Saturday, March 19

 

It had almost passed me by but, apparently, Thursday was St Patrick’s Day.  It might have continued to be unnoticed if Peter, the tutor at our Writing Group hadn’t decided to make a fuss about it.  He turned up to the group on Friday with an Irish flag and his guitar.  He re-named us all with our equivalent Irish name (I’m Sean, of course) and proceeded to sing a couple of Irish songs to get us in the mood.  It certainly helped in encouraging good writing and I think we produced better stories than we have for a long time.  It’s easy to fall into a pattern of writing and we all need a kick in the pants from time to time to lift our game.

 

I had written a story on the topic, The Town I Loved So Well.  I could have written about a real town, I suppose, but I chose to describe a fictional country town I called Claymore.  I described the main street and some of the shops, talked about the primary school which I attended and made some comments about what it felt like to move back to the city.  I managed to fool everyone who thought I was talking about a real experience.

 

I’ve just finished reading Born or Bred, about Martin Bryant who killed 35 people in a shooting spree at Port Arthur in 1996.  It’s a chilling story and answers a lot of questions about how this tragedy came about. Martin Bryant had great difficulty in making and keeping friends but he desperately wanted social interaction.  His father was a stabilising influence on Martin but, unfortunately, committed suicide when Martin was in his middle-twenties.  Without his father’s steadying hand, Martin’s behaviour became more out of control.

 

 He had inherited a fortune from a woman he befriended and used the money, for example, to take long-distance flights where he would be in the company of some poor soul for 20 or more hours and could force a conversation.  He might only stay a day or two at his destination and then take another long flight where he would enjoy the company of another passenger. He was also able to afford to buy firearms and so on, without proper checks being carried out.

 

The psychiatrist who studied Martin Bryant commented , “(Martin) is rather dim, rather silly, rather resentful and feels he was mistreated, and despairs on life.  You combine that with a fascination for guns, and you’ve got a tragedy.

 

Take the (father’s) suicide out and it wouldn’t have happened.  Without the money, it wouldn’t have happened.  Take the guns out, and it wouldn’t have happened.  Provide a little more effective care, and it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

I don’t know whether our society is better now at identifying people who might pose problems in the future, and dealing with them more effectively, but I certainly hope so.