30 years ago today

[blameless]

The name "Lockerbie" became famous for all the wrong reasons:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources..._Am_flight_103

[Duncan Gardner]

I went through the area that night on way up to Stranraer & Belfast. A University friend's brother was on the plane

[Giggler]

Still a name imbued with tragedy like, to my ears at least, Bradford.

I did my Pointless audition in Glasgow because I didn’t want my partially-sighted mate travelling too far. I missed a rail connection in Lockerbie and spent two hours drinking on my own in three town centre pubs on a night when Bury were beating Sheffield United. The town is no doubt as normal as it can be now but it felt like Ogdenville or North Haverbrook.

[ad hoc]

I met somebody recently who was living in Lockerbie when it happened (she was 8 I think she said). She remembers a huge bang and a night of sirens and chaos. But obviously the full trauma that she got from the news and from the days that followed have never left her

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Christ, I was about to say "we did this recently" but when I searched for my reply it was nearly four years ago. Anyway, as I was saying four years ago:

Probably taking it into different territory altogether, but me and my then mate swore we saw the Pan Am plane that crashed onto Lockerbie fly over (Carlisle) on the way, we were out that night dropping money off at people's houses (not drug related, unfortunately) and commented on a plane flying overhead. My later girlfriend's mother was driving south on the M74 at the time, saw the flash and thought Chapelcross (nearby nuclear power station that she lived right next to) had gone bang.

I'd also add my dad was working at Carlisle's then only 24 hour petrol station at the time and had various journalists and freelancers calling in asking for directions to Lockerbie, and had a prime view of the emergency services going out of Carlisle and back again later.

A few years later I was working for the local authorit(y/ies) that covered Lockerbie and the impact was still being felt years later. The council looked after a substantial community fund, eventually swelled by formal fundraising (including, strangely, The Mission playing a benefit gig in Carlisle) but initially funded by people from all over the UK and the world sending cash in envelopes, some marked with no more than "Lockerbie", which was went to the council for safe keeping.

[adams house cat]

Visited Lockerbie a few years ago. Nice town, nice people.

Like Aberfan, famous for all the wrong reasons. Impossible to forget the appalling tragedy.

[elguapo4]

It was the night of our work Christmas party. A group of us went to Dalys pub on Eden quay to watch Spain play Norn Iron in our world cup group. At ht they interrupted the usual yakity yak for a special announcement which we assumed was yet another bombing in Belfast. Everyone knew it was bad but it wasn't until the next day that the worst of happened.
Ps didn't Emmerdale do a bad taste cliffhanger based around a Lockerbie incident a few years later?

[WOM]

A mate and I visited it in spring of '90, and the houses on those streets were still being rebuilt. We spoke to a very old stone carver doing names on headstones who'd lived there all his life.

[Nurse Duckett]

Best chip shop chips I've ever had were from Lockerbie, back in 1980, when we nipped over the border from a trip to the Lake District. Just the right amount of grease - fantastic. Never been back there.

[Crusoe]

Ps didn't Emmerdale do a bad taste cliffhanger based around a Lockerbie incident a few years later?

yes. I remember watching it. I don't know how they justified that one.

[Eggchaser]

To get to my parents' house, we take the A303 exit that is also marked "Hungerford". I always mentally tag "Massacre" on the back of it in my mind.

[Sits]

And similarly Dunblane carries tragic, unavoidable echoes.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

My grandaunt lived in a village best known for being the site of a 'cinema fire' that killed 48 people back in 1926. It was an international news event on a par with lockerbie, with charity galas in holywood, oh, and a mass grave.

[Sean of the Shed]

Mrs of the Shed knew somebody who died on the Lockerbie Pan-Am plane. She was 19 years old and had just got engaged.

[adams house cat]

yes. I remember watching it. I don't know how they justified that one.

"Softly, Softly", I think, ran an episode about a truck loaded with chemicals or something that ran away on a steep hill and hit a primary school with many deaths. Aberfan was still a recent memory, ten years or so, and it caused a lpt of controversy at the time.