This must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
All the local shops closed for business by midday but it seems all the dumb-arse office workers were determined to go down with their sinking ships or something. It's strange how different peopel have thier own ways of dealing with this kind of panic; some around me just had a kind of "well, there's not really much I can do about it" attitude and got on with whatever work they were doing. Others - the opportunist types, I suppose - began discretely looking for ways to exploit the skiving opportunities. Others still (myself included) adopted a sort of horrified fascination with the events as they unfolded and were unable to take their eyes off the TV/computer screens bringing updates. We waited in vain for permission to go home early but, when none came, people from my office began to drift off in small groups from about three o'clock onwards.
I'd never seen central London like that before - the police had cordoned off half of the road where I work and were patrolling on horseback to keep away the rubberneckers. So there was very little road traffic but an enormous sea of my suit-wearing brethren, all talking about the same thing, all looking confused and all trying to figure out where to catch a train out of the capital from. A few were making frustrated and pointless attempts to flag down cabs but most were moving in a tide towards London Bridge station, weaving around more pockets of police who were trying to errect crowd-control barriers, while, all the time, air ambulances were buzzing overhead and ambulances stood ready on street corners, presumably in case any more attacks began. I followed the other commuters into the ticket hall at London Bridge but nothing much was arriving or departing and the place was packed to bursting point with anxious people and a few annoyed police trying to subdue them. I then fought against the tide and, after a very long and difficult walk, managed to make it to Blackfriars and catch a train home from there. My phone eventually began working again and I was very touched by the text and voice messages that people had left during the day, checking if I was alright. My grandmother (who had only recently come out of hospital) had been hysterical this morning, convinced that myself and my father were going to be among the victims but she's calmed down now.
Perhaps, at some level, I knew a disaster was coming, simply because - with the exception of the G8 thing and the Olympic bidding - there had been so few real stories in the news over the last few weeks. I remember a similar calm before the storm in the days running up to 9/11; in fact I specifically remember looking at The Sun on that morning, which had devoted the entire front page to a picture of Victoria Beckham's (fake) lip piercing and bore the huge headline "OH MY GOB!". And the following day, by a strange sort of logic, the contents of their front page implied that 3,000 deaths were of equal importance to the world.
So, what now then? Are we going to follow in New York's footsteps after 9/11 and hold candle-lit vigils around the city? (I can just picture it now - people waving Union Jacks and singing "maybe it's becorrz I'm a Landanaah, that I lav Landaan Taaahn..." - Christ, that's an awful picture). Well, we've been dealing with terrorism here since the 1960s, so I suppose we'll bounce back soon enough, although I expect Charles Clarke's intentions to introduce ID cards and other privacy-interferring devices will become ever more rabid from this point onwards. By the time the olympics come to this city, we'll probably all be tagged and bar-coded like cattle. Dickheads will surely focus their fury on members of the Muslim community (or those who at least appear to be), who had nothing to do with today's events. Maybe, if we're really lucky, we'll have a pretty-looking, colour-coded alert level system like the Americans already have, to show us how paranoid and jittery we should be with each passing day.Sigh. I can't wait. Well, back to work tomorrow anyway, so as life goes on, I'll just have to re-establish my faith in public transport.
I'd never seen central London like that before - the police had cordoned off half of the road where I work and were patrolling on horseback to keep away the rubberneckers. So there was very little road traffic but an enormous sea of my suit-wearing brethren, all talking about the same thing, all looking confused and all trying to figure out where to catch a train out of the capital from. A few were making frustrated and pointless attempts to flag down cabs but most were moving in a tide towards London Bridge station, weaving around more pockets of police who were trying to errect crowd-control barriers, while, all the time, air ambulances were buzzing overhead and ambulances stood ready on street corners, presumably in case any more attacks began. I followed the other commuters into the ticket hall at London Bridge but nothing much was arriving or departing and the place was packed to bursting point with anxious people and a few annoyed police trying to subdue them. I then fought against the tide and, after a very long and difficult walk, managed to make it to Blackfriars and catch a train home from there. My phone eventually began working again and I was very touched by the text and voice messages that people had left during the day, checking if I was alright. My grandmother (who had only recently come out of hospital) had been hysterical this morning, convinced that myself and my father were going to be among the victims but she's calmed down now.
Perhaps, at some level, I knew a disaster was coming, simply because - with the exception of the G8 thing and the Olympic bidding - there had been so few real stories in the news over the last few weeks. I remember a similar calm before the storm in the days running up to 9/11; in fact I specifically remember looking at The Sun on that morning, which had devoted the entire front page to a picture of Victoria Beckham's (fake) lip piercing and bore the huge headline "OH MY GOB!". And the following day, by a strange sort of logic, the contents of their front page implied that 3,000 deaths were of equal importance to the world.
So, what now then? Are we going to follow in New York's footsteps after 9/11 and hold candle-lit vigils around the city? (I can just picture it now - people waving Union Jacks and singing "maybe it's becorrz I'm a Landanaah, that I lav Landaan Taaahn..." - Christ, that's an awful picture). Well, we've been dealing with terrorism here since the 1960s, so I suppose we'll bounce back soon enough, although I expect Charles Clarke's intentions to introduce ID cards and other privacy-interferring devices will become ever more rabid from this point onwards. By the time the olympics come to this city, we'll probably all be tagged and bar-coded like cattle. Dickheads will surely focus their fury on members of the Muslim community (or those who at least appear to be), who had nothing to do with today's events. Maybe, if we're really lucky, we'll have a pretty-looking, colour-coded alert level system like the Americans already have, to show us how paranoid and jittery we should be with each passing day.Sigh. I can't wait. Well, back to work tomorrow anyway, so as life goes on, I'll just have to re-establish my faith in public transport.