Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when the ‘planes hit the Twin Towers? What about the London bombings of 2005? Or when Covid lockdown was first announced? Or when the Berlin wall came down? Every generation has its big news event that imprints a lasting image not only of the breaking news story being broadcast, but also of the time and place you found yourself and of the very activity in which you were engaged. Many generations have many such moments.

I remember precisely where I was on March 13, 1996. I was 10, in Primary 6 and in a creative writing class with our enthusiastic class teacher, and head teacher of our small school in rural Scotland. We were working on castle books – stories inspired from the Middle Ages and written up painstakingly carefully on pages that would fold to form a 3D immersive experience where the book also resembled a fortress.  Under the creative guidance of our headteacher, we were not only inspired to hone our narration skills, but also learn calligraphy in our Stirlingshire school.

The office phone rang. It could be heard loud and clearly in our room as an extension bell would sound in the classroom after only one ring of the main phone. I laid down my felt-tip pen and hastily marched out of the classroom. I had an important remit that day: I was on phone duty. Mrs Adair, the name has been changed, also instilled a sense of business acumen in the school ethos she had built. On a rolling roster, Primary 6 and 7 pupils took turns at answering the phone. The task was to greet the – sometimes somewhat bemused – caller, take a message, or redirect the call to the appropriate person.

A candle alongside tributes placed in the Garden of Remembrance in Dunblane Cemetery. Photo credit: Jane Barlow/PA (Image: PA)

Despite a light dusting of snow still lying outside, in grey shorts and the purple school jumper, I smartly – and probably quite proudly – entered the school office and picked up the receiver.

“Good Morning. Fintry Primary School, Jamie speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hello Jamie. It’s Mrs Pirie ( the name has been changed). Is Mrs Adair there?” Mrs Pirie was a retired helping hand in the school

“I’m sorry but Mrs Adair is teaching right now. Can I take a message?”

“It is quite urgent – can you please get her take the call?”

“OK, I’ll see. What is it regarding?”

“Well, emm… There’s been a shooting. At Dunblane Primary.”

The script then goes blank in my mind. I knew we ended the call. I knew she’d asked me to get Mrs Adair to call her back. I was unable to process it as such at the time, but I recall hearing the panic in her voice, the urgency and the concern for the children in school. It may seem candid now, foolish even. It seems reckless for her to have told me about the shooting. But I’d have learnt later that day anyway. And yet, momentarily, I was the only person in the school who seemingly knew.

Jamie at primary school (Image: Jamie Smith-Maillet)

It was of course 1996. There were no smartphones, let alone mobile phones, or barely any. I had a friend who had a car phone. I remember calling mum and dad from it at some point, so excited about the prospect of being in car and having my parents on a telephone. There was of course no internet. Our 100-roll-call primary school had a handful of computers installed in the library where floppy discs were genuinely floppy and learning what the word prompt meant was quintessential. 24-hour news channels were yet to be imported from the States – BBC News 24 only started airing in 1997. Official word of events would come from compiled reports in the evening news, during a police press briefing or from the council. Occasionally, scheduled television would be interrupted from live breaking news.

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The most reliable source of information at that hour on that day was a phone call from someone, trusted and local, who had heard firsthand from someone else.

“Mrs Adai*, excuse me – can I please talk to you?”

The grave of school teacher Gwen Mayor in Dunblane Cemetery, Dunblane, Stirlingshire, on the 30th anniversary of the massacre where 16 children and their teacher Gwen Mayor were killed. Photo credit: Jane Barlow/PA (Image: PA)

I guess I was quite astute with my processing of telephone calls. I remember pulling her aside outside the classroom. In my 10-year-old thinking, there was one operative word in the call which shook me and I felt I ought not to share in front of the class: shooting.

“Mrs Pirie has asked you to call her back. There has been a shooting at Dunblane Primary school”.

I remember her calm, her uninquisitive response, her reassuring tone. She returned to class, instructed us to continue with our work, and then left to return the call.

