The Way to beat terror
I WAS on holiday in Spain last week, driving the Camino de Santiago, known in English as the Way of St James.
Hundreds of thousands of people a year walk the 500 mile medieval pilgrim route from the Pyrenees to the shrine of the apostle and the city of Santiago de Compostela is a tourist hotspot. It was absolutely packed. And as I looked down from the roof of the cathedral I realised with a shudder it was also a prime terror target.
Scores of Christian pilgrims completing the Way, kneeling before an iconic church with holidaymakers distractedly gawping at the beautiful facade – and all in one confined area.
The Spanish authorities knew it too, because parked discreetly nearby were cars carrying terror cops heavily armed with machine guns and hi-tech kit.
Police were on alert in Barcelona too because the CIA warned them two months ago the Ramblas tourist mecca was a target.
So when news broke of the carnage there on Thursday I wondered, how the hell it could have happened.
Not again? More innocents slain. Broken bodies in the street – the gut- DAME Helen Mirren is a national treasure – brilliant, funny, feisty and a smouldering style icon at 72.
And this week she gave a typically ballsy interview to a mag about feminism, gender equality and Donald Trump’s treatment of women.
She also revealed that in the 60s, she hated being “a cliché of sexiness – blonde hair, tits, waist” at a wrenching sight of that wheelel ripped from a baby buggy. Is anywhere in Europe safe?afe? Of course not. Not 100 perer cent. Not unless we make our citiesties into vast walled fortresses like Santiagoantiago de Compostela was in the middle e ages when the first Islamic terrorists – the Moors – brought bloodshed to Spain. Not unless we ban vehicles s and erect barricades in every pedestrian an area. Not unless we give up our freedom. Because the terrible ble irony is t hat hi- t ech kit and sophisticated counterterrorism measuresures still can’t stop the mostt primitive of weapons – a heavy battering ram drivenven by a kamikaze killer. But our fear of terrorismism is far higher than our likelihood of fallinging victim to it. The statistics prove that.
And we can USE that fear to build up our own defences.
We all need to become more alert, more engaged with our surroundings, more perceptive about those around us.
We must get to know the Run, Hide, Tell procedure the police have released.
And we will learn to live with the reality of terror – because it’s the only Way to stop fear ruling our lives. time when skinny Twiggy-types were cool.
But, predictably, other headlines twisted that into “Helen HATED her curves” and the bitchy brigade then slagged her off for “pretending” to loathe her sex appeal. Which is rot. She was simply reminding us how women’s bodies are constantly judged and categorised by others.