I am just back in Edinburgh after a brief trip to Stranraer to participate in a session, about the Lockerbie case amongst other things, in the Young Scotland Programme run by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland (http://www.contemporaryscotland.com/index.php). Most of the participants were only toddlers or very young primary school children in December 1988, but it was interesting to discover that most of them had clear memories of the incident.
After the YSP session, I took the opportunity to visit Lockerbie and to spend the night there -- the first time I had been back in my home town for a few years. The town seems to be thriving and the population expanding, with lots of new residential building in evidence. The disaster of 21 December 1988 has certainly not been forgotten, but it does not occupy the foreground of people's lives: the people of the town have resolutely got on with the business of living. This was entirely to be expected: one of my clearest recollections of the days and weeks following the tragedy was the descent upon the town of a team of "trauma counsellors" to provide support and assistance to such of the townsfolk as felt the need for it. The counsellors sat in glorious isolation. A close-knit Lowland Scottish country town like Lockerbie is not fertile ground for the counselling industry.
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