A WEEK ago I wrote that war now “percolates everyday life everywhere”. Appalling confirmation came two days later with the terrorist atrocities in Paris.

Killing 129 people who were simply enjoying a Friday evening out, the attacks were much more of a blow to “everyday life” than the earlier shootings of staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, perceived to have insulted Islam’s founder, Mohammed.

Of course, Britain suffered the 7/7 attack, randomly killing passengers on London’s tube and a bus. The slaughter at a Mumbai hotel and the recent downing of the Russian airliner show the same terrorist determination to strike the general public. The threat is indeed now universal.

The French President, Francois Hollande, spoke of facing “an Islamist army”. No qualification. Not a “warped” or “twisted” Islamist army, nor an army of “Islamist fanatics”.

Yet after each atrocity claimed in the name of Islam, Muslim leaders painstakingly (wearily you might even say) reiterate that their religion is one of peace and tolerance. Maybe they need to work harder to persuade young male Muslims that this is the case.

Lame though that suggestion might seem, it is hard to see any other long-term solution. For while it is no doubt possible, with sheer military might, to crush and evict Isil, the putative fundamentalist Islamic state, from the territories it has occupied, followers of its murderous ideology will remain embedded in our communities. They will fester with even more hate. And it will never be possible, every time, to stop groups of them obtaining guns and, given their willingness to die in the act, inflicting indiscriminate slaughter in our streets.

A much happier matter touching faith – the meticulous rebuilding at Beamish of St Helen’s church, from Eston. A picture with the Echo’s report showed the simple altar. Add, if you will, a surplice-clad boyish figure kneeling at the right hand side. That was me in the 1950s, when I assisted as a server at the monthly communion services still held in the largely-Georgian church.

When finally abandoned in favour of its Victorian successor, it was seriously vandalised. While Beamish’s rescue is wholly admirable I have to tell the restorers that “in my day” its interior was plastered and whitewashed. This gave it more of a Georgian atmosphere than the altar photograph suggests it has now, with its stonework exposed. Then, you could have filmed a Thomas Hardy scene there. Could you today?

As ready as anyone to praise the brilliance of Dame Maggie Smith as an actress, I feel I’ve seen quite enough of the picture of her waving her walking sticks from her wheelchair in the film version of Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van. Has any publicity shot of recent years gained more exposure? Perhaps it will be counter-productive. I, for one, am not sure I can face seeing the imaged played out on the screen.

From an item on the front page of a national newspaper’s business section I learned that House of Fraser – Binns in these parts – is Chinese owned. A report inside told me that MG is also Chinese owned. Is any British industry now not foreign-owned? Cleveland Potash – Israel. Redcar steelworks – Tailand. Skinningrove steelworks – India. Yorkshire Bank – Australia. Why?