Then my memories go blurry. I vaguely recall classmates asking me who had called and why. I remember not wanting to share. But then, perhaps, I think I did – or somehow the news, awash with misinformation at that point, got out. There was talk about the number 17 which, in playground conversations, turned into the age of the person killed. We would of course all learn that evening it was the overall death toll: of children five years younger than us and of their teacher.

Fintry and Dunblane had a lot in common. Small schools, both in Stirlingshire some 25 minutes’ drive from one another, rural settings. That day, we returned home to our families. I remember many parents coming to the school to pick up friends, many more than usual. There was inevitably much concern and speculation. Was this a spate of attacks? Who was behind it? Everything would be known in due course but, in the interim, panic spread fast.

My brother, two years younger, and I returned home to accompanied television-news viewing. Our mum was a primary school teacher and was quite well-versed in guiding children through the unknown. Our dad, also a teacher by trade, was then working at the BBC as an education officer. He was showing teachers around Queen Margaret Drive and was in the gallery of the news studio when the story came in and they had to break it. One of his colleagues, and friends, was a reporter and came from Dunblane – he was rapidly sent to the scene.

Like children our age around Scotland and elsewhere, my brother and I of course had questions, worries and things we didn’t quite grasp that parents could not truly answer, or didn’t know how to, or for which it was a just too challenging to console. But school ultimately filled much of that void, mine did anyway.

The following day, like across the country, many parents kept their children at home. Out in the village, in the park on swings with friends, we all talked of the same story, or called each other on landlines, of course, when we could and were allowed to. The day after that, school offered a space for a ritual that British schools do somewhat well: assembly.

While the entire school came together to try to understand, or even grieve, not quite knowing what that was, and in whatever ways we could or felt we needed with parents and teachers in the hall, we older pupils were granted a longer time alone. Earlier that year, another learning installed in our curriculum locally was philosophy – trying to explore what I may have thought at the time were silly questions. “How do we know what we see is what we see?” And yet, instilling critical thinking from a young age proved incredibly powerful. We talked at length, and openly, about the shooting, about gun control in Scotland, about our concerns, our worries, our hopes. At the time, I didn’t realise what it was, let alone that I needed it. Far from being affected directly, we were all impacted by Dunblane in one way or another. Simply put, school was therapy.

The commemoration Standing Stone in Dunblane Cathedral, Dunblane. Photo credit: Jane Barlow/PA (Image: Jane Barlow)

And from that specific moment, another vivid memory returns. The polished floor of the hall in which we sat for our open discussions. We were seated on low benches, in yellow polished pine, the kind that were stacked at the side of the hall when not in use. We were sitting in a circle - everyone in view. As a small school, it was the only hall: it was the hall where we held assembly, the hall where we had lunch, and the hall where gym class was held. Just like in Dunblane, two days earlier, down the road.

I look back now on that period as both the teacher and journalist I’ve become, thankful for the support I had in my rural school so close to the scene of the tragedy and the trauma. In both of my professions today, journalists on the ground and in the newsrooms have the task of most challenging and complex task of reporting loyally and accurately what is happening. At their level, teachers have the responsibility of guiding into the processing of it all: allowing for space, time and a safe place where reflection and support of one another is possible. Just last week, I interrupted all my regular classes to allow for dialogue about Iran. It is our force as humans to listen to one another, so often forgotten in the pace, fury and division of social media bubbles today.

As the most poignant and beautifully crafted documentary from the BBC, How the Dunblane school shooting changed Britain, reveals, from a horrific tragedy came, with effort and within time, a significant change in gun ownership rules, my own blurry memories recall a time where community and school spirit helped recovery of something that we didn’t realise was wounded. Dialogue was a bit part of that whole story. Indeed, much can be learnt from such times. Sometimes it starts with a phone call.

*The names have been changed in this article

Jamie Smith-Maillet is a Franco-Scottish award-winning journalist and university teacher. Brought up in Stirlingshire, he now lives and works in France where he specialises in French and European affairs as a freelance broadcast correspondent for British media and France 24. Multilingual, his work has been commended by Amnesty International and the Refugee Council for Scotland.

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