Friends in Nice are so shocked, says author Eoin
WEXFORD’S best-selling author Eoin Colfer went ahead with a planned holiday near Nice following last week’s terrorist attack in which 84 people died including 10 children.
Eoin and his family have holidayed regularly in a village called Tourettes Sur Loup about 15 miles from Nice and flew out last Saturday, as scheduled, for a three-week summer break.
The Colfers left Dublin airport less than 48 hours after the massacre on the Promenade des Anglais in which lone truck driver Tunisian Mohamed Lahoualej Bouhlel (31) mowed down onlookers at a fireworks display for Bastille Day on Thursday.
‘We didn’t consider not going. Not at all. We feel such an affinity towards the place. We really just want to see our friends. They are all so shocked,’ said Eoin, on the day after the Nice attack.
The author said that after hearing about the atrocity, he and his wife Jackie were immediately worried for their friends who live in the area.
‘ The first thing I did was go on the phone and start texting people to make sure everyone was okay. Thankfully, all our friends are fine,’ he said.
‘It’s truly horrible. It’s so indiscriminate. And it seems to be the way of the world now,’ said Eoin who wrote the book ‘Airman’ in Tourettes Sur Loup while the family lived there full-time when children Finn (18) and Sean (13) were younger.
‘We used to have a house there but we sold it a few years ago. We still go back there to the same village. The boys went to school there. I remember giving a talk in the international school in Nice.’
‘We know a lot of people around the area. There’s a big ex-pat community. I’m sure there were hundreds of Irish people on the promenade that night. There’s a large Muslim population in Nice too and I’m sure a lot of them would have been watching the fireworks as well.’
‘It’s totally heartbreaking. It’s indiscriminate terrorism,’ said Eoin who was joined by Jackie and their younger son Sean as they flew to Nice on Saturday, with Finn due to follow a few days later in the company of Wexford friends of the Colfers also holidaying in the area.
Eoin said he wasn’t unduly worried about travelling to Nice after the attack. ‘It could just as easily happen in Dublin but I don’t know what the situation is going to be like with security when we get there,’ he said.