Number 11 is where I grew up and what you see here is part of one of a pair of stone pillars that mark the entrance. My mother daubed the numbers on in white paint about 20 years ago.
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| Number 11. On FP4+ in RO9, printed on MGV paper. |
Not long after I moved back to Northern Ireland from the South of England, where I had been for the best part of 20 years, we got a chance to build our own house in the field adjoining Number 11. If you'd told me at the age of 18 that I'd be living 'back home' when I was 40 I would most likely have laughed in disbelief. At 18, I couldn't wait to get away - The Troubles were in full swing and our society was a mess. When I returned in 1997 things were different - the Good Friday Agreement was being drafted and most of the troops and checkpoints were gone. We weren't out of the woods yet, though. Yesterday, the 15th August, marks the 23rd anniversary of the single worst event in the whole 30-year nightmare: Omagh. That one car bomb in 1998 resulted in 29 deaths, including a woman pregnant with twins, 6 teenagers, 6 children, 2 Spanish tourists and over 200 injured. I was staying in a guest house in Scotland when it came on the news - the images on the TV were unbelievably distressing. I think I went out and dulled my thought processes with the help of some local malt whisky.
It would be nice to be able to say that the Omagh Bomb marked the end of The Troubles and while things definitely settled down in the immediate aftermath, there remain a few people still of a mind that the only way to achieve the change they want is by bombing and killing. But thankfully it's only a few - to the tourist, or causal observer, everyday life in Northern Ireland today is just the same as many other parts of the UK and Ireland. Let's hope it stays that way.
I remember Omagh, when it was on the news. It was hard to believe. Of course, we'd had Oklahoma City just a few years before, so it was less hard to believe than it might have been.
ReplyDeleteOklahoma City was on another scale entirely, Jim. At least the perpetrators were caught and convicted. The relatives of victims of Omagh will never get complete closure, I fear. There were civil cases brought, retrials but no criminal convictions were ever secured.
DeleteAlthough I live just down the road from North Korea (part of this province is in North Korea), I feel lucky that nothing much goes on here. Reading the international news these days is pretty depressing.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope nothing much ever will go on where you live, Marcus - I'm all for a quiet life!
DeleteThe news from many parts of the world is awful. Perhaps it always was and we're just being bombarded with more news from more places than ever before.