I went to Lockerbie on Saturday. For reasons I don't even understand.
I was staying in Moffat, 13 miles and a 35 minute bus ride away, and if I'm honest I probably wouldn't have thought of going to Lockerbie if it wasn't for the bombing and the resultant plane crash that happened there 24 years ago.
The journey there was pretty pleasant. It was a nice sunny day, there were good views of the hills, it was all very Scottish, but as soon as I passed the 'Welcome to Lockerbie' sign I started to feel a bit strange.
And the strangeness continued when I got off the bus. I don't think Lockerbie itself is strange. It's just like lots of other towns I've been to in Scotland. There were industrial estates, an auction mart, people chatting in doorways, a man walking a dog, people waiting for buses. And then there was me. And I think it might have been me that had brought the strangeness.
The difference between all the other Scottish towns I've been to over the years, and Lockerbie might have been purely in my head. It had the same kind of shops, the same kind of scenery, the same kind of people, all except for the fact that when I was looking at the town and the hills surrounding it I was wondering what it must have looked like when they were on fire, and the streets and gardens were full of dead bodies, and there was a massive crater in the middle of the town and bits of aeroplane everywhere. And I thought to myself. No town deserves that.
I didn't do my research properly either, I knew there were two memorials but I didn't write down beforehand where they were. As a result I couldn't find either of them. and I didn't want to ask anyone where they were. It could have been a dead person's mother I was asking, or a dead person's son, and I didn't want to look like a disaster tourist, even though that's probably what I was.
I did go to the local church and there was a massive gravestone in the graveyard, much bigger than all the others, and I wondered if that might be the memorial, but there wasn't a path to it, and I didn't want to start walking over other graves to go and have a look, so I just stayed at a distance. When I got home, I checked up and I wasn't even in the right place, so the one I saw was probably just belonged to somebody important whose family could afford a big gravestone, or one of the town's founding fathers or something.
I went to Tesco at one point, and there was a ghost in the entrance collecting money, and Dracula and some other people dressed as dead people were wandering around inside. As it happened, they were Tesco employees dressing up for Halloween, but it seemed surreal to me to be wandering around somewhere so synonymous with death and tragedy, and to be seeing people dressed as ghosts.
But then again, if dressing up as ghosts is normal at this time of year, why should Lockerbie be any different? Even though it's a place that's known for something so out of the ordinary, shouldn't it be allowed to do the same normal things as everyone else?
In the end, I only stayed a couple of hours in Lockerbie. I had some fish and chips and I got the bus back to Moffat. The feeling I kept having was that I was an intruder at the funeral of someone I didn't know, and it wasn't a feeling I liked.
The experience seemed even more incongruous to me, because I was spending the weekend in such a positive environment with loving friends and families, and to take time out from that to go see a place that's known worldwide because of something so terrible made me feel uneasy.
I don't really know what it means to pay your respects, I don't know if it's just empty words or not, but somehow by going to Lockerbie I'd felt like that's what I was doing.
For the short time I was there, I spent some time thinking about those terrible and tragic events, and how they must have affected, and still continue to affect the community where it happened. I thought about the scars that must be there, even if they're well hidden, Like the people of Dunblane and Hungerford, and others, it must seem at times like they're living under a terrible curse, and I certainly didn't envy them for living with that legacy.
But even though it felt strange to be there, and I didn't see any memorials and I didn't offer any condolences to anyone, and I didn't in any way acknowledge to anyone why I was there, by the time I got back on the bus I felt like I had at least made an attempt to understand. Even if I came away thinking that what happened there can never really be understood.
One of the really inspiring things I read about Lockerbie before I went was about how the community had pulled together at the time of the tragedy. For example, in the days following the disaster:
Volunteers from Lockerbie set up and manned canteens, which stayed open 24 hours, where relatives, soldiers, police officers, and social workers could find free sandwiches, hot meals, coffee, and someone to talk to. The people of the town washed, dried, and ironed every piece of clothing that was found once the police had determined they were of no forensic value, so that as many items as possible could be returned to the relatives. The BBC's Scottish correspondent, Andrew Cassell, reported on the 10th anniversary of the bombing that the townspeople had "opened their homes and hearts" to the relatives, bearing their own losses "stoically and with enormous dignity", and that the bonds forged then continue to this day
And when I got back off the bus in Moffat, I walked back up the road to the hostel where my friends were all gathered together, and I was welcomed back in, and we all had a meal together.
And the sadness I'd felt earlier in the day might have amplified the feeling, but as I sat there I felt grateful for my own community, and I was glad to be a part of it.
