I made Nottingham my home in August 1995.
That's not strictly true; it never felt like home for a while after that, but that's when I arrived.
I never intended it to be that way, but I was transfixed by an English woman, and although she never asked me to stay here, we decided it was the best place, on balance, to build the lives of our future selves.
And so, I realized this week, for reasons which will become apparent in a second, that Nottingham is my home.
I still feel inextricably linked and tied to Scotland, and I could still go back there in a second, and it'd be my home, but at present, my home is here, and this is where my home is.
My home and adopted city were shattered in the early hours of Tuesday morning by a tragedy that is difficult to comprehend for many people here.
The reason that that is so difficult and that the events of Tuesday morning are so difficult to deal with is that it brought such a tragedy out of the abstract and into the personal.
It brought it into our home.
I watch the news daily and see horrible tragedies unfold.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Syria and so many other places, yet it washes over me with just a minimal amount of sadness and empathy for the people whose lives have been destroyed.
I watched last year as my friend and his son tried to resuscitate Dylan Rich, the 17-year-old West Bridgford Colts player who collapsed and died during a football match.
I wasn't there, but I watched the aftermath of what happened to Tim and to Max, and I felt deeply saddened by that.
It never touched me, though, the way the unfolding events of Tuesday have touched me and other people around me.
The senseless nature of what happened is difficult to comprehend, but more so because it happened a couple of miles from my house.
Other people experience these tragedies on an hour-by-hour and day-by-day basis (my wife is a children's cancer nurse; it is no less sad when she loses one of her patients in a senseless act of illness).
But for this and for some reason, it is so damaging and visceral to the community of Nottingham.
The only ray of light that shines through after this horrible, horrible series of events is that people have risen up to help, console, and comfort each other.
In a world where society seems to be disappearing, in Nottingham, at least this week, society has come back together.
Whether it be for the loss of someone who was four months from their retirement after helping people out for so long throughout their lives or for others who were merely visiting our city, our home, to study and to build their future lives, everybody is terribly saddened and affected by what has happened and that in itself at least is a comfort.
I've never felt sadder in Nottingham than I felt this week, apart from on one other occasion.
I've never felt more like Nottingham as my home.
Blog Post Number - 3476
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