Ten years ago today was on my mind all day.
I wrote the following as an email to friends outside of London, and a year later, posted it as my first blog entry on MySpace. When MySpace went down the tubes I managed to harvest my blogs, and meant to repost this here. Well, I am finally getting round to it.
In 2007 I moved into the flat where I had been staying that day in 2005, and during my more than five years in that neighbourhood, I don't know how many times I rode the no. 30 bus, or walked by or came out of the part of Liverpool Station that had been hit.
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I
was separated from my laptop, as well as (fountain!) pen and paper on
the 7th, and I wrote the following a couple days later. I was a bit
annoyed that I had forgotten some of the details I'd written in my head,
and worried that the tone might be a bit bloggy; it's certainly not
investigative journalism! I don't know anyone directly involved and did
not seek anyone out who was, but anyway, I write so many things that I
never finish so for once I'm sending something out anyway.
7.7:
Okay, this is what it was like. I had been here four days but my jet
lag's worse than ever. I'm sleeping on the famous crash couch in Liz's
flat in Highbury. It's ten something in the morning and Liz comes in;
she should be at work. She had gone to the bus stop but no bus ever
came, and finally she learned what had gone down: eight tube stations
bombed as well as the no. 30 bus.
(Yes, it wasn't eight, it was
three, but in the first hours the news was very fuzzy.) Liz makes coffee
and turns on the TV, News 24, and we're both glad we're not watching
American news, with its constant commentary - theories, opinions,
wafflers waffling on just to hear the sound of their own self-beloved
voices. Mikes thrust down the gob of someone whose house just burned
down - "So, how do you FEEL?"
Getting back to the point...
Nothing much unfolds for a while and we stare at the gogglebox,
transfixed. Liz walks to work in Clerkenwell, reports later that the
streets were eerily deserted and that people stared suspiciously down at
her from windows above.
I watch and I watch. Even watch the
Shrub, who reminds me of a braindead tin soldier with his arms held
rigidly out from his sides, and marvel at the fact that no grammatical
errors emerge in his speech, or maybe my brain's on holiday and I'm not
really listening, still thinking of his pal the panic-stricken (B)Liar's
shell-shocked face.
Or maybe my brain is feeling guilty 'cause all the misspellt words on the crawling text are bugging me - Edgeware Road (it's Edgware!!), Oldgate for Aldgate...
The
rumours start flying later, but only outside the TV news world;
although the Beeb showed that map with the excess burning stations, they
are cautious only to report the facts. Liz rings, says she heard that
it was suicide bombers, jumping in front of trains; then she heard that
the bombers escaped and that the bombs were set off by mobile phones. My
mobile doesn't work on the Underground, even the shallow lines, so how
could that be possible? Never mind, it all ain't true.
So. I'm
stranded. Yesterday I took all my stuff to my new digs, then went back
into town and crashed back at Liz's on the aforementioned couch after a
late night drinking sesh - a lock-in at the Wenlock Arms, and there's no
way to get back to Edmonton, where my stuff is. It's way way out there
in the part of North London
best avoided. I realise I need money and must get to the bank before it
shuts as I have misplaced my cash card. (Days later, as ever, I find it
exactly five minutes after the replacement card arrives in the post.)
The bank is way down at the other end of Upper Street, so I hurry out.
We're
not very far from two of the bomb sites and I expect to find all doom
and gloom, but first of all it's a glorious day. It had been raining
earlier but now the sky is blue, the air is washed and clean, the sun is
shining but very gently, hardly ever had I seen such perfect weather.
Everyone is smiling. Phoning people, saying, "It was just a matter of
time." "I'm all right." Laughing about having to walk or being stranded.
Smiling at passers-by, saying hello - now this is WEIRD! This is just
not done in London. I overtake some Yank tourists who are walking too slowly and they apologise to me.
People
are sitting in the outdoor cafes. The only things I see that are closed
are one clothes shop, one betting shop (though a sign in the window
assures customers that a branch not far away remains open) and all three
branches of Starbucks have closed down early. (Perhaps the management
were worried they might have to dole out some free water at some point.)
And my bank. And just half an hour early, the bastards!
So I
wander into Sainsbury's, where, even though there are the longest waits
I'd ever seen at the checkouts (announcements over the Tannoy keep
apologising for this), everyone remains happy and smiling. A woman, who
was balancing her basket precariously atop one of those old lady
shopping wheely things, sees the contents crash to the floor and
immediately a dozen people surround her, picking up eggshells and cheese
puffs, and others rally to find her replacement items (which she puts
in her basket in the same dangerous position, forcing one of the good
Samaritans to end up holding it for her). I'd never seen behaviour like
this in London.
Maybe oop north, where they'd probably be brewing oop a cooppa for the
old dear and force-feeding some Tunnock's teacakes down her gullet too,
but London?? As Pokey once said to Gumby (I had to stick a
incomprehensible to non-Yanks reference in amidst all these
Britishisms): "Weird, man, weird!"