I was staying in Moffat, 13 miles and a 35 minute bus ride away, and if I'm honest I probably wouldn't have thought of going to Lockerbie if it wasn't for the bombing and the resultant plane crash that happened there 24 years ago.
The journey there was pretty pleasant. It was a nice sunny day, there were good views of the hills, it was all very Scottish, but as soon as I passed the 'Welcome to Lockerbie' sign I started to feel a bit strange.
And the strangeness continued when I got off the bus. I don't think Lockerbie itself is strange. It's just like lots of other towns I've been to in Scotland. There were industrial estates, an auction mart, people chatting in doorways, a man walking a dog, people waiting for buses. And then there was me. And I think it might have been me that had brought the strangeness.
The difference between all the other Scottish towns I've been to over the years, and Lockerbie might have been purely in my head. It had the same kind of shops, the same kind of scenery, the same kind of people, all except for the fact that when I was looking at the town and the hills surrounding it I was wondering what it must have looked like when they were on fire, and the streets and gardens were full of dead bodies, and there was a massive crater in the middle of the town and bits of aeroplane everywhere. And I thought to myself. No town deserves that.
I didn't do my research properly either, I knew there were two memorials but I didn't write down beforehand where they were. As a result I couldn't find either of them. and I didn't want to ask anyone where they were. It could have been a dead person's mother I was asking, or a dead person's son, and I didn't want to look like a disaster tourist, even though that's probably what I was.
I did go to the local church and there was a massive gravestone in the graveyard, much bigger than all the others, and I wondered if that might be the memorial, but there wasn't a path to it, and I didn't want to start walking over other graves to go and have a look, so I just stayed at a distance. When I got home, I checked up and I wasn't even in the right place, so the one I saw was probably just belonged to somebody important whose family could afford a big gravestone, or one of the town's founding fathers or something.
I went to Tesco at one point, and there was a ghost in the entrance collecting money, and Dracula and some other people dressed as dead people were wandering around inside. As it happened, they were Tesco employees dressing up for Halloween, but it seemed surreal to me to be wandering around somewhere so synonymous with death and tragedy, and to be seeing people dressed as ghosts.
But then again, if dressing up as ghosts is normal at this time of year, why should Lockerbie be any different? Even though it's a place that's known for something so out of the ordinary, shouldn't it be allowed to do the same normal things as everyone else?
In the end, I only stayed a couple of hours in Lockerbie. I had some fish and chips and I got the bus back to Moffat. The feeling I kept having was that I was an intruder at the funeral of someone I didn't know, and it wasn't a feeling I liked.
The experience seemed even more incongruous to me, because I was spending the weekend in such a positive environment with loving friends and families, and to take time out from that to go see a place that's known worldwide because of something so terrible made me feel uneasy.
I don't really know what it means to pay your respects, I don't know if it's just empty words or not, but somehow by going to Lockerbie I'd felt like that's what I was doing.
For the short time I was there, I spent some time thinking about those terrible and tragic events, and how they must have affected, and still continue to affect the community where it happened. I thought about the scars that must be there, even if they're well hidden, Like the people of Dunblane and Hungerford, and others, it must seem at times like they're living under a terrible curse, and I certainly didn't envy them for living with that legacy.
But even though it felt strange to be there, and I didn't see any memorials and I didn't offer any condolences to anyone, and I didn't in any way acknowledge to anyone why I was there, by the time I got back on the bus I felt like I had at least made an attempt to understand. Even if I came away thinking that what happened there can never really be understood.
One of the really inspiring things I read about Lockerbie before I went was about how the community had pulled together at the time of the tragedy. For example, in the days following the disaster:
Volunteers from Lockerbie set up and manned canteens, which stayed open 24 hours, where relatives, soldiers, police officers, and social workers could find free sandwiches, hot meals, coffee, and someone to talk to. The people of the town washed, dried, and ironed every piece of clothing that was found once the police had determined they were of no forensic value, so that as many items as possible could be returned to the relatives. The BBC's Scottish correspondent, Andrew Cassell, reported on the 10th anniversary of the bombing that the townspeople had "opened their homes and hearts" to the relatives, bearing their own losses "stoically and with enormous dignity", and that the bonds forged then continue to this day
And when I got back off the bus in Moffat, I walked back up the road to the hostel where my friends were all gathered together, and I was welcomed back in, and we all had a meal together.
And the sadness I'd felt earlier in the day might have amplified the feeling, but as I sat there I felt grateful for my own community, and I was glad to be a part of it.
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