In the early hours of this morning, Saturday 6th June 2012, a young woman died in a house further down the road that we live on.
I could drone on how this sort of thing never happens in Ampthill, but it has, and it would be trite in the extreme to start down that path. It’s irrelevant anyway. People are hurting, they don’t want my words, they want answers from Police officers. Shocking things happen in city centres and equally shocking things happen in rural idylls and Ampthill is neither. It’s an ordinary town, populated by ordinary people. It doesn’t have immunity from the outside world and you’re not in this one if you think anything different.
I can’t begin to imagine a more hideous thing to happen to a young girl, or adequately comprehend the grief that her family and friends are now experiencing. I’m sure the bottom just dropped out of their world. For the young man arrested on suspicion of her murder, time will tell what the circumstances of this were and it would be irresponsible of me to start speculating. The lives of two families will be blighted by this, whichever side of things they are on.
I’m just a woman who lives up the road from where it happened and it makes me cry every time I think about it. All I can say is that I am so very, very sorry. There aren’t words. And from me the less the better.
With love from Ailesbury Road, Ampthill. x
It is so sad for any life to end in a violent way but doubly so for someone so young. Beautifully honest post!
I personally don’t think this is an appropriate subject to use to promote your blog. As Ronan Keating wrote:-
You say it best when you say nothing at all
I am not ‘promoting’ my blog. I’ve have written about the life in Ampthill for over six years now. I think that making a comment on something that happened in this town, on my road even, is not exceeding the remit of that.
Of course, you are entitled to disagree with me and on that point I respect your opinion.
“Promoting” her blog? How? By doing what hundreds of bloggers do and writing, sensitively, about something terribly sad that’s happened in the town about which she writes (and in the road in which she lives) and has affected her profoundly?
I assume you therefore also think that the BBC, Sky News, Beds on Sunday, Daily Mail etc, all of whom have reported on this are also using this sad event to “promote” their channels/websites/publications?
I’m genuinely baffled by this comment (and ever so slightly bemused by Ronan Keating being quoted).
Rachel was not “promoting her blog” she was writing an entry in her blog -about tragedy being close to home. I think that is fair and reasonable.
I think its important that you write about it.
You do live in a nice part of the world where for all their eccentricity, people have a decent set of values.
Your feelings……the very fact that you “feel” at all ……….reveals you to be a human being….which is our highest aspiration.
I really have lost count of the number of people who I have known who have died in this kind of circumstance. Everytime Ive sat down to work it out, I come up with a different answer. Its no excuse for me to say that I live where I live…because there wasa time when my life felt “human”.
For decades, my humanity was chipped away at. Looking for excuses. Waking up to breakfast time news and trying to rationalise a reason that the “body found this morning” wasnt me….I would have worn that uniform, I would not have opposed that uniform, I would not have wandered into that area or whatever. When we look for reasons …..its human. When we see “reasons”….its de-humanising.In a way I envy your humanity.
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Hi Rachel, how awful. And yes, it’s so hard to find the right things to say in these situations and yet saying something, at least, seems the right thing to do.
On the other issue, your blog is about things you see and happen to you and those around you so it’s absolutely right and proper that you do talk about this, if you choose. If your blog was about your gift shop next to the house of the poor girl and you threw in the name of your shop at a stab at extra publicity, then yes, that’s distateful. Of course that’s just my opinion but I have a very large antennae for offence in such areas and I thought it entirely appropriate.