We dropped in a local restaurant for lunch. The proprietor is English and not only does he serve fish and chips English style, but also a very good series of Indian meals. It is one of our more recent discoveries in a village perhaps five miles from us on the road towards Beziers.

He admitted the custom had dropped quite alarmingly since the Paris shootings some 470 miles away.

“The French are just not going out so much,” he said, contending that a well-known international fast-food chain was some 50 per cent down on takings over the last two weeks.

I know Paris has experienced a real slump in tourism but to think a village in The Tarn might be similarly affected, is quite sobering. The fact is, we have to learn to live with this threat, not just in France but all over the western world.

A friend of mine phoned me from Denmark. He had been touring through France, by train, and was in Paris a fortnight earlier.

“Of course, if you drop bombs on people, they are always likely to want to hit back,” he said, which seemed a very fair viewpoint until I drew attention to the fact France had not dropped bombs on Syria or Iraq, which, of course, is the point. The Jihadists do not make those distinctions despite the fact the French were pilloried in the USA and the UK for not participating in the bid to topple Saddam Hussein. That did not spare them the attention of ISIS.

What is my point, you may ask? There is no point and to my mind, there can be no point. There will be more of these terrorist activities, whether we bomb or not. The world will never be the same, no matter how much pacifism is generated or sabre rattling is propagated.

Now of course, France is dropping bombs and the majority seem to be supporting the decision and the claim, the atrocities were an act of war, has resonated.

In the meantime there is some navel gazing in the UK. Personally I am favour of bombing them purely because we might kill a few and that will only be the equivalent of cutting off one of Hydra’s many heads. We have been bombing ISIS in Iraq for months, so why is there such a difference to spreading it another 1000 miles? I do not doubt they will come for the UK whether we bomb them or not. As a former intelligence chief said this week: they have plotted for months and months and when they pull off an atrocity, they will look round and seek some reason to justify it. Just as being an aid worker or being France did not make any difference to the killers, bombs may inconvenience them but not change their ultimate focus.

If those who seek the pacifist route believe they will be spared somehow as a result of their stance, they will be sorely disillusioned, just as those who advocate bombing are almost certain to find it is not the complete answer to the problem. There has been much talk about speeding up the political settlement. ISIS will not take part in a settlement and you cannot negotiate with people who would quite happily come to the negotiating table and blow you and themselves up.

Maybe Blair with all those claims he was going to war against a real threat to the UK, muddied the waters but people tend to forget the attack on the Twin Towers came before the invasion of Iraq and almost a decade after the first attempt to blow up the towers. One can go on forever about the chicken and egg situation. The causes go back a long way but the concept of taking an infidel with you to paradise is not a new one but the reality is now and tomorrow.

I do think we can reduce the numbers of the enemy, for they are involved in a war against us. I do believe we need to tighten our borders but I believe we have to go about our everyday lives, accepting there is always the chance of an atrocity claiming you. I think it is a lottery we have to live with because this is not 1939 when a fiendish cult over-ran Europe. We knew where the enemy was and who it was. Today, the enemy is everywhere and if we eradicate them, briefly, in Syria, they will arise in another nearby country and all the time, they will have their twisted disciples in France, the UK and everywhere, also playing a part in our everyday lives.

So I will continue to walk the dogs and undertake a normal life, but will sigh with a deeper relief when the plane lands at Stansted or Luton (and on the return to Beziers or Carcassonne) when we visit the UK.

It was also sobering to read of a priest in France who has been relieved of his duties after writing that the young people attending the concert in Paris, were courting the devil, because they liked rock music etc, and were no different from the terrorists.

So the nutters are everywhere and they grow monthly in numbers.

We have just read of the case of a man and his girlfriend killing and cutting up his step-sister. It was horrific but there are so many horrific crimes committed: there are pages of them in the world’s newspapers. It is increasingly part of the world we live in: teachers killed, fellow pupils shot or knifed.

The plain fact is that there is no cure for these activities as indeed there is no cure for the Jihadists. We have to learn to live with the threat, minimise it where we can, but accept it is going to happen to someone, somewhere. I hope it is not you and yours, almost as fervently as I hope it is not me or mine but it is something that does and will happen.

In the meantime, I have looked for a smile when perusing the heavy news in the newspapers. I found one the other day.  When a shop was burning in Germany the other week, the fire brigade came and officer had to forcibly remove a customer who was staying in the building watching a video and was determined not to leave until the end. Another example of nutters walking amongst us although, as I say, this item did bring a rare smile when I read the building involved was a porn shop and the customer was watching a video called Throbbing Hood.