The Sound of Silence

Today, for the first time, I felt proud to be a Londoner. Many’s a time that I have ranted to excess about the capital’s pollution, overcrowding, inflated house prices, litter, and decrepit public transport. But it is only since last Thursday that I have grown to understand what this metropolis stands for and have discovered that its citizens do care about it deeply. More importantly, they care about each other more passionately than I could ever have imagined from their previously impassive faces. The floral tributes outside the sites of the bombings are heart-rending and represent every community that has made our town its home. And London has picked itself up and carried on like you wouldn’t believe. Of course, in many ways we didn’t have a choice – we have bills to pay, and going to work is the only way we can do that. But nonetheless, tube trains are packed to the hilt in soaring temperatures, scarlet buses are gridlocked along every thoroughfare and people have taken to its streets in droves. Yes, people look furtively at one another whenever a passenger with a rucksack clambers aboard, yes, bus drivers demand the owner of every bag of shopping makes themself known and yes, we all have the godawful fear that just because we were lucky the last time doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen again at any moment, and this time to us, but still there is this overwhelming sense of “Fuck you!”. The terrorists will never win. Though that is a phrase steeped in government rhetoric, right now it seems that nothing will break this capital’s spirit, nothing will make its multi-national, multi-faith and multi-cultural races turn on each other. The only thing that frightens us are the hideous articles in the American press claiming that the UK is too soft on Muslims and that “Londonistan” has become a breeding ground for terrorists plotting to attack America. The apparent belief Stateside that every Muslim is a terrorist is utterly appalling and just preaches the kind of Bushite ignorance that keeps me awake at night. Presumably the Republican government also believes that we should adopt their own practices towards Muslims – such as giving every citizen a gun to shoot them with, locking them up without trial and abusing them in federal jails.

Today, though, London fell completely silent. I have never witnessed anything so moving or empowering. It took no one to organise us – across the city, at the stroke of noon, people poured out of their houses and offices onto the streets. Buses and taxis stopped, car engines switched off, and everyone stood with their heads bowed for two deeply reflective minutes. I’d always thought I’d want to flee London once the terrorist assault happened, but today, this moment of us reclaiming our world, made me want to stay.

Today would have been my mother’s 59th birthday. As the noise of nothingness spoke so many words I thought of her too, robbed of her chance to grow older by a dreadful disease. But so many of those the terrorists have slaughtered were younger even than me – they have lost everything, and we must honour them, remember them, lest we should forget that a split second can take us from a full and happy life into the great abyss of death.

Sleep brings escape

So it's finally happened. The mass terror attack on London's antiquated and overstretched transport system that we have all been fearing and expecting since Blair joined Bush's bandwagon war on terror is now upon us. Tragically, as we always knew it would be, it was all too easy for the attackers and one can only imagine the grim, unbearable horrors that rush-hour commuters on the three trains and one bus involved faced this morning.
I have been glued to the news all day (switching channels whenever Michael Howard turned up to give a statement) and cannot help but be overwhelmed and humbled at my own lucky escape. I am currently employed in the Holborn area and use the Piccadilly Line through Kings Cross and Russell Square on a daily basis, normally passing through some time close to 9am. But today Dave and I were somehow unwilling to rise and slumbered on long past the blare of our alarm clock, and my laziness for once possibly saved my life. (Vices proving merciful is a recurrent theme for us this year it seems - it was our stinginess not wanting to pay the extra 200 pounds it would have cost us to go for Christmas that prevented us from being in Sri Lanka when the tsunami struck on Boxing Day.) By the time I reached Finsbury Park station, the entire tube service had been shut down. We had been warned of this by an automatic announcement at Harringay station, but none of us believed it and so had continued on our way once a train finally arrived. ("There are no London Underground services this morning" the announcement said. We just assumed it had left a line or a couple of station names off.) The problem was initially claimed to be a power surge and instantly everyone wondered how the hell London was seriously thinking itself capable of hosting the Olympic games when it could have its entire transport network shut down by electrical faults. However, outside Finsbury Park station, there were enough rumours of explosions coming from mobile phone conversations and such evident chaos that it was an easy decision to stop standing around tutting and slip off home again to find out some sensible and more accurate facts. I had thought I'd take a 91 bus from Crouch End into Holborn later in the day, but news of the explosion on the number 30 bus in Tavistock Square (bang in the middle of the 91 route) and the entire cordoning off of the Bloomsbury area quickly put paid to such ideas.
So here I am, safely in our Crouch End lounge, unbelieving, shocked, angry and relieved all at once. Dave is trying to get home from Barnet, where out of town bus services are still running. I won't feel comfortable until he is back here with me. Sadly, I fear there will be many couples in London tonight who won't be as lucky.

REBECCA