Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner

Information didn’t spread yesterday. It seeped out across

London like a dark patch of water through a cloth. It scampered along spider-webs of gossip, from person to person in a hearsay run of rumour. Calls from someone’s friend of a friend who knew someone who worked with the police – for a while these nebulous lines of Chinese whispers were the only sources of information we had, as we drank tea, ate biscuits, and listened as the rumours strengthened, swirled and eddied into something that loomed up out of our collective and unspoken fear: explosions on the tube.

Who hasn’t thought of it? I remained bizarrely calm throughout all the talk a few years ago of terrorism. I blithely skipped my way up the Northern line while expert humm-ed over anthrax and ha-ed over ricin. I felt invincible. We all felt invincible.

And yet.
And yet.
I said to my friend Erin at work yesterday that fear was out of all proportion to risk, and that even then, perceived risk was out of all proportion to actual risk (bear in mind that, pending a possible promotion, I am trying talk as impressively as I can at the moment, at work. This is my excuse for these kinds of sage words at the moment. Any other time, it’s just showing off.)

And yet… the other morning, while inserting myself into an over-crowded train, I thought I smelt petrol. Even though I congratulate myself on being calm, panic immediately flooded my mind, like flame swallowing up a rag. I saw myself getting off, I saw myself walking away from the carriage, down the platform, then sheltering from the blast. I imagined myself talking on the six o’clock news, under the patient, paternal gaze of a BBC news reader, “I don’t know what made me get off. I suppose I was just lucky. Or sixth sense. Or something.”

Because how do you know? When it’s your turn, there’s no announcement on the tannoy. There is no ceremony, or fanfare. A bang loud enough to rip eardrums, tearing people away from their friends and families forever, leaving others blinking, dust-covered, blood-spattered, in the wreckage. ‘It wasn’t my time’. But no one is sure why, or how.

When I got up yesterday morning, the Northern line wasn’t working. I harrumphed the harrumph of a tired

London commuter. Honestly. My journey into work was a ludicrous mis-mash of unfamiliar overground trains. I saw a school friend wandering on the platform, outside the train that I was in, and called her on her mobile, “Hi! It’s me – I can see you! … How are you getting in? … Oh, I know… I know. Honestly…I mean, really. Well – see you later, then!” (Later on, when the mobile networks were down, with paranoia in overdrive, I suddenly heard myself on the news again, ‘that was the last time I ever spoke to her’. Dramatic, but thankfully not prophetic.) I texted work, "I might be late. Northern line in meltdown." (I found that message last night, and chilled a little as I deleted it.)

Generally, I have little truck with people who are over-dramatic. When our Chief Executive blundered into our office, waving his arms like a windmill, mumbling about an explosion on the tube, I arranged my features into their most scathing expression, “Mike. There’s no explosion. It’s just the bloody Northern line playing up again.”
He waved his arms some more, “No, really, there’s been an explosion at Euston. The whole underground network is suspended.”

I went onto the BBC news website. Couldn’t get on. Tried google, and skynews. No luck. Something was niggling at the back of my mind…. I remembered that on September 11th, 2001, I hadn’t been able to get onto BBC news. Ridiculous. I folded that thought up, and tucked it safely away.

The rest of that morning was the steady drip-drip of bad news. “A power-surge.” “Radio 5 says a power surge…” “National grid say no power surge reported.” “But the computers in here aren’t working. Maybe there was a London-wide power surge?” “What does the radio say?” “Can anyone get onto the internet?” “Our internet connections aren’t working!” “My phone isn’t working.” “Is your phone working?” “Does anyone know what’s going on?”

“Joe’s mate works with the police. Says there’s an explosion on a bus. That couldn’t be a power surge, could it?” “A what?” “I’ve just spoken to my Mum. Bombs on the underground – terrorist attacks.”

Our mobiles jammed. The phones wouldn’t work. Emails were down. All of our lifelines to the outside world, cut off one by one as we sat and looked at our rendundant computer screens.

Anthony looked at us all, “Shall I make us a cup of tea?” We must have thought about it for all of a nanosecond. “Oh, yes please. That would be lovely.” We drank our tea and ate our biscuits, clasping our mugs with both hands: the international body language of the scared.

