Of all the momentous and potentially life changing political events that have occurred in the last 12 months who could have predicted that among those attracting global attention would be a West Tyrone MP with a loaf of bread on his head.
I have been reporting on the Kingsmill atrocity for many years. I've spoken to victims and reported on the circumstances of not just that awful event but the terrible sectarian bloodshed that came both before and after the murder of ten Protestant workmen.
I was in court the day the autopsy findings detailing the injuries of each victim were read to Judge Brian Sherrard, who is hearing the inquest.
Victim after victim with multiple injuries and gruesome details of the cause of death were set out in medical terms.
It was a difficult day's work, it was graphic and harrowing and painted a picture of a slaughter with no mercy shown.
I found it tough and I was just an observer. I cannot begin to imagine how it felt for the loved ones, some of them very elderly, sitting in the public gallery.
I've spoken to Alan Black, the only survivor of that day, who carries his trauma with a great deal of dignity and without any of the bitterness you would expect from someone who had undergone such a horrific experience.
Kingsmill was such a terrible attack that even for those brutal times it was deemed too barbaric for the IRA to claim and while it is widely accepted that they carried out the murders, to this day they have never publicly acknowledged that.
The massacre followed the coordinated and sectarian attacks on the Reavey and O'Dowd families that left six members of those two families dead just days before.
So much grief, 16 people dead in a relatively close geographical area in a matter of days left those communities hurting and with no resolution to the legacy of Northern Ireland's conflict those people still hurt.
And so, while I've seen and heard some horrendous things over the years I find it hard to comprehend how anyone could be so crass and insensitive as to mock the victims of that awful event.
Barry McElduff is a person who you could accurately describe as eccentric.
We may never know what he was at or what was going through his mind when he posed with a Kingsmill loaf on his head on the 42nd anniversary of that shocking slaughter.
Sinn Féin say they're satisfied that it wasn't a malicious act, others have pointed out that the odds of randomly picking that brand of bread on that day and posing in that manner was remote.
Regardless of intent the post caused harm and hurt and that is not behaviour becoming of any elected representative.
And an MP, a senior member of any party, should not be running about a service station with bread on their head like a court jester in any circumstances.
Barry McElduff's actions insulted Alan Black and brought into question the role of abstentionist Sinn Féin MPs and what exactly they do to fill their day.
The entire sorry sordid episode, the post, the hurt, the hypocrisy that followed and the lasting implications for the process we are 20 years into, was a depressing saga from start to finish.
We had a peace process and it was successful up to the point that it stopped violence but it was a failure in terms of uniting the two communities who share this strange little place.
Those who travel around the world selling the success of our peace process are little better than snake oil salesmen, because our process was a political failure and the events of the last 12-months have demonstrated that.
The new secretary of state Karen Bradley has her work cut out and it remains to be seen if she will approach her post with more enthusiasm than her predecessor who always appeared to have one eye on the airport departure lounge.
However, I fear we are beyond the point of talks to get devolution up and running again. Instead we need a total rethink on how to approach our post political peace process.
For right now we have peace but we certainly don't have unity, respect or indeed a political process worth shouting about.
