Reflections from Nice

There are large collections of flowers, flags, balloons, football shirts and various other marks of remembrance both on the Promenade des Anglais and round the bandstand next to the Monument de Centenaire here in Nice.  Fully armed soldiers patrol in groups of four along the Promenade and up and down the main streets. Nice in July 2016 superficially feels a bit like Belfast 1986. But that was during a concerted campaign with a political agenda. Nice, an attack by a Tunisian resident in France, has been followed by a spate  of attacks in Germany by an Afghan asylum seeker, a bullied and anxious teenager and a failed Syrian asylum seeker who was facing deportation. All of these events were magnified by the quickly present mainstream media, amplifying the now ubiquitous social media.

Certainly if the objective in Nice was to terrorise the population, the enraged driver of that now infamous white lorry failed spectacularly. What passes in Nice for a beach is packed with quietly toasting bodies. Bikes (with both one and two wheels) still have to be negotiated by pedestrians trying to get to the beach. The cafes, restaurants and market stalls continue to do a brisk trade. Indeed, large as they are, you need to look to see the memorials to the recent attack, and can easily miss the extra security patrols. Life goes on. Reporting from the scene of one of the attacks in Germany, a BBC reporter commented that what struck him was the normality of life just a few hours after an attack. Life goes on; it has to.

Perhaps this is aided by the lack of a coherent campaign and accompanying narrative. The thing about the IRA campaign that began in the late 1960's was it had a clear cause, a strategy and a desired end-point. It provided a historical narrative as well as a contemporaneous one. The response was a "new normal", one that included both obvious and not so obvious security measures. People adjusted to a particular way of doing things that factored in an ongoing terrorist threat. It seemed to me at the time to be a bit like the way a society deals with other structural challenges like chronically high inflation or electricity only being available for a couple of hours a day. You adjust. You have to. Life goes on.

But currently, the randomness of the attacks on mainland Europe preclude this kind of adjustment. Neither the causes of them, nor the causers, have a high proportion of coherence or commonality. So the responses to them may well also be piecemeal and heterogeneous. There will be responses of course. Life goes on.

What you may ask, has any of this to do with my usual concerns of science and faith and God? Well, in the face of these recent events many of the issues I've been commenting on seem rather narrow. Not unimportant you understand, but narrow. None of them in themselves are life or death issues. No one is going to be heaping up flowers to remember them.  Of course we only have time and space to pontificate on narrow matters because of the usual absence of the kind of meaningless violence that has marked these last few weeks in continental Europe. Most of the time, in most places there is no need to look out for a deranged van driver, bomber or axe weilder. Our peace and security, a bit like good health, are perhaps things we only appreciate when they are threatened. They are worth appreciating, and maintaining. Easier said than done.

The kind of calm and space that I've enjoyed in my lifetime did not come at no cost. It may not last. The political and social stability that I've enjoyed may or may not be enjoyed by my children. But while it remains the predominant feature of my surroundings, sitting in Nice I'm reminded to make the most of it. In the words of the Apostle Paul "..making the best use of time.." (Eph 5:16). Perhaps then I'd better get back to narrower, less troubling, matters.