Craigavon, my home

Maybe my blog, in its short history, hasn't been the place for overt politics, but it is tonight.
A policeman was shot dead in my home town of Craigavon tonight and I can't tell you how sad I am for him, his family and the area.
He was shot dead, doing his job, a mile from my parents' house in a housing development in fields around my school, Lismore, where I ran cross country and close to the pitches where I kicked points with our Martin and our cousins Eoin and Kieran the last time I was home.
He was assassinated near the school I'm going back to on Thursday, 18 years after I left, to give a seminar on journalism to 16-18 year old pupils.
This shooting has devastated the name of the wonderful place I grew up in and a wonderful place to go to school.
When I was growing up, Lismore was (and remains) a shining beacon of educational equality where you could achieve academically without going to many of the grammar schools that satellite Craigavon.
I would say that. My ma teaches at the school and I worked there at every level of staff from substitute teacher up to cleaning staff. My ma and da serve St Anthony's chapel as does my uncle Fergus and Auntie Pauline.
I still feel proud to represent Lismore and Craigavon every day of my life. It made me what I am. I feel ashamed to have run away from it and make a life elsewhere.
But much more than this, and contrary to news reports tonight, the Craigavon I grew up in was not a ghettoised place full of dissident Republicans.
In Drumgor Tavern, a mile from Lismore Manor, Prods and Taigs, Catholics and Protestants drank side-by-side. All the soccer teams I played for were mixed, the lads and women I served in the Goodyear Sports and Social Club were of mixed religious backgrounds.
Ultimately, this blog about Curtis Mayfield's bongo player or a Lloyd Cole lyric or a Bill Hicks punchline seems a trivial self indulgence full of complacency and hubris.
God bless him, whoever he was.