IF you are reading this and happen to be in position of authority, kindly resist the urge to tell us to carry on regardless over the coming days.

We know you mean well, but we and – above all - the people directly affected by the ongoing catalogue of terrorist murder deserve rather more than World War Two slogans lately attached to novelty coffee mugs and tea towels.

The majority of us will, of course, carry on with our daily lives. We shall do so mostly because of stubbornness and defiance. It’s handy that we’re so stubborn and defiant, because our options are a bit limited.

For millions of us, hiding behind the front door until the danger goes away isn’t a viable alternative.

If we did, we’d soon be out of a job, homeless and on the breadline.

So we shall carry on, but we shall not carry on regardless.

We shall carry on but we shall have regard for our 34 fellow human beings from all walks of life who have been killed over the last 10 weeks or so.

We shall have regard for those the dead loved and were loved by. We shall have regard for the places at Christmas dinner tables and other family celebrations which will be empty forever. We shall have regard for the grief which will still be felt many years from now.

We shall carry on but we shall have regard for every wedding, baptism, graduation, anniversary, happy holiday or other family event which would otherwise have taken place this year, next year or decades hence, but now shall not.

We shall have regard for every ounce of potential which will now go unfulfilled, and for every good and kind deed which will now go undone. We shall have regard for the injured, the scarred and the maimed, who face challenges of which we cannot even begin to conceive.

Most of those people will carry on, too, but many will be reminded of what they have endured every time they catch sight of themselves in a mirror, put on a prosthetic or find themselves no longer able to accomplish some ordinary task.

We shall have regard for the front line emergency services personnel who must run toward terrible danger while urging the rest of us to run in the opposite direction. We shall have regard for the decent people whose faith the terrorists pollute, and who are at increased risk of violence and loathing, whether from otherwise good people driven temporarily mad by fear or by evil people seizing an excuse to emerge from beneath their stones.

We shall carry on but we shall have regard for all of this, and we shall also have regard for certain important questions.

We shall ask, for example, how in the name of sanity it is possible that people known to one of the world’s oldest and most experienced intelligence services as potential terrorists are apparently able to become actual terrorists.

If the answer turns out to be anything to do with the availability of resources, we shall have a whole lot of other questions to ask.

It is nearly 16 years since 9/11 and nearly a dozen since the London tube and bus atrocities.

Christine deserves her dizzy heights

CONGRATULATIONS to Cricklade’s own Christine Tew, aka DJ Dizzy Twilight, whose Britain’s Got Talent trajectory took her as far as the semi-finals.

Christine, a former registrar and nurse, is 66-years-old.

She is living proof that advancing years are no barrier to learning new skills, exploring hidden abilities and never settling for what is expected of us. Christine is an inspiration to every one of us who’s scared to have their next birthday celebration at a restaurant in case the candles on the cake trigger the sprinkler system. She reminds us that the option of being who we choose to be is always open.

Having said that, I hope more attention is paid from now on to her skills rather than her age.

After all, 66 is only about seven years older than Tim Westwood, who as far as I know had a Radio 1 gig until 2013 and can still be heard on Capital Xtra.

  • THE train company formerly known as First Great Western is the country’s slowest at responding to complaints.

According to figures for the final quarter of last year, Great Western Railway replied to less than half of the complaints it received within 20 days.

The average among other franchises was 87 percent.

In other surprising news, ducks quack, rain generally obeys the law of gravity and unhappy skunks whiff a bit.