This was originally posted on my old blog on 11 January 2015.

A headline on one of the newspapers on the stand shouted as I walked into the shop: “THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER”. A glance confirmed my suspicion that it was about the Charlie Hebdo shootings and subsequent manhunt. I went into the shop, got the bits and bobs I’d come for, walked back along the dark, quiet alley, and through my mind floated the fact that as I strode, mothers coped with indefinite life in refugee camps, shock and grief tore into those coping with the murder of an entire village, someone somewhere was without a moment’s doubt floating in a cramped ship to a hoped-for but probably impossible better life, and on and on the misery goes. But hey, the unthinkable affront of some of this spilling over into our comfortable lives in the West has been ended.

And that’s all that counts. The nightmare is over.