Birmingham Post

Standing on a beach and gazing out to the ocean at sunset, lying on one's back and looking up at the stars, or clasping hands in a cold, musty church would seem to offer a far more fitting backdrop for such lofty thoughts.

But the thought of death has a way of creeping up on you, nagging at you just when you least expect it; and in an odd way the absolute ordinariness of the surroundings, sitting in a parking bay on Colmore Row, probably makes for as good a place as any.

It is not that I am morbid or that I am taken to regular consideration of the great beyond.

It is just that the obscene threat posed by terrorism has left me, and I am sure many other parents, mulling over the "what if" question.

To be more precise, what if a suicide bomber, or car bomber, decided to strike while I was out shopping with my wife? And what if the gutless, misguided individual with the nails and explosives strapped to his chest just happened to take me and my wife with him?

Such a scenario would leave our two daughters orphans.

Now I appreciate things have moved on since the eponymous heroes of Charles Dickens's novels were cast out into a corrupting world of penury, child labour and organised crime, but a parentless predicament is far from ideal for children today.

Writing these thoughts I am not being self-indulgent and neither am I looking for anyone to say "Oh, Richard, the girls would miss you terribly" (although I jolly well hope they would).

No, my chief concern is who would look after the children in the absence of their mum and dad. No doubt similar thoughts have always exercised the minds of parents, ever since prehistoric man went out hunting mammoths.

What if Fred got eaten alive by a big woolly one while Wilma was savaged by a dinosaur while doing the washing at the local waterfall?

It could happen.

The possibility of dying and leaving behind orphans was heightened in the 20th century when mainland Britain came under attack from outside aggressors on an unprecedented scale during the Second World War.

The Vikings and Romans inevitably accounted for several sets of parents but their reign of terror was nothing compared with the murderous assaults of the Luftwaffe.

Children lost both parents in air raids and mothers were killed at home while their husbands succumbed to shell fire or snipers' bullets overseas.

Since 1945, Britons have remained remarkably untroubled with the devastating exception of Irish republican terrorism, whose vile imprint was left in Birmingham on the night two pubs were bombed in 1974.

Al Qaida-inspired attacks have raised the spectre of domestic terrorism once more.

The odds of being wiped out in a car crash, a fire or a violent crime are probably far higher than the chances of being killed by a suicide bomber but as I sat in my car in Colmore Row I couldn't help thinking: "What if?"

If my wife and I didn't get home, who would we want to look after our children? Parents? Siblings? And shouldn't we talk to them in advance?

Hopefully, it's the hardest decision you won't have to make but I can't help feeling that unless I take it, I am being negligent.

And I despise the terrorists even more for making me think like this.