It’s worrying that the ISIS bride isn’t even remorseful – Lesley Keating

However I’ve also just watched a televised interview with her – and she doesn’t help her own case. 

I was expecting a terrified young girl who’d run for her life to escape a brutal regime which she bitterly regretted joining. 

I expected her to be apologetic and humble, grieving for the loss of two babies, missing her family and desperate to protect her new-born child at any cost. 

What I saw instead was a very matter-of-fact, dispassionate 19-year old woman who didn’t seem to have a shred of remorse for her actions. 

I saw a young woman who explained the only reason she wanted to leave was that ‘it got hard at the end’. 

Up until then, she’d been ‘fine’ with atrocities like beheadings.

She admits she’s no longer the naive 15-year-old who ran away to join a terrorist organisation with two friends, one of whom is now dead and the other, well... who knows? 

She’s not heard from her for a while now so Shamima said she ‘wouldn’t be surprised’ if she was to learn she had died too, although she admits she’d feel ‘hurt’. 

When questioned, she recalls how she enjoyed living under the regime up until the very end when it got difficult and she wanted out. 

‘I did have a good time. It’s just that at the end things got harder and I couldn’t take it anymore,’ she explains.

Well, that’s just lovely. 

How nice she had a ‘good time’.

All through the interview, she makes no apology for the pain she caused her family and ponders over whether the UK will welcome her back with a cold detachment that does little to garner sympathy or dispel fears about her motives in returning. 

Far from regretting her time with Isis, Shamima states that her time in Syria has made her ‘stronger and tougher’. 

That, in my book, potentially makes her a very dangerous young lady indeed.

If you didn’t get a Valentine don’t cry about it, get over it

For Valentine’s Day, Mike sent me beautiful roses and a card. Not bad after nearly 30 years!

I love Valentine’s Day – even the years when I got a big fat nothing or, embarrassingly, at 13 when my dad sent a card, pretending it was from some boy.

But the fun police now say that an unsolicited card is a form of harassment. And not getting a card can contribute towards stress and depression.

Oh, do me a favour – it’s a harmless tradition! The do-gooders who say it’s harmful are probably the same types who insist on prizes for everyone, not just winners.

We don’t all get a card. We don’t all win. Deal with it.

Spring seems to have sprung and I am so excited about it

I went for a walk with Milly our dog and have actually come back really uplifted just because there is a little trace of spring in the air.

I normally hate February. Everyone is usually miserable because all the new year joie de vivre has finally run out and post-Christmas bills are biting.

But, the birds are singing their heads off, the sun is making an attempt to show itself and there are crocuses in neighbouring gardens.

Today would have been my mum’s birthday so, fittingly for a Welsh girl, the daffodils are out too.

There is even the scent of line-dried washing filtering in from somewhere. Maybe, after a cold and uninspiring winter, spring has sprung after all!