It was a school project that brought me, my Granda and a Nobel Prize winner together – and as my sister teased me recently I’ve been dining out on it ever since.

So here I go again.

I was 12-years-old when I carried out my first ever interview with my Granda, Vincent Trainor. He was a mortician at a Daisy Hill Hospital, just miles from the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and he worked there through the very worst years of the Troubles. So, of course, he made an interesting subject.

Among the awful anecdotes he shared with me was his recollection of the Kingsmill Massacre, one of the Conflict’s most appalling atrocities.

The horror unfolded on a cold, winter evening in 1976 when a gang of gunmen stopped a van packed with workers heading home.

There had been a spate of violence in the days before and the 12 men onboard thought the would-be killers were Loyalists, there to murder Catholics.

And when the terrorists ordered any Catholics in the group to step forward, the band of men whispered to the only one there to stay put.

They wanted to protect him, Granda said, but the man insisted on making himself known, prepared to be killed by the roadside.

It turned out the terrorists were Republicans.

They were there to kill his friends instead, and as he stepped forward they lifted their guns and opened fire on the 11 other men.

All but one of them died, and their Catholic friend was forced to flee as the screams of his workmates rang out.

In 1996 my Granda recalled the men’s dirty boots and the empty lunch boxes they’d carried with them on their way home from work.

He’d cleaned up their bodies, and prepared them for their funerals.

And all those years later as the fire roared in the front room of his house, he told me what happened.

A short time later my dad read an article about the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney and words he’d spoken about the shooting.

Encouraged by my parents, I posted a copy of the interview to the poet, not sure if he’d ever see it. But around a week later a neatly-typed letter arrived at our house, from Seamus Heaney to me.

He said he was moved to receive a copy of Granda’s words, that he was “almost relieved to find the story of the Catholic man’s action on the night confirmed” and that he was “never sure whether that might not just have been a piece of folklore”.

He called my Granda an “impressive interviewee” with “extraordinary things to tell”.

A framed copy of the letter took pride of place in my Granda’s house until he died.

It continues as a reminder of the work he and so many unsung heroes did during those harrowing years – and of the “extraordinary things” ordinary people have to tell.