COMING into the third week since Scotland elected a new parliament, we were hoping business would finally return to some sort of normality.
But at the start of the week, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell pled guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party over a period of 12 years and the news cycle has been in overdrive ever since.
On Thursday, I was handed the opportunity to sit down with the First Minister at Bute House – something I had put in a bid for the previous week.
I was initially interested in speaking to John Swinney about why he had opted not to recruit a constitution secretary in his new Cabinet and why he had chosen to take this brief into his own portfolio.
Angus Robertson and Mike Russell before him had taken on this responsibility previously. It was a major change, and I was keen to know why Swinney felt it needed to be him who drove forward the independence effort.
But by the time the interview came around, I almost forgot to include that matter in my list of questions, only remembering about it when I was sat watching TV at home the evening before.
So much had happened since. The Parliament had voted to call for the UK Government to issue a Section 30 order and we wanted to know what Swinney’s next steps were. Asking about Murrell was also key, but we knew striking the right tone and balance around the matter would be key.
Having watched the way in which the issue had been covered by the rest of the press – and in particular the way many had rabidly gone after Nicola Sturgeon in a desperate bid to implicate her in Murrell’s deception – I was keen not to join the rabble by pressing him on what the former first minister did or did not know. Only Sturgeon can answer those questions.
But questions needed to be asked about how Murrell managed to steal this vast sum of money undetected, and whether sufficient lessons had been learned. We made sure they were.
Speaking to the First Minister, I pressed hard on the issue of independence first and foremost and while Swinney carefully managed not to reveal any specific tactics he had in his back pocket, he did seem determined to find a way to make it impossible for the UK Government to refuse Scotland’s right to self-determination. We also spoke about the newly-formed Celtic Alliance of the SNP, Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru and even a bit about the World Cup.
I did come away from the interview feeling a little frustrated we didn’t get any definitive answers about what he planned to do if the UK Government keeps saying no.
At the same time though, I felt satisfied we had done our best to ask important questions about our country's future, rather than endless speculation on internal party matters. The UK Government continues to deny Scots a chance to make a choice despite electing a record-breaking majority of pro-independence MSPs and no one seems bothered.
What Murrell did was horrendous and there will be questions going forward for the party.
But journalists must keep an eye on the bigger picture. Our jobs should be about ensuring the bread-and-butter issues – and for us the main one is always independence – are still covered behind the smog of sensationalism and, in some cases, clear misogyny.
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