In 2001 I was attending a first-year undergraduate history seminar at a Scottish university At the first meeting, we did the usual introductions around the class. One student gave Lockerbie as her home town. I asked if she remembered the night that PA103 came down, this being the major event in the community's recent history. However, in asking this question I realized that she would have been about five years old at the time, so perhaps she would have been too young to have much memory of the disaster. I was unprepared for the emotion that welled up in her eyes—/ had touched a raw nerve. When I was a child living in a Lanarkshire village, in the era before the construction of long-distance motorways, I often used to watch the white buses of Western Scottish Motor Transport, distinguished by their black trim and gold 'Western' titles, wind along the main road in the early evening. These were overnight services between Glasgow and London, and at holiday time the coaches could form a convoy of 12 or more.
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