May I first begin by expressing my utter shock and horror regarding the brutal murders of 12 innocent Cumbrians by a man driven to unimaginable extremes of sanity. All my sympathy and wishes go out to the victims, the bereaved and those affected.
News broke on a carefree post-exam trip skipping between chocolate-box Dartmoor villages sheltering from a brilliant blue sky beneath waxy green leaves, these rural idylls in the shape of those Western Cumbrian hamlets and communities shaken to the core. Just this morning I had recieved a family phone call from the car heading to the Lake District for an afternoon of sunshine and smiles on board beat-up boats and pursuing the incessantly energetic dog. A feeling of security turned to one of stomach-churning dread as the radio blared facts and figures impossible to digest: a frantic phone call restored some semblance of calm, but the despair remained.
In no way am I trying to say that I can identify or emphasise with those who have been affected by the disaster: however, it was not just the events of this afternoon but of my home life which makes it all seem terrifyingly close to home.
Rural life is my home life: five miles along twisting single-track lanes to civilisation and certain isolation in the freezing winter makes for a more solitary lifestyle lacking in twenty-four hour shopping, Chinese take-aways and efficient transport links. However, there would be few who would welcome the exchange of bird song for bus beeps, of tractor convoys for roads blocked by lorries, of fluffy lambkins for pointy-nosed ratties.
The violence in the countryside is all the more shocking becuase it ruptures a context which seems completely at odds with the incident. Mass random shootings seem from another world; occurrences consigned to crazed American students, perhaps, or else copycat Chinese crazies.
"Countryside" conjures images of peace, beauty, stillness, broken by the squwak of a pheasant or the clanging of a vehicle over a cattle-grid. Gunshots and bodies slumped on pavements belong to grey inner city shoot-outs. Not any more.
It is saddeningly time to realise that the rural world is one no longer protected by its connotations of peace, beauty and community: it is one so removed from violence and its effects that I fear wounds will run even deeper. Unlike violence in the big city context, which may act more as a pause button on the hustle and bustle of life as knife crime incidents jostle for newspaper space, I worry that incidents such as the Cumbrian murders will bring rural communities to a shuddering, empty, hopeless halt. The sparseness and peacefulness of country life may only serve to amplify the awfulness of the incidents.
I pray that it won't.
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