Omagh
Highlights of the 10th Anniversary commemoration of victims of the Omagh bomb: lashing rain; Martin McGuinness laying a wreath in honour of victims of republican terrorism; Terry Waite telling us about good Jews who work for peace and bad Jews who persecute Palestinians; the Omagh Waterford Peace Choir (‘not a Prod amongst them’, said my Presbyterian friend, observing them all blessing themselves) singing a hymn with the lines ‘Lord, there are times when I have to ask, “What?” -/Times when your love is not easy to spot’; ‘a Dialogue, in music, of lament and hope’ (don’t ask, but petals were involved); and an audience of around 800 rather than the 10,000 expected. Still, it wasn’t all nauseating. They did read ‘Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto’, by John Hewitt, probably the finest poem about the Troubles.
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