I knew this anniversary was coming—I’ve been busy and forgot it was today—the memories are very real. Someone posted a link and these memories that have never left me came to the fore.
I was there—aged 14—half way through Brookside on a Monday night – will never ever forget it. I remember seeing a fire engine going up the road to put out the fires only for it to come back the other way minutes later with its windscreen shattered with stones – I remember people trying to sell us stolen goods – I remember fleeing my house – I remember a police van burning on its side in the petrol station on the corner of our road and the two lovely brothers from our local post office who died – I remember our high street looking like a bomb had hit it – I remember not going to school the next day and then being told off with the teacher not quite realising what we had been through – I remember when Douglas Hurd came and it all kicked off again and a car pulled up outside our house and when they opened the boot there was a milk crate of petrol bombs so we fled the house again as the threat of the petrol station being blown up was getting real and I remember a newspaper photographer being beaten up and all his equipment stolen. I remember being terrified.