My darling daughter is off on a school outing tomorrow afternoon, bless her!
Now when I was a little girl, a school outing was a much-anticipated affair, lessons were learnt in the weeks preceding the trip, questionnaires were completed (or not!) during the trip, and for a week after there came the dissecting of said trip and what we had absorbed (or otherwise) from it. One of my biggest lessons that I took away from a school trip was never, ever, put a banana in your sandwich box, leave it in your bag on a stuffy coach and expect to find an appetising smorgasbord waiting for you at lunchtime! The smell of ripe banana still turns my stomach to this day!
Oh! My! How time has a changed! My significant other and I gave our youngest a few lessons, do's or don't's if you will, of how to behave before, during and after this upcoming trip.
For those of you who are not aware of it, I live in rural Normandy, France. The crap storm that is migratory jihad has yet to reach this verdant little pocket of peace and quiet. Yet, being the operative word.
Along with the usual; listen to your teacher, don't wander off, don't get lost palaver we felt the need to issue, for want of a better description, survival instructions.
Now the odds of anything happening at this little concert venue, at a show put on for kids, in the rural administrative capital of our department are remote, I grant you. But, just stop for a second and reflect back to a unseasonably warm November evening in Paris in 2015, and ask yourself whether the 89 people who left their homes and offices that night, to go to a little-known concert venue and see a band most of us had never heard of, could have predicted the carnage that happened? Many reports have said that the victims were sitting ducks, unaware of what was going on and even less capable of reacting.
So at the risk of being alarmist, yes we will advise our daughter of what to do should she hear gunfire and shouting. If she can hide, HIDE. If she can run, RUN. To NOT under any circumstances trust anyone, unless they are wearing a police or gendarme's uniform or it's one of her teachers or parent helpers. She will have a bracelet on her wrist, with salient contact details, in the event of loss or, God forbid, anything else.
At what point in this, the 21st Century, is this in any way acceptable? Alarmist? Yes! Because, since the declaration of jihad against the West, and the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Bataclan and Paris attacks, and the Nice attacks, none of us knows when or where it is going to happen again; and we would be naive in the extreme to believe it is not going to happen again.
Ultimately, we live in a country whose government issues terrorism emergency drills in primary schools. Instead of dealing with the problem, they occupy themselves with minimising the collateral damage. So, YES, we are being alarmist, because the current French government does not have the will to deal with the root cause of the problem and we cannot trust them with the safety of our daughter. We'd rather be labelled alarmist and see our daughter grow into a strong, intelligent, compassionate, beautiful woman than be the parents who didn't and don't.
I just hope and pray that the French realise that next time might be too late and they vote in Marine Le Pen as their President in 2017. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
Now when I was a little girl, a school outing was a much-anticipated affair, lessons were learnt in the weeks preceding the trip, questionnaires were completed (or not!) during the trip, and for a week after there came the dissecting of said trip and what we had absorbed (or otherwise) from it. One of my biggest lessons that I took away from a school trip was never, ever, put a banana in your sandwich box, leave it in your bag on a stuffy coach and expect to find an appetising smorgasbord waiting for you at lunchtime! The smell of ripe banana still turns my stomach to this day!
Oh! My! How time has a changed! My significant other and I gave our youngest a few lessons, do's or don't's if you will, of how to behave before, during and after this upcoming trip.
For those of you who are not aware of it, I live in rural Normandy, France. The crap storm that is migratory jihad has yet to reach this verdant little pocket of peace and quiet. Yet, being the operative word.
Along with the usual; listen to your teacher, don't wander off, don't get lost palaver we felt the need to issue, for want of a better description, survival instructions.
Now the odds of anything happening at this little concert venue, at a show put on for kids, in the rural administrative capital of our department are remote, I grant you. But, just stop for a second and reflect back to a unseasonably warm November evening in Paris in 2015, and ask yourself whether the 89 people who left their homes and offices that night, to go to a little-known concert venue and see a band most of us had never heard of, could have predicted the carnage that happened? Many reports have said that the victims were sitting ducks, unaware of what was going on and even less capable of reacting.
So at the risk of being alarmist, yes we will advise our daughter of what to do should she hear gunfire and shouting. If she can hide, HIDE. If she can run, RUN. To NOT under any circumstances trust anyone, unless they are wearing a police or gendarme's uniform or it's one of her teachers or parent helpers. She will have a bracelet on her wrist, with salient contact details, in the event of loss or, God forbid, anything else.
At what point in this, the 21st Century, is this in any way acceptable? Alarmist? Yes! Because, since the declaration of jihad against the West, and the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Bataclan and Paris attacks, and the Nice attacks, none of us knows when or where it is going to happen again; and we would be naive in the extreme to believe it is not going to happen again.
Ultimately, we live in a country whose government issues terrorism emergency drills in primary schools. Instead of dealing with the problem, they occupy themselves with minimising the collateral damage. So, YES, we are being alarmist, because the current French government does not have the will to deal with the root cause of the problem and we cannot trust them with the safety of our daughter. We'd rather be labelled alarmist and see our daughter grow into a strong, intelligent, compassionate, beautiful woman than be the parents who didn't and don't.
I just hope and pray that the French realise that next time might be too late and they vote in Marine Le Pen as their President in 2017. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about.
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