Dunblane

I've always resisted writing anything about the Dunblane Massacre. If you're a parent or a teacher or just someone with a bit of humanity, you won't have forgotten what happened twenty years ago. 

There are a few awful events that make me think I know where I was when that happened: the murder of Martin Luther King, the murder of John F Kennedy - and Dunblane.

I was in what was then the Pond Hotel in Great Western Road, doing a training session in French with primary teachers from the Glasgow area. I loved these people. They were totally dedicated to their job, worked hard with me, loved their kids, worried they weren't doing enough for them, and the craic was great. Exemplary practitioners. And every one of them was a volunteer. 

For some reason that day we didn't have the use of the conference suite - the 'big room' - but had been exiled to a pretty small side room which, unfortunately, had a phone. At about 11.15am, just after coffee time, the phone rang. I picked it up and the caller asked to speak to one of the course participants. I was pretty annoyed: the hotel staff knew I didn't like phone calls when we were working. The teacher concerned took the receiver, listened for less than a minute and hung up. Then she said: "That was my sister. She says there's been a shooting in a school in Dunblane." Straight away, one of the other participants said: "My niece goes to Dunblane primary." I said we were going to stop now and suggested we all go to our rooms and try to find out what was happening. This was before the age of mobile phones. I can't remember if we had Sky then. 

I went to my own room and put on the TV, switching between BBC1 and STV. All we could see were mothers with kids in buggies running up the road to the school. There were very few police outside the school, but quite a few journalists. I watched for a while, trying to sort it out in my head. I kept muting the TV to tune to Radio Scotland and Radio Clyde on the bedside radio. There was a news bulletin at 1pm. I can't remember if that gave the number of victims but I knew it was bad. I've never forgotten that at one point, Shereen Nanjiani shoved a microphone in a mother's face and asked: "How do you feel?" I knew she was out of her depth - we all were - but I would have battered her if she'd been anywhere near me.  

I went down to the dining room about half one. Some of the teachers were there. Very subdued. The man whose niece was in the school had managed to find out that she was safe. There was still no clear picture of what had happened, but Thomas Hamilton was already being mentioned as the gunman. 

May he rot in hell. I have no religious beliefs but if hell exists, I hope Thomas Hamilton will suffer eternal torments. I look at the wee kids in my family and they are only babies at five. How could anyone do that to babies? What kind of sick, perverted, inhuman? No, don't try to explain it to me. It's too much to take in. It's a new heart-break every anniversary. How the families have survived I don't know. They are heroes all. 

Dunblane was, we can only hope, a one-off, something that cannot be repeated now that the Snowdrop Campaign has put handguns out of the reach of most people. 

I wish we could ban all guns.