Tuesday 11 September 2012

Save the day

To all of you for whom this day is one of sorrow and terrible memories, my prayers and my thoughts are for you today.

It's hard to have good and bad memories on the same day. Tony and I have a nephew whose birthday is 11 September - he was born long before 2001, but now everybody thinks of that day as a day of mourning.

There is a day of mourning in Scottish history, too. On 13 March 1996, in the small Scottish town of Dunblane, a man who was clearly unbalanced burst into the hall of the little primary school armed with four guns. By the time he turned the gun on himself, sixteen children - all around six years old - and their teacher lay dead. For days, all of us in the UK went through the motions of normal life while shocked and horrified that such a thing could happen. And no compassion, no anger, could bring those little children and the teacher who died trying to save them back to their families.

For years, the mention of Dunblane was associated with 'massacre'.

In the school that day - one of the children who was in school, but not in the hall - was wee Jamie Murray, who grew up to be a tennis player. So did his little brother, Andy. And today I woke up to the news that Andy Murray has won the US Open Tennis Championship, the first British man to win a Grand Slam in over seventy years.

What a joy, what a celebration! Our brave lad, for some of us at leastyou have given this date a new resonance. It wil always have its sorrow, but it's your day today and a proud day for Scotland.

And now, when we hear of Dunblane, we don't just think of the massacre. We think, 'Andy Murray'.

Bring it home to Dunblane, bonny lad.

3 comments:

sciencefreak12 said...

Aw, that's a shame that people have to comint murder and such. Just evil.

Serouisly, killing a buch of little kids it's like what happened in Colorado for the mindnight showing of Batman whan that mentally unstable guy just opean fired. Watched the whole thing on the news.

At Kindwood hight ( my old school now) we would have an assembaly with JROTC ( My brother, Brandon, is in that) for 9/11. I remember watching that on the news.


Kristi has an interesting veiwpoint on life/math. Their would be no science without math etc. Tecnicaly, math is numbers which is letters. So, English is very important. Do you know about conceptual math? It's about applying concepts. She says that i'm very good at applying knowledge/concepts.

I miss you character blogs. When are you gonna look at mine, you said " I will check it out " you never did, did you.

margaret mcallister said...

It's OK, I finally found it! Love the pictures!

I was never good at maths, but I can do basic arithmetic. You need that to be able to cope in the world and organise yourself.

sciencefreak12 said...

Thanks :D please surcribe to me!!

NEEDLE!!!!

Glad you liked the pitures.