Slaughter in Nice

The TV today has been rolling the horrendous news about the evil terrorist who killed 84 people in the South of France last night as they watched a firework display put on to celebrate the National holiday of Bastille Day. Mowing down innocent holiday makers, families with their children, using a 19 tons hire truck as a murder weapon.  Then, driving that truck into a crowd of people; intending to, and hoping to kill as many as possible. Amongst the dead are, they say, ten children, many more are on the critical list in hospital over fifty they say; between life and death according the M. Hollande.

All day long there have been complaints that the French authorities had not done enough to prevent this murderous spree. Yet it seems to me that nobody can prepare or be ready for such random attacks by lunatic extremists. There is no way an attack like this can be prepared for surely.

Nice, is a holiday destination, one of the most famous in the South of France. It is a fabulous resort that combines ancient and modern in a city that is a business centre as well as a beach resort playground.

My husband Steve and I have been to stay in Nice so many times in our roughly forty years together. The Promenade des Anglais is very familiar to us since we have stayed in the town to compete in the Nice Triathlon on at least five occasions maybe more, I haven’t checked. The run route of that event is held completely on the sea front road, where all these unsuspecting people were so wickedly targeted and murdered. This time by a man who lived and worked in the town.

We have stayed in hotels right on the sea front and in the old town. We have stayed in Saint Laurent-du-Var, where this vile killer hired the truck it seems. We have been there on work trips with American clients and even had a weekend stay in winter to watch the World Figure Skating Championships in the ice stadium there.

We have a friend, who in one of our many coffee shop chats about the world and what is right and wrong with it, claimed to believe that nobody is totally and completely evil. Every time one of these dreadful attacks occurs in the world, one of the neighbours or a family member will be interviewed on TV and say how shocked they are, because he is such a nice ordinary family man. Nice ordinary people do not plot massacres. Somebody else must either know or have an inkling of what they are under the surface; that they are a time bomb waiting for a touch to the fuse, a press of a button.

I pray for those still in a critical condition in hospital. I despair with the families of the victims whose family live is destroyed, who must find a way to carry on. I was only a child during World War II but I remember that there were notices that said ‘Careless talk costs lives; well in the modern world careless ears and eyes are costing lives now and we should all try to notice when something is not right.