17 years since Dunblane, and I still don’t quite have the words to describe it.
No, I’m lucky enough not to have known anyone there, and I didn’t live in the area at that time, but even in Glasgow, we took it personally. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in Scotland, you know? And certainly not in a little town like Dunblane. I still remember where I was when I heard, just wasting time in the Uni snackbar, when the serving ladies told me. Word spread quickly, and almost everyone knows someone who was affected by it.
I don’t have anything deep and meaningful to say here, I just had to start a thread and not let the day go unmarked. We remember.
That’s weird, 'cos I would have said 20-25 years ago. I think my brain must have conflated Dunblane and Hungerford into “gun massacres that happened a long time ago when I was a kid”. In 1996 I was at university, but I could swear I remember it being much longer ago than that.
But then, thinking about it, Andy Murray was at the school in Dunblane, wasn’t he, and he is only, what, 25?
It seems longer to me too. Yeah, he was there, but not in that class, he was older than P1. Although he remembers his mum giving the killer lifts on previous occasions - small town indeed.
A friend of mine lived there at the time, and was a member of the gun club.
Afterwards he sold his guns and left the club and also needed counseling. He’s still not fully over it, I think.
He eventually moved away and has also taken up ballrooom dancing! (No direct relation - it’s so he and his wife keep active as they get older)
Bumping this thread on the twentieth anniversary. I’ve got my own five year old Primary One now, which brings an added perspective to the horror that happened that day.
My facebook feed is full of pictures of snowdrops posted by fellow scots and UKers, in memory of the children and their teacher.
What a horror. I was completely unaware of the incident, as in 1996 I was living in western Africa and there was not as yet anything resembling internet service in that part of the continent, nor were newspapers a common thing.
