I guess most people will be busy preparing for Christmas.

Well if you ask the residents of Sherwood Crescent in Lockerkie Scotland you maynot get an answer as 11 of them have been dead for the past thirty years killed in their homes while watching TV, preparing the evening meal and relaxing after arriving home from work. The other residents will probably steer away from eye contact and want to change the subject.

Pamela who I have known for the past 4 years as a curator at Tundergarth Church Memorial Room at Dryfesdale just outside Lockerbie wont be seen on the day as PTSD has finally caught up with her and she resigned her Curator job last month.

I called into Lockerbie Town Hall very few people were around only the Caretaker, it seemed like a morgue well 30 years ago it was the town morgue handling over 259 bodies in thousands of pieces, everyone of them a first time visitor and representing 21 different Nations. They had not planned to spend Christmas at Lockerbie most infact had planned Christmas in New York State in the US.

We could try to ask Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, a Muslim, after all he was released from Greenock Prision in August 2009 on compassionate grounds but No thankfully he is rotting away and his spirit is burning in hell.

Just maybe we could ask Boeing about N739PA, a 747-121 better known world wide as Maid of The Seas,after all her wings landed in Sherwood Crescent,large sections of the cabin landed in Rosebank Crescent, the cockpit in a field in Tundergarth,one engine landed in Alexander Drive while another landed in Netherplace bursting a water main.

I know why not ask American author Ken Dornstein who wrote the book "The Boy who fell out of the sky"perhaps not as "that boy"was his brother.

While in the US lets ask either David or Steven Flannigan as it was their 10 year old Sister Joanne who rested in the fields before reassembly at the Town Hall next to their father Thomas who the day before, 20th December 1988, had celebrated his 44th birthday in Germany awaiting his flight home. Not only was Joanne a happy lively young lady at his party but her mother Kathleen also joined in the party and boarded flight 103 on Pan Am to join the two older brothers for a family Christmas.The two older brothers never got that Christmas with their parents and sister instead they got three suitcases with freshly laundried clothing all of which had been lovely collected from the streets and fields by Lockerbie residents and thousands of helpers and after examination was washed sorted and returned to relatives. A Broadway play "The laundry of Lockerbie"told that story many years later.

The bombing of Flight 103 while airborne over the Border Districts between England and Scotland shocked the world and drew attention to the rapidly diminishing freedoms of a world from acts of terrorism.

Where some of these passengers actual "targets",No

Was this act against Pan Am in particular No.

Was it carried out specificially against the US No.

Was it carried out to gain financial benefits No

Was it designed to shock the civilised Western Nations Yes

The memorial service in 2008 marked the 20th Anniversary with a theme

"We shall never forget"

I haven't, I have visited Lockerbie a number of times meeting with and talking to those affected. Their numbers have declined over the years but still every visit throws up new traumas, old memories that won't go away but the defiant message is the same.

So this 21st December 2018 as 21 Nations remember their lost ones let us NEVER FORGET and NEVER let terrorism ruin our lives.