Lisburn councillor Stephen Martin said the news had "come as a bolt out of the blue".
Until, that is, another shock, a bolt of lightening perhaps, sends them off in another direction.
Wade on abortion, decided in 1973, which came as a bolt from the blue.
Crudely speaking, if there is lightning around, St Peter's has a reasonably high chance of getting a bolt.
But some say that it is absurd to depict the law lords' judgment as a bolt from the blue.
It came on so fast it was was like a bolt of lightning.
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Tools to measure customer sentiment are starting to be embedded in solutions rather than offered as a bolt on capability.
The odds of having to duck away from a bolt of lightning in the land of Disney's Magic Kingdom, Orlando, Fla.
The plan to close a Merseyside aircraft parts factory has come as "a bolt out of the blue", according to a local MP.
Mr Howarth said the plant had been recruiting "within the last 12 months, so it's a bit of a bolt out of the blue".
The success of the Matthew 25 PAC would mark a sea change in the electoral landscape, unprecedented but not a bolt from the blue.
"It hit me like a bolt out of the blue, " he recalls: A franchise system would be a way to maintain standards and improve the supply chain.
Pete Gardner, the chief executive of the British Athletes Commission, says he is "very concerned at the proposals, which have come as a bolt from the blue".
For the series of paintings at Gagosian, he overlaid old publicity stills from the 1940s and '50s with silk-screened images such as a bolt, banana or lemon.
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The president of Board for Control of Cricket in India N Srinivasan told reporters that he was "shocked" by the developments which he described as "a bolt from the blue".
To say the idea for "Struck By Lightning" hit me like a bolt of lightning would be an incredibly convenient way to start this piece but also the most accurate comparison I could make.
So the correct paint has been applied to those areas that have suffered corrosion, and a bolt with the right kind of metal has been attached to a fitting that earlier caused the "minor" flood.
They added that the proposals, which they described as "a bolt out of the blue", would hurt small businesses and employee share-ownership schemes, as well as discouraging risk-taking by venture capital firms vital to economic growth.
Under Jewish and Islamic law, animals for slaughter must be healthy and uninjured at the time of death, which rules out driving a bolt into the brain - though some Muslim authorities accept forms of stunning that can be guaranteed not to kill the animal.
Authorities also seized a bolt-action rifle, a .22-caliber rifle, a Marksman BB gun and a .22 revolver starter pistol, along with nine knives of varying sizes, a nearly 7-foot-long pole with a blade on one end and a spear tip on the other, and three samurai swords.
Marjorie was no longer as adept as she had been when she was younger and able to unroll a bolt of cloth and see every seam and dart, every buttonhole and facing, when she could tell, even before putting one pin into the cloth, how it would all fall together.
There will be so much excitement as court artists will capture the moment in chalk, journalists will make a bolt for the courtroom door to fill in the blank (Prison Years) they have in the stories they wrote on Tuesday, and photographers will grab a photo of Gupta entering and leaving the courthouse.
If, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, for example, which you and I remember because we were around, it had all gone wrong and the Russians had put a bolt from the blue on London and Mr MacMillan was killed, the decision whether to launch the B-force, the B-bombers with their hydrogen bombs, would have gone to the Chief of Bomber Command, an airman in uniform.
Five boys aged between 16 and 18 were admitted to hospital on Tuesday after a lightning bolt hit a cricket field at their school.
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From a traffic flow point of view, the hole in the support on the far side of the box was occupied by a machine bolt with a nut loosely screwed into the end.
Creativity is often portrayed as a lightning bolt that strikes without warning, leaving a sudden burst of ideas in its wake.
Work ran over by 90 minutes due to a tool running low on battery power and a particularly awkward bolt securing a handrail that needed to be removed.
If there is a Usain Bolt moment in the U.S., it will be on a baseball diamond In New York on Tuesday.
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