THE REV Ian Paisley celebrated his 86th birthday yesterday by announcing plans to continue his career as a newspaper columnist when the summer ends.
Earlier this year there were fears about the health of the former first minister, DUP leader and moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church, after he was admitted to hospital with a serious heart condition.
His wife Baroness Eileen Paisley and his children gathered at his bedside at the Ulster Hospital in east Belfast amid concerns about his prognosis.
But Dr Paisley proved the accuracy of what his son Ian Paisley jnr said about him, that “there is life in the old dog yet”, by first being moved from intensive care to the general hospital and finally, in late February, being allowed back to his home in east Belfast.
Now he is writing again. In a special Good Friday birthday article for yesterday’s Belfast-based News Letter newspaper, for which he wrote a mostly religious column, he talked of the future.
“It is my intention, God willing, to resume this weekly column in September but as I am celebrating my 86th birthday today I wanted to express my thanks and exercise my wrist,” he wrote.
He used the article to thank people for their support. “Before I begin my comments I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you who sent your good wishes to me during my time in hospital and since,” he wrote.
He posed for a photograph with his wife, sitting at a table reading a birthday card and preparing to tuck into some birthday cake.
Baroness Paisley said her husband was in better health than anyone had ever thought possible.
Dr Paisley, who was elevated to the title of Lord Bannside in 2010, said he would be spending Easter with his extended family.
“In our household the youngest family visitors will be my two great-grandsons – they are aged three and one – and, as the oldest, I will be tipping the scales at the other end,” he wrote.
“In between the octogenarians and the toddlers, every decade will be represented. Each will have had their triumphs and sorrows, each will have had their aspirations and disappointments, and each will continue to face the trials and tests that life is made up of,” he wrote.
