Paris.

I wanted to write about the terror attacks in Paris, but as someone who never really shuts up, I find myself struggling to know what to say. Whilst I was feeding Edith on the bed at Center Parcs, enjoying our little family break, I had a bulletin pop up from BBC news on my phone. It said ‘shooting in a restaurant in Paris, gunman opens fire in killing spree”. I immediately clicked the app, read the news and switched to Twitter, where you genuinely get the news before the news. Within seconds the hashtag Paris was screeching out of my phone. I text Adam in the room next door to tell him to check his Twitter, there has been a mass shooting… And then that there had been 3 other attacks…

As the evening went on, we spent the first night of our holiday rapidly checking Twitter and watching Sky news (which is appalling by the way, seriously, how can they be THAT far behind other channels and still consider themselves a news channel?). It became apparent pretty quickly that this was terrorism. This wasn’t a shooting from some lunatic with a gun, this was planned, scheduled and fucking horrific. This was humanity at it’s very worst.

We both ended up staying glued to our phones until gone midnight, neither of us daring to turn them off because we needed to know what was happening. We were scared to go to bed and find out that more tragedies had occurred, and neither of us could sleep knowing the fear and sadness that was happening just off the shores of our own country. That is the blunt truth of it you know, no one wants to say it out loud for fear of being branded ignorant or inhumane but it’s the truth – this has impact because we might all be one species, but when it comes down to it we’re inherently selfish. The world has been crying out demanding to know why this attack has had such publicity but the daily attacks in Syria, the other 3 horrendous attacks on Friday, are put aside or given minimal media coverage… and that is the answer. This shows that ISIS is not just a bunch of bad people killing others in already war torn countries, this isn’t half way across the world, this isn’t a minimal security location where the world is now apathetic due to frequency and misinformation. No, this is France. This is Europe. WE are European. This is in our house.

The hashtag #porteouverte (or open door) where Parisian’s were offering to help keep the stranded safe came out pretty fast, a sparkling example of the goodness is people in light of a tragedy. In the last few days we’ve heard a lot about how we need to look for the good in humanity, we need to look for the acts of kindness amongst the cruelty, and remember those moments. The problem is, the world is so filled with hatred, I have seen real acts of kindness in the last few days, but for every act of kindness there has been hatred and viciousness to match it and marr it in the way I believe only humans can do. I have seen people demanding boycotts of Muslim businesses, hate fuelled slurs towards Muslims from agnostics, Christians and many more, I’ve seen hate filled slurs from Muslims towards Jews and back again. Where does it stop? Is religion always to be a platform to divide us? Will the world never learn that this isn’t about religion?

This is about people. Bad people, who can’t be negotiated with, can’t be mollified and won’t be satisfied until the world that you and I know is a very different place. Telling ourselves otherwise is naive, and I have lost faith in a kind and calm resolution. I wish I had an answer to that problem.

We made a conscious decision to answer Reuben’s questions openly and honestly, we didn’t turn off the news when he walked in, we didn’t shy away from telling him the facts. During the minute silence on Monday he had wandered out of the play area and tried to come back to our seats, but the staff were lined up along the bar, the customers were still and everyone was quietly watching the TV in the corner. It freaked him out a bit, it’s the first time he’s seen a minute silence in person and it’s a scary thing – it’s deafening, and you instinctually know that something bad has taken place. We’ve had a long chat, I’ve explained to him that some very bad people came to country that is close to us, used their weapons and hurt a lot of people, killing most. Bless his heart, he asked me why, so I told him the truth.

I can’t answer that.