Shattered heartbeat of the community hits home in every corner of Ireland

THERE is a service station just like it in every small Irish town or village. You pop in for a coffee, or when you’re hungry.

You order a chicken roll at the hot food counter. It’s there for that litre of milk when you’ve just remembered you poured the last of it on your cornflakes that morning.

You stop for flowers when you’re on the way to visit your mam. You buy a bunch of grapes and a magazine for the older neighbour who is not well.

On a Friday afternoon, on the way home from work, you stop in for a EuroMillions ticket and, when you’re queuing up and even though you know you shouldn’t, you pick up that Yorkie bar or the bag of jelly babies, and have it scoffed in the car on the way home before you have to explain it.

Above all, you know everyone in the shop. The young woman behind the counter is the daughter of the lad you sat beside at school. The kid who asks if you want your tyres pumped is your daughter’s partner for her Debs and you reckon he’s sound because his mother is a nurse.

The star player on the parish hurling team diplomatically looks you up and down and asks if you can carry that bag of coal yourself, or if you would like some help.

And, of course, you know the owner, who during the pandemic went to great lengths to ensure that anyone housebound still had all the essentials delivered, every day if necessary.

You know the other customers and they know you.

Sometimes, you’re delighted to see them, other times you wonder if they’re judging you because you have two bottles of wine and not just the one.

These shops are the heartbeat of our communities, and there are a million stories created and told in them every year. In five minutes, you will find out who got engaged, who had a baby, who’s off to Birmingham or Boston or Brisbane for that new job.

The Applegreen in Creeslough is probably just like that.

Most people in the village of 393 inhabitants surely would find themselves there a few times a week, waiting for it to open at 7.30am for a warm cuppa to drink on the way to work, or nipping in just before 11pm for the 500g butter so they can leave it on the counter to soften before making the sandwiches for school next morning.

The explosion at the garage on Friday will have sent not just a literal shockwave through Creeslough – but an emotional one too. Ten people are dead – the youngest just a child of five – and one more critically injured in hospital.

In the immediate aftermath of this tragedy, a community rallied around to help first responders clear the rubble.

The wait to recover the bodies of loved ones a unique torture.

The dead will be mourned for the lifetimes of those left behind – and beyond.

But despite the awful scale of the suffering in this tiny crossroads, this is not a tragedy that affects just one community.

It hits home in every community in Ireland, because we all know what it means.

We’ve all been to that Applegreen. We all know everyone in it. And we all know the deep pain yet to come.