Repeating History
I felt very old listening to the radio last night and this morning. Arts Extra had an item about a revival of the play "Somewhere Over the Balcony" written by Marie Jones about women living in Divis Flats. Kim Lenaghan reminded listeners that it was 20 years since the Charabanc theatre company first put on the play.
"20 years!" I felt staggered as I have vivid memories of the time, as I was then sharing a house with Marie Jones and her fellow Charabanc member Eleanor Methven. It was a lively time, but the news was terribly dark.
I also have memories of heading in to work to help out on the coverage of the IRA Enniskillen bomb. This morning Good Morning Ulster spoke to my old ´óÏó´«Ã½ colleagues Mike Philpott and Keith Baker who recalled the trauma of covering the Poppy Day atrocity. Today people in Enniskillen attended a remembrance service twenty years on.
20 years, I thought, well at least that is history...then just after dropping off my own child at school I learned about what had happened to the off duty PSNI officer, blasted by a shot gun as he dropped his child off at Lumen Christi Grammar School.
Of course May 8th wasn't, to borrow Francis Fukuyama's phrase, the end of history. But twenty years on from the Enniskillen bomb, who really thinks that a cold blooded shooting of the kind perpetrated today can play any part in building a better future?
I'm 