london bombings