Friday 15th August will be a strange day for me and many others from my home town of Omagh in Co. Tyrone, N. Ireland.  It will be ten years since the Saturday afternoon bomb blast which killed thirty-one people, including unborn twins, and tore apart the main street of the town I grew up in.  There is a memorial service on Friday, but one tinged with bitterness and the stupid, pointless side of politics that persists in Northern Ireland.

Coming just three months after the Good Friday Agreement was ratified by 71% of the people of Northern Ireland; the Omagh Bomb was the incident which caused the greatest loss of life in thirty years of "the troubles".  I was seventy miles away, in my car driving across Belfast, when the first news report came out.  I'd lived and worked in Belfast for 20 years but like all natives of small towns still regarded home as the place I grew up in. 

First reports were innocuous enough, a bomb had gone off in Omagh Main Street, there were no reports of any injuries.  The same thing had happened the week before in Banbridge, with no injuries.  It was one of those things you had got used to living in Northern Ireland.  But a few minutes later things began to change.   First two people were reported dead, then five, then seven.  It took me fifteen minutes to get across town; by that stage the number had reached nine or ten.

I spent the next three hours in front of a television, trying to phone my parents, Uncles and Aunts and the few school friends who still lived in the town to find out if they were OK.  But the phone system was 'browned out'.  I thought about driving home, but we were being advised to stay off the roads.  Eventually an Aunt who lived in Belfast got a call from my mother who had driven to the next big town to make a call to say that all of the family were well.

Watching television throughout that day was one of the strangest experiences of my life.  Imagine watching footage of 9-11 or the war in Georgia and it being your hometown with people you knew walking through the rubble.   

In the first footage to emerge, I saw the prop forward from the rugby team I used to play on lift a car out of the way to let an ambulance through.   He herniated himself badly in the process and never played rugby again.  I'm told he worked tireously throughout that day before the adrenalin wore off and he collapsed in pain.

Shortly afterwards I saw an ex-neighbour walking towards the camera, blood pouring from a head wound and her shirt ripped or burnt from her back, most of her skirt missing.  In the background I could see the rubble that had been the shop that had been opened by my old maths teacher.  I found out later that he had been trapped under the collapsed building but had survived.

Some other friends and acquaintances were not so lucky.  The wife of a keen gardener who used to ask my father for advice had been killed.  A Manager in the Bank I worked for, who used to travel with my rugby team, had spent the day in bed, unable to move with a back injury.  He was listening to the radio and waiting for his wife and son to come home.  They were in hospital, his wife fighting for her life and his young sports-mad son having his leg amputated. 

There were other stories, of people I knew or at least would have recognised or nodded to in the street.  Like the three women from Waterson's shop, where I had always bought my Omagh Academy School uniform, who went out for lunch together that day, only one ever came back. 

As the story of the day began to emerge.  It appeared Police had been given a warning of the bomb using an old IRA code word, now used by one the breakaway groups.  According to the warning a bomb had been planted at Omagh Courthouse, an impressive building at the top of the steep slope of High street.  Police had evacuated shops and bars, sending the people to the traffic lights at the other end of the town.  When the car bomb finally went off it was surrounded by the very people who had just been evacuated. 

 Politicians fell over themselves to speak out; Martin McGuinness managed to say that the bombing was wrong.  However his initial statement was somewhat equivocal and was one of the things that brought me closest to anger that day.  He wouldn't say that the bombing was morally wrong, but that it was tactically wrong.  That it would 'do nothing to further the Republican cause".  When asked if he would urge people to help the Police to find those responsible, he said that there was no place for informers in the Republican movement.

I've never forgotten that initial, raw unconsidered reply.  Everything was toned down, made more acceptable later when Gerry Adams spoke.  But every time I see our deputy First Minister I'm reminded of his words on that day.

On the Tuesday or Wednesday after the bomb BBC Northern Ireland broadcast a television program that has, to my knowledge, never been repeated.  And one I hope never is.  It was very simple, film of the families of those killed.  Each spoke about their experiences on the day but mainly about the people they had lost.  There were no interruptions from presenters, or stupid questions about how they felt, just ordinary people talking about their friends, their wives, their fathers, their children. 

There was no anger; it was as if the time for anger would come later.  The people who had planted this bomb were scum, nothing, not important.  The families of the dead and the whole community had lost good people and they were the important thing at that moment.  And that is why the program should never be repeated.  It was served a purpose at the time, to let people speak, to let the rest of the community listen to them.  It was like a wake, or a funeral that the whole country could attend.  There was no self-pity in that show, almost everyone who was interviewed spoke first of someone else, of their sympathy for them. 

And then there was Michael Gallagher.  Softly spoken, with the typical rural, Omagh accent and phrasing that I, I'm ashamed to say, had almost looked down on or made fun of over the years.  He talked about his dead son and the events of the day with great love, concern for other people and incredible dignity.   He found time in his pain to thank those who had tried to help, to remember others who had been hurt or lost loved ones.

He was no orator, not in the traditional sense, but somehow his words spoke for everyone.  I was, I still am, incredibly proud that my wee town produced someone who could speak so simply, so directly and so honestly.   His words made me cry, they helped a town grieve and come together. 

Since then he has been the main voice of the families.  Always dignified, but always asking the questions that need to be asked.  He demands justice for the people murdered on that day and will not let them be forgotten for the sake of political expediency. 

There is a row surrounding the official memorial service tomorrow.  The original memorial, put in place by the families of the dead, has been removed and the local council, led by Sinn Fein, will be replacing it.  They have changed the previously agreed wording, removing identification of the bombers as "Dissident Republicans" and have invited politicians whose equivocal condemnations of the attack means that most would rather they were not there.  Some of the families will not be attending as a result.

But Northern Ireland is a different place today.  It isn't perfect, by any means, the Real IRA have started to become active again with a recent murder attempt against a Catholic Policeman and a few badly organised and ineffective bomb attempts.   Organised crime still exists, revealing the true nature of many members of the terrorist organisations on both sides of the community.  But we had a peaceful marching season this summer for the first time in many years, and our politicians fight over water charges and education policy and not over murders and bombings. 

I'll be honest, I hate the fact that the deputy First Minister is a man who probably led the IRA at one stage and was not prepared to call for the people who planted the Omagh bomb to be brought to justice, but that is a small price to pay for the hope that the bad old days of hatred and murder are past - or at least are fading into memory.