Well, someone's not a happy
camper. Way over on the other side of the store there's a lot of
shouting, and some kind of security person was summoned to expel the
culprit, but we (I say "we" because the people in my queue take turns to
go over and try to find out what's going on but no-one has any success -
it's a big store and difficult to get close or to see past the crowds
at the tills) never manage to find out what the deal was.
Then,
weirder still, the woman at the till chats to me, just like we were up
north and this sort of thing is normal! About the weather, about the
crowds of people stocking up with food, what time she started work and
how she was getting home etc. This is getting to be very strange.
Now
I'm hungry and I'm still cashless and living on plastic so I head for
Pasha on the way back, but we're in the in-between hours when they have
their doors open but they aren't serving any food, so it's La Petite
Auberge; at first I'm the sole customer but it soon fills up with
stranded folk; one man wants a table with enough light to read the paper
and I've got the "Stan-dud" too - the only London paper is an evening
one and aren't they happy about that! The morning rags with their
blazing "We've Got the Olympics!" headlines now looked forlorn.
My
phone keeps beeping with text messages; I go back to Liz's and ring my
mother as she (Liz) had urged me to; she had only just heard the news.
But had not thought of phoning me The buses are running and I go out
to wait for one to Clerkenwell, but after half an hour I walk halfway.
When one comes and I try to pay the fare the driver tells me buses are
free "because of the troubles". (What - are we in Ulster?) I probably could have got all the way back to Edmonton now, but I don't feel much like being alone. Especially in those ultra dreary digs.
So
I meet Liz and Sergio, who had walked from his work in Paddington to
Clerkenwell - took two hours - in the pub next to Liz's office, and then
we get a cab back to the Wenlock Arms in Hoxton. The cab driver is all
chatty too, telling us how hungry he is - heading for McDonald's soon -
and about deserted streets he had gone through a bit earlier. The
streets are still unusually empty for this part of town. But in the
Wenlock all is normal. It's quiz night, and nice to do something so
normal and mundane. We come in fourth, pints all round.
14 July
Everyone
has been full of "what if's", and all the newspaper columnists have
written about the strange few days in which Londoners spoke to one
another. That has pretty much passed and things are back to normal,
although the tubes are less crowded and the buses more crowded. The
other night I spoke to Vivianne in Leeds, who said she was glad she wasn't in London,
and the next morning my old hometown was all over the news. Beeston,
where I worked the (not so) better part of a year, and then Burley, the Hyde Park scrag end of Burley, and there's a TV reporter standing at the top of Vivianne's street!
Vivianne
was returning from the shop when she was stopped and her house keys
confiscated. The cops knocked on the door where Steve was working on the
computer (in his underwear as it was quite hot); he was told he had 30
seconds to evacuate the premises; was allowed to get a pair of jeans but
not to fetch his mobile phone or to take his car (finally, about seven
hours later after several refusals, a cop drove it out for him.)
They
were not allowed back for 48 hours and several hundred others were
evacuated as well. If you had nowhere to go they put you up at the
leisure centre (what fun), where apparently the old fossils - I mean
dears - relived the war and sang songs throughout the night. Steve was
interviewed by the local TV news (but naturally did not get to see it)
and I should really do a proper interview with him as he made the story
sound much more interesting when he told it to me than what I've just
written here. But having spent many many nights in that house and
neighbourhood (I lived round the corner) I wish I could have seen the
faces of some of the white trash criminal neighbours (it's the kinda
place where a two-year-old's first words are "fuck off!") being
evacuated - wonder how they managed to get - and keep - them all out! I
bet there was a lot of toilet flushing in those last few minutes ...
The
bomb factory flat, which is just over the road, is one that belongs to
Leeds Fed, the housing association for which I once worked. I'd also
love to see that application form!
30 July
Arrests,
stand-offs, shootings and of course the botched attempts by the
Keystone* bombers on the 21st; this is said to have made both residents
and visitors alike much more fearful, but not yours truly. Cops
everywhere, everyone peering about, looking at one another with
suspicion. and the tubes are still nicely uncrowded. The other night I
had a train car to myself, and it wasn't even an odd time (it was about 8:45 pm)
or a remote area (it was fairly central and a main line), and I noticed
a carrier bag abandoned near one of the doors. I didn't investigate and
it looked like it contained only an Evening Standard, but the deal is,
you are meant to report ANYTHING unattended - so did I? Naah, I was
getting off the train at the next stop anyhow.
*(credit - Richard R.)
And
yesterday I was going to work from my new digs in Tulse Hill - yeah, commuting! - and as I got on the
No. 2 bus I realised I was taking the same route at the same time on the
same day of the week as Jean Charles de Menezes. There's a big tribute
outside Stockwell Station and the questions are still buzzing (police
still have not explained why someone they were convinced was a bomber
was allowed to board a bus, or why he was not detained before entering
the tube station - it's quite a long way from the bus stop to the
station entrance and plenty of room for manoeuvering out on the
sidewalk) and everyone I know is wondering why people are so accepting
of this, and our mayor Ken is wobbling like a weeble, first alienating
himself from Noo Labour (but endearing himself to us) by "mentioning the
war", then defending the shoot-to-kill cops and passing the buck.
And that's that.
e/k/w
