Many of us will have spent time today thinking about the senseless, violent killing yesterday of Ashling Murphy in Tullamore, a recent teaching graduate with a life full of potential ahead. Ashling was doing nothing out of the ordinary. She was out for a run in broad daylight in a busy area after a day’s teaching, when she was set upon and violently murdered by an older man. Today, life has changed horribly and irrevocably for her family, friends and her little pupils. The thoughts of a nation are with them all, we hold their hurt and trauma in our hearts.

What can we do to make sense of it all? Not much. Some of us write, to express the anger and the bewilderment and the fear. None of us have the answers, but most of us don’t want to see this happening again, despite the sense of inevitability. If you are a man, this will probably be an uncomfortable and unpleasant read. But please read it, and sit with it, and most of all, do not take it personally.