WATCHING reports about the London bombings on the news, the younger boys had lots of questions. But mainly, they wanted to know: "Will they come and bomb us too?"

Thankfully, I was able to reassure them that, living in the heart of rural North Yorkshire, they were as safe as could be. "Terrorists are interested in attacking places with lots of people, like big cities. They wouldn't come near a small village in the middle of nowhere."

But, as I spoke, I couldn't help thinking of those parents living in places like London who were undoubtedly being asked the same questions. I doubt if they were finding it quite as easy to reassure their children.

All over the capital adults are, admirably, getting back to work, travelling on buses and the Tube, defiant in the face of any terrorist threat. But waving their children off on the school bus or sending them on the Underground must be their biggest challenge, especially in these days of increasingly protective parenting.

It does make me wonder how my own parents coped, raising six children during the height of the Troubles in a border town known as the "most bombed town in Northern Ireland".

As a child, I couldn't remember a time before the Army patrolled the streets. Having our bags searched, our school bus stoned and our bedroom windows shattered by the noise from nearby explosions was all a part of normal life to us.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for my parents, who knew what it was to live a more carefree existence and had to adapt to this dramatic change in lifestyle.

Having children often leads us to reassess our own childhoods. Many of us come to appreciate, at long last, what our poor parents had to put up with. And it can lead to a new-found respect and understanding.

Looking back, I can now understand something of what my mother must have felt when my sister and I were caught up in the middle of a shooting outside our house.

We had been playing outside, on our bikes in the car park in front of our house, when two gunmen yelled at us to lie down before firing over our heads at an Army patrol.

When the noise stopped, we got up and ran home. My mother, who had seen it all from the window and rushed to the front gate, held us tightly and cried for what seemed like ages. "It's all right, we haven't been hurt," I remember saying, puzzled by her apparent over-reaction. I couldn't understand why she was crying.

Yet, if it happened to my sons today, I know I would be in pieces. I don't know how my mother slept at night afterwards, or how she ever let us out to play on the streets on our own again. But she did.

Like most children, we were pretty resilient and fearless. When a group of friends arrived at primary school, full of excitement because they had just seen the Town Hall being blown up as their bus approached it, I felt I had missed out.

"It's not fair," I said to my mother later. "How come I've never seen an explosion?" I thought she was being really mean when she replied: "I hope you never do."

When I asked her recently how she coped with all the dangers we faced, she simply said: "What else could we do? I crossed my fingers and prayed you would all be all right when you went off to school or out with your friends. Thank God, you always were.

"I know I always tried hard to stay calm for all of you, so that you wouldn't panic, but that wasn't necessarily what I was feeling inside."

When I bring my own children back to Northern Ireland today, they love hearing all the old "war stories", but they can't understand why we didn't just move away. Even after their grandfather's shop was destroyed in an explosion, I tell them, that simply wasn't an option.

Like those living and working in London today, people in Northern Ireland just got on with it.

They clung to family ties and friendships, the roots people had put down over generations, and the fact that this was their - in the most emotive sense of the word - home.

In the meantime we had, thanks to my parents, what I can now look back on as an extremely happy, relaxed childhood, with the Troubles a mere backdrop.

I am not sure if I could do such a good job with my children in the same circumstances. But then, living in peaceful North Yorkshire, I have never, thankfully, been put to the test.

Published: 21/07/2005