I awoke this Easter Monday morning to the news that hundreds of people had been killed on the island of Sri Lanka, in a violent and coordinated attack on churches and hotels in the country.

As I write, it turns out that the death toll as a result of these attacks has risen to 290, with hundreds of others injured; eight of the dead are said to be British.

A life is a life, but the newspapers here in the UK are focusing more on the lives of the British nationals than the others because, well, they’re British, and it sells more newspapers.  That’s what business our journalistic media are in.

Almost every newspaper in Britain are highlighting the plight of one family in particular; the Nicholson family – father Ben, mother Anita, son Alex and daughter Annabel.  Almost the perfect Western family, in other words.  This family were staying at one of the island’s more upmarket hotels, I forget the name of it, for an Easter holiday.

As yet, nobody has come forward to claim responsibility.  Not that it would be of any comfort to Ben Nicholson, father of the family named above, who, it appears, is the only survivor out of his whole family.  His wife, and both children, are feared dead.

It is an awful fact of life that life itself is fragile; you never know when your number’s up, etc.; but goodness me, it sometimes feels so random, so pointless.  And it’s kind of ironic that churches were a target; because here were many people worshipping a God who appears remote, even nonexistent, and Christians will be hard pressed to explain why it is three out of four of an innocent family, or indeed anyone killed in those attacks, should be blown to bits, while others have survived for all sorts of reasons.  It makes no sense to me, and I doubt it does to anybody else because there is no rational explanation for it.

Some of you Brits of a certain age will remember the McWhirter twins – Norris and Ross.  They were identical twins, and together they founded, I believe, the Guinness Book of World Records, which is still published annually today.  The reason why I mention them is because they were well-known on television, which gave them a sort of public notoriety, and that in turn allowed them to speak out on issues that troubled them.  Ross, in particular, thought that the British government of the time was too soft on Northern Ireland, and offered a reward for the arrest and capture of any terrorist known to be carrying out a series of bomb attacks in London at that time.

And so it was that, on November 27, 1975, Ross McWhirter opened his front door to find himself on the business end of a .357 Magnum revolver, and two operatives of the Provisional IRA, who shot him dead at point blank range.  No time to say goodbye to his wife, his family and his brother, just – bang!

The reason I mention that is because, of the two brothers, Norris McWhirter got to live another 29 years on his own.  I remember the killing of Ross; it was on the news, and it shocked me.  I didn’t think that things like that happened to presenters of the Record Breakers TV programme, and to this day I could not, and cannot understand why it is that one brother has to die, but not the other, at such a young age (he was 50).

Some call it Fate, with a capital F.  Well, he was meant to go.  It was his time.  Why was it ‘his time?’  He seemed fit and healthy, he had no disease and was not violent in any way, why should he die and his brother live?  It makes no sense to me, when many other pairs of twins around the world can both live into their ripe old ages.

Fan(s) of my blog know that I always bring Elvis Presley into anything and everything.  Well, Elvis Presley was one of a set of identical twins.  His parents named him Jessie Garon, but he had one distinct disadvantage; he was born dead.

Not even a shot a life.  Is life really so random as to claim the life of one twin before it had begun, while the other went on to everlasting fame.  What’s that all about?

Some people in this life get to win hundreds of millions of pounds on the Lottery; others are blown to bits by a suicide bomber before they are ten years old.  Like many of you out there, I just don’t get it; I just don’t get it. x