---

It's Friday night. I've just got home after having a few drinks after work at the Leopard's Club, home of the best fish supper in Bermuda.

This is my last week here after nine years. Next Thursday I'm getting on the plane with my dog Roxy and heading back home to Southport, a coastal town in the North West of England about an hour away from Liverpool and Manchester.

I am leaving the island on good terms; it's just that after such a long period away it's time to reconnect with my large family - they've been begging me to come home for years. I may be back. Once this place gets under your skin, it's in there forever, or so I've heard.

I feel I'm leaving a Bermuda that is much better in every conceivable way than when I arrived.

The biggest difference I've noticed is people's increased willingness to talk, to open up about their lives. In my mind that speaks volumes, it suggests a greater sense of ownership, which has only been made possible by the political evolution that I've witnessed during my time here.

I'm glad I see it like this; I know some journalists who continue to bang their heads against the wall, frustrated about all the things Bermuda isn't. I feel sorry for all of you who are subjected to that on a daily basis. Thankfully I won't.

I remember soon after I arrived on the island being up at Government House. The UBP and its followers got themselves in such a state over Jennifer Smith's proposed constitutional reforms that they called in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office so they could tell its representatives, in their usual hysterical way, about their fears that the Progressive Labour Party was building the foundations for a dictatorship.

People actually believed that there was something innately menacing about one man, one vote.

Needless to say, after months of the usual, laborious political shenanigans played out in the daily paper and on TV, the UBP finally conceded, under Pam Gordon's leadership, that maybe the reforms weren't such a bad idea after all.

I mention that because it was the first time I actually got to witness just how threatened a lot of the white community felt by a so-called black government - and I couldn't understand why. I do now and with that knowledge I agree with those who believe that it is up to that element of the white community to wake up to reality.

Fast forward to today and the Big Conversation, a brilliant initiative in which some, and granted it was only a small number, of whites, finally began to grasp the concept of privilege. And the reason they were able to grasp it, is because they were actually willing to listen, rather than play the victim card, bury their heads in the sand and wish the past would all just go away.

Oh, how simple that would be.

Anyway, that's how it seems to have played out over the years, right up until the UBP imploded at last month's election. And to think some people thought they were ready to become the Government!

I've been called a 'Brown lover' by that man - I can't even bear to write his name - who runs one of those self-important blogs. But it's not that.

I think like all politicians, and all people, Dr. Brown has his flaws, that he could handle things differently, but at the end of the day, on balance, I agree with the majority of Bermudians who would much rather have him running the country than anyone else, whether they're in the PLP or the UBP.

Whenever I interviewed Dr. Brown I was always accused of being soft and of not getting the answers I should have. That's rubbish. What those people were angry about, and continue to be angry about, is that Dr. Brown didn't and doesn't give them the answers they want to hear. That he isn't someone else.

Covering politics here is exhausting, both reporting on it and having to read it. I won't miss it because 90 per cent of it is making hay, which is to say, a complete waste of everyone's time and their mental energy.

I think a lot of Bermudians feel this way. They know what's going on and how to interpret a story. One-sided attack stories are simply not believable, and it's insulting to think otherwise.

The best stories, the most meaningful stories, come from regular people, and it is here that I am truly grateful to all those I have written about who trusted me to give an accurate reflection of their experience.

I remember sitting with a sobbing Roan Bicarie in his daughter's bedroom hours after a wall collapsed and killed his wife Andrea in the car park at Bermuda College.

I remember when six-year-old Tyaisha Cox was run over and killed and the affect it had on her family. They let me into their house and made me feel welcome before showing me the hole in their souls.

I remember when Hurricane Fabian killed Stephen Symons, Gladys Saunders, Nicole O' Connor and Manuel Pacheco. While the rest of the media seemed to put undue emphasis on the financial implications, I was the first journalist to interview the relatives of all four families and the Bermuda Sun was the first newspaper to carry photographs of all four of them. The human cost should always override the financial.

Those family members spoke to me when they still had hope that their loved ones would be found; people with emotions so raw, but still willing to talk to me.

I remember going to Dejon Simmons's house the day before the documentary was going to air about the bike crash that burned his entire body and face beyond recognition. He was just lying there with his shirt off, playing on the computer.

He had had to accept what he looked like - it was that or death - now it was up to the rest of us to take a good look and accept him, too.

There are so many examples like this, which is why I am genuinely grateful to have been given the opportunity to work at the Bermuda Sun.

Tony McWilliam is a very humble man and a great editor. He abhors the hysteria that comes with some stories and he understands the human condition. He displays compassion when warranted and encourages tenacity when you're starting to think 'what's the point?'

Take the Cooper Twins murder trial, for example.

We understood that no matter what their past deeds, these were someone's children, and we made a great effort to obtain photographs that we published after the trial along with an in-depth background story on who they actually were. Seeing the twins as children was as poignant as it gets.

Death stories are always the worst for a journalist; no one wants to make that call. But in this game the quicker you do it, the better. No wonder people see us as predators.

I remember Coleman Easton; Chris Pimentel; Shaki Crockwell; Madeline Joell; Lori Mello; Dame Lois Browne-Evans; David Allen; Eugene Cox; Sir John Plowman; at least three homeless men who I gave money to but never got their names (well, I didn't want to be pokey); Rhondelle Tankard; Boyd Gatton; Shaundae Jones and Jason Lightbourne. There are more, but that's enough for anyone.

In the midst of all this, there was also a lot of fun. Bermuda is what you make it. I don't recognize the Bermuda written about in the other papers a lot of time, but that's a whole other story.

As a foreigner, guest worker, expatriate, whatever, I've never felt a smidgeon of hostility from any Bermudian. If anything, I leave feeling I have been genuinely embraced.

I've already written far more than I was meant to. So all that's left to say is: Thank you.[[In-content Ad]]

---