Tubalicious, again

Yesterday, I took the tube for the first time since the bombings. Not a whole lot of time between Thursday and Monday, but it's not like I could not take the tube. It's unavoidable. Especially because I hate buses.

But London seems to be recovering nicely. The tube employees are back to making jokes (tho, describing a train as "ready to rumble" does seem a bit off, somehow) and commuters are still, as ever, ignoring each other behind newspapers--even if the headlines are all about the bombers, the victims and the search for the terrorists.

It probably helps that today, according to the Evening Standard (my new favouritest paper), several arrests have been made, and at least one of the (apparent) four bombers died in the attacks. It's rather reassuring that the police can actually arrest people in cases like this. It makes terrorists seem less untouchable... and that I like.

This city really does buy into the whole stiff upper-lip bullshit, which is rather funny. It's great to be strong and resiliant, but it's also okay to... y'know, be scared of things like bombs, and be emotional about things like 52 murders. But that's London for you, love it or hate it.

...

With any incident--that's what they're callling it: "the incidents of last Thursday"--such as this, people like to talk about where they were when it happened. (I can still rerun my whole day from Sept 11, right from when my dad called me and got me out of bed until the evening at the Gauntlet.) Me, my story involves Heathrow, and that mess. My flatmate Suji, however, was staying at her boyfriend's place in Russell Square (how he can afford that is another story). Russell Square, of course, being the above-ground marker of the Kings Cross bomb, and also just a few blocks from Tavistock Square (now home to an exploded bus and a squad of forensic police people). She's not sure which explosion she heard (I'd imagine it was the bus) but she heard one of them. She tried to go outside shortly after, to see what was up, but was told by police to get back in. She didn't bother trying to get back to New Cross that day.

...

K, that's it for now, as I'm being booted (verbally) from the library. Dover and Sandwich post to come!