(no subject)
Most days, I don't actually get the tube, but today, due to a breakfast meeting I had to get to in the west end, I did. To be honest, I was glad that circumstances forced me to, because the way that London dealt with the aftermath of last year's bombings made me so proud to be a citizen of this city, and it felt a little bit like I was showing my own piece of solidarity. What it also meant, though, was that I didn't relive the same route that I had been taking a year ago. Then, I was on a WAGN train, that didn't get any further than Finsbury Park. We were told there had been a power failure at Moorgate, and that we should try to take the tube. My colleague and I, seeing the vast swathes of people going down the stairs, decided to try to take a bus. As the bus got fuller and fuller, it became apparent that people had been kicked off of the tubes too. At this point, I got a phone call telling me that the news was reporting a massive power surge. My mum wanted to check I wasn't stuck underground somewhere. But I was fine, I was on a bus. A few minutes after that, as traffic came to a standstill through Islington, we got off the bus. Almost as soon as we did, my phone rang again. "Get off the bus! Buses are being blown up! Get off the main roads!". The strange thing was that all around me were totally calm commuters, most of whom were unaware of the horrors that were unfolding as we all walked towards the city. As things started to become clearer, we kept walking towards the sites of the disasters. There was no way to get home, so we needed to reach the relative safety of our offices, at least there we would find phones and internet to work out what was going on. The phone networks were already patchy, but I managed to speak to Dan, Jo and my Mum to reassure them that all was fine. But it wasn't fine, really. Hundreds, thousands of displaced commuters were walking above tube tunnels, unsure if the ground was about to shake again, or if this was just the first stage of more horrors.
By the time I got to my office, all the mobile networks were out. I arrived, to see hundreds of people congregated outside of my office. They had been evacuated from Liverpool Street Station, just over the road, and didn't know where to go next. Everyone was looking for information, all of the details were still patchy, and we still didn't know how many bombs had actually gone off. Along the road people were saying there had been ten, twenty, even more. Some people didn't believe there were any, that the power surge story was true and the rest was just scaremongering. Of course, once we got inside and photos started to find their way to the internet, we all knew that it wasn't scaremongering. Slowly, we all started to try to account for our friends, family and workmates. I was one of the lucky ones, who had peace of mind by about mid afternoon, but all the waiting for contact made me acutely aware that there were others who would never get that e-mail, or that phone call.
During the day, none of us really knew what to do. We were evacuated a few times, then told to get back inside and stay away from the windows. Mostly, we just watched the news and tirelessly hit refresh on the news sites. Messages came from friends and family around the world, especially New York, where I have both family and colleagues - they wanted us to know that they were standing in solidarity with us, that they understood how we felt, that we must get back to normal as quickly as we could. So we did. As mid afternoon arrived, people started taking to the streets again, this time for a long walk home. There were huge groups of people walking in high heels and suits, some silently contemplating, some talking about anything but the reason for our exodous. Many people stopped in pubs, most people spoke to strangers in a way that Londoners never normally do. As we walked through zone 1, into zone 2 the amount of people got smaller and smaller. By the time we hit zone 3, someone had managed to fight through the traffic to pick us up, and when we made it back to the safety of our home, the enormity of what had happened that day suddenly hit us. Pictures still on the television, voices on the radio, words on the internet, but behind all that, the reality that real people had blown themselves up, and taken with them at random, totally normal people on their way to another day at the office.
But the next day, London got up, and London went to work. And we continued to do so every day. And each time I made a journey that ended safely, I felt a little bit relieved, and a little bit triumphant. And now, a year on, London still goes on. I took the tube this morning. I saw more police than I've ever seen in zone 1. I got a cab. I saw people walking on the streets. In a few minutes time there will be a two-minute silence to commemorate what happened last year, so fresh and also so distant. I will be thinking of those who died, I will be thinking of those who killed them, and I will be thinking of those who survived. A year on, I am still trying to make sense of what happened, but I am also thankful for the fact that while we look for answers, we still carry on. We carried on that day, we carried on that night, that week and that month, and really, carrying on is our only defence against a terrorism that defies any logic that we understand.
By the time I got to my office, all the mobile networks were out. I arrived, to see hundreds of people congregated outside of my office. They had been evacuated from Liverpool Street Station, just over the road, and didn't know where to go next. Everyone was looking for information, all of the details were still patchy, and we still didn't know how many bombs had actually gone off. Along the road people were saying there had been ten, twenty, even more. Some people didn't believe there were any, that the power surge story was true and the rest was just scaremongering. Of course, once we got inside and photos started to find their way to the internet, we all knew that it wasn't scaremongering. Slowly, we all started to try to account for our friends, family and workmates. I was one of the lucky ones, who had peace of mind by about mid afternoon, but all the waiting for contact made me acutely aware that there were others who would never get that e-mail, or that phone call.
During the day, none of us really knew what to do. We were evacuated a few times, then told to get back inside and stay away from the windows. Mostly, we just watched the news and tirelessly hit refresh on the news sites. Messages came from friends and family around the world, especially New York, where I have both family and colleagues - they wanted us to know that they were standing in solidarity with us, that they understood how we felt, that we must get back to normal as quickly as we could. So we did. As mid afternoon arrived, people started taking to the streets again, this time for a long walk home. There were huge groups of people walking in high heels and suits, some silently contemplating, some talking about anything but the reason for our exodous. Many people stopped in pubs, most people spoke to strangers in a way that Londoners never normally do. As we walked through zone 1, into zone 2 the amount of people got smaller and smaller. By the time we hit zone 3, someone had managed to fight through the traffic to pick us up, and when we made it back to the safety of our home, the enormity of what had happened that day suddenly hit us. Pictures still on the television, voices on the radio, words on the internet, but behind all that, the reality that real people had blown themselves up, and taken with them at random, totally normal people on their way to another day at the office.
But the next day, London got up, and London went to work. And we continued to do so every day. And each time I made a journey that ended safely, I felt a little bit relieved, and a little bit triumphant. And now, a year on, London still goes on. I took the tube this morning. I saw more police than I've ever seen in zone 1. I got a cab. I saw people walking on the streets. In a few minutes time there will be a two-minute silence to commemorate what happened last year, so fresh and also so distant. I will be thinking of those who died, I will be thinking of those who killed them, and I will be thinking of those who survived. A year on, I am still trying to make sense of what happened, but I am also thankful for the fact that while we look for answers, we still carry on. We carried on that day, we carried on that night, that week and that month, and really, carrying on is our only defence against a terrorism that defies any logic that we understand.