was only 19, died in a road accident on his way back from a gig in Birmingham. He was a friend of a friend and I had met him several times.

I was shaken when two people I worked with in a London bookshop both died of cancer in their thirties -  Amanda of breast cancer and Nigel of lung cancer. They were both lovely people and shouldn't have met such an early end.

Grief, and who provokes it, can surprise you.

Paparazzi no thanks

It must be a relief to Northern Ireland's celebrities not to be ruthlessly pursued at all hours of the day and night by totally immoral paparazzi itching for a salacious shot of X in her underwear or Y snorting cocaine.

This predatory media stalking, so routine on the Other Island, simply doesn't happen here. Famous names can just get on with their everyday lives, doing the shopping, taking the kids to school, sunbathing in the garden, and the snappers simply aren't interested.

That's because we regard their private lives as their own business and nothing to do with us. Why do we need to know that presenter A is cheating on her husband? Or that model B likes kinky sex? It's their work we're concerned with, and the rest is strictly off limits.

Furthermore, there just isn't the gulf between the famous and the non-famous that exists elsewhere. Here the famous aren't remote, inaccessible figures living in a world of their own and seen as fair game for constant prying and snooping. In a small society like ours, they're just one of us and entitled to the same dignity and respect.

Also we put a much greater emphasis on the family and family values, and we don't approve of any behaviour that undermines the sanctity of the family and its independence. Photographers lurking behind the garage would be as welcome as the bailiffs or a passing paedophile.

Then again, we take the attitude that if other people are going through difficult personal problems, they need some space to work through them in their own time and in their own way without prurient outsiders poking their nose in and making the problem worse.

We don't share this malicious English tendency to kick someone when they're down, to sneer at their bad luck and try to finish them off completely. No, we love our celebrities, we're proud of them, and we protect them fiercely from unsavoury attentions. The likes of Donna Traynor and Noel Thompson* are national treasures and not to be trifled with by common oiks.

* the presenters of BBC News Northern Ireland