I was out at a local Christmas concert, coming back home around half 10 as the Border News was starting. On seeing the footage of houses on fire in Lockerbie I asked my dad what had happened and he explained that there'd been a plane crash. When I asked why there were houses burning, I can remember my dad's reply: "it came down on a town".
As Lockerbie is similar in size to Duns, and a lad the same age as I was at the time lost his family in the inferno (he survived as he was around at a friend's getting his sister's bike repaired), that was when the scale of things hit home, a feeling of disbelief that something so awful could have happened so close to Christmas.
My grandfather was ill with Parkinson's disease at that time, and I was sitting with him to allow my gran out to a Christmas concert that evening when the ITN newsflash appeared on screen.
There were no pictures for a long time - just an over-the-shoulder graphic of the type of plane, if memory serves. After the newsflash they went back to regular programming until the bulletin came on air later.
Our next door neighbours, the Eilbeck family had moved to Lockerbie about 3 months before - not sure if they were affected. I sincerely hope not.
That was the evening Lockerbie became synonymous with "plane crash", rather than "cheese".
Terribly sad.