Safe in the knowledge that the rather shabby, scabby area of

London in which we work was not likely to be the subject of any kind of explosion, we began to loosen up. Shock veered towards slightly silly hysteria and back to shock again. Normal rules suspended, an almost party-atmosphere emerged, unbidden and inappropriate but oddly comforting. We started to make bad jokes. We began to excavate our desks, searching for supplies, not sure how long we’d be stuck in the office. Bella emerged triumphant from one of her desk drawers, “I’ve got a packet of wotsits and a nectarine!” Colin trumped her, “I’ve got a big bar of chocolate!” “I’ve got four apples?” I ventured, but no one was listening. They were all too busy chomping on Cadbury’s. “In times of crisis,” I said, reaching for a piece, “it’s important to keep your strength up.”
“Yeah,” said Colin, through a mouthful of chocolate, “but we’ll have to be careful. If we run low, it’ll be like ‘Alive’. How long before we start eating each other? Andwho would we eat first?”

Karen and I gave each other nervous looks. We both agreed that vegetarians were likely to be very un-nutritious.

Some bright spark put on BBC news 24 on our plasma screen on the mezzanine, and we interspersed moments of nervy high jinks in the office with creeping out to watch the unfolding footage, as the number of people dead crept up in increments.

And all afternoon, as our mobile networks ached with the unexpected load, we heard the repeated chirrup and tweet of text messages that managed to squeeze through. Messages from friends all over

London , the same message repeated again and again, “I’m okay. Wanted to check that you were safe…” “R u ok? We r fine. Evacuated from Kings X but fine.” “We’re both okay. How are things in the City?”

I had emailed my Dad, but suddenly feared that the message hadn’t got through to him, so kept pressing ‘call’ on my mobile phone until suddenly, unexpectedly, I got a signal and got through.

“Hello, it’s me. Did you get my email?”

He sounded vague, “Yes, I did. Trouble on the tube?” He made it sound like leaves on the line. Like over-crowding at

Camden

Town . I was suddenly cross with him, and a horrible part of me wanted to scare him, “No, not ‘trouble on the tube’. Six explosions in central

London , on the tubes and on a bus. I wanted to let you know I’m okay.”

“Oh.” His surprise eased my wounded ego just a little.

Being so far from everything, the only tales I have to tell, really, are of a strange feeling both of isolation from the smoke and the panic, and a feeling of solidarity, of being in the thick of things. Of feeling pathetic and stupid because although I didn’t see or hear a thing, although , so far, everyone I know is safe, I nevertheless got home last night and cried like a baby.

I was ashamed of crying, because this morning, when we woke up, something was in the air. I’d felt this before. The unfamiliar feeling of an amorphous mass of millions of disparate people, whose thoughts and ideas suddenly and unexpectedly coalesce into something discernible and coherent. Like a random flock of birds who suddenly change direction, piercing beautiful darts across the sky. Like the buzz of a television screen that swirls and rationalises into a picture. It was zeitgeist. I’d felt it the previous day, when the whole of

London got to its feet and cheered and punched the air when we won the Olympic bid. The contrast of that happiness with the mood this morning was bitter-sweet, and made my eyes itch.

But the fact is that zeitgeist is exciting, whatever the reason. And this morning you could feel it rolling up out of the cracks in the pavement. We will not be bowed. We will overcome. We expected this, and it’s tragic, and it’s terrible, but it’s not on the scale we feared, and now it’s time to grieve, time to clear up, time to get up, dust ourselves off, and get back to it. Time to get back to work. The commuters’ feet beat out this tattoo on the steps down to the platforms.

I took the tube. And there it was again: identical expressions on every face in the carriage: part sadness, part determination. Resilience. It was silent but bizarrely moving.

And it made me realise how important

London is to me now. I’ve only been here three years, but I am so proud to be part of a city that can take this on the chin, pick itself up, and carry on as  before. Just as we enter the twenty-first century, confused, belligerent, asking ourselves what it means to be British, the answer comes up and smacks us in the face, with a ripped up double-decker bus, and bodies lying metres underground. To be British, to be a Londoner, is to keep going. It’s putting the kettle on. It’s opening the second packet of emergency biscuit rations. It’s calling your family, and saying ‘Oh yes. We’re all absolutely fine. We’re just getting back to work.’ It’s hearing the terrible news and saying, “well, honestly, it could have been a lot worse.”  “After all, there’s no need to over-react.” It’s Jack reading the paper this morning, and pointing at the headline which said ‘7/7’, and saying philosophically, “I suppose it’s a good thing that that 7th July says ‘7/7’ whether you are British or American.” It’s getting back on the Tube, getting back on the train, it’s squaring your shoulders and saying, this is awful, but it isn’t as bad as we thought, and we can keep on going. After all, it’s what we do best.

With love,
therumtumtugger (unscathed, but not unaffected)
xxx