I have been watching the TV news for quite a while. It seems superfluous to use words, and linking to news sites is pointless. As I write, they are talking about 38 deaths, and many more seriously injured, and walking wounded, the traumatised etc.
Whenever one hears of senseless unnecesaary deaths of random strangers, it creates an emotional response. When they are caused deliberately, with malice, it raises questions in my mind.
But in a way, the numbers are meaningless. From time to time, the various disasters that happen throw up a name of a vague acquaintance, or a friend of a friend, or someone one used to know - I've known that for twenty years, plane crashes, train crashes, terrorist attacks. For the friends and families of those who die, it's one. One is the number. Same as when people die in unprovoked attacks, RTAs, accidents on building sites.
For the rest of us, we feel sympathy. And then what. I'm afraid, in my immediate workplace, the main concern was 'how to get home'. I left at half three. I knew I wasn't going to get any work done. I walked to Victoria, and, actually, I was home before five, getting, I think, the first train out to my nearest suburban station.
Meanwhile, the PM is saying carry on with life as normal. People will struggle in to work tomorrow (not me, I'm a part timer, I don't work Fridays...). My main concern is getting to Heathrow on Saturday.
The pisshead I live with keeps saying "Oh, you're so brave, you're so brave..." No, not really. When I moved to the South East, and then to London, it was common for stations to close nearly every week because of bomb blasts, unexploded bombs, coded phone calls, and suspect packages. When meeting a friend in town on a Saturday, before mobiles, we'd arrange Plan B and Plan C in case we couldn't meet at the bottom of the escalators at Victoria. As recently as my first blog meet, just over two years ago, I narrowly avoided getting caught up in a suspect package alert on my way home.
This all came back on Saturday, when I wrote out pieces of paper, one for Jimmy (with my mobile number) and one for me (with his) saying where to meet if we get separated.
Before we went to Live8 we stopped for a coffee at Costa Coffee on Victoria; I saw a table outside with a weekend bag, and a Daily Mail. A bloke came out of the shop and sat down with it. Jimmy came out with our coffee and I said, in a loud voice "Trouble with days like today, you get the peasants from the sticks leaving their bags unattended - all you need is one moron like that, Victoria's closed and the day's ruined for everyone."
The Daily Mail reader glared furiously at me; another chap grabbed his rucksack from the chair he had been standing near. I hope that that peasant Daily Mail reader now realises I was only being 50% Bitch; the other 50% was Years of Experience. Frankly, if he hadn't emerged by the time Jimmy did, I would have dragged the nearest police officer away from his vital duty of holding a bride in his arms as the rest of her homeward-bound hen party took photos.
Someone I know was due to go out for drinking tonight round Aldgate. The drinking's not been cancelled, it's been relocated. By the way, her partner's a policeman.
That's what we do in London. We carry on as normal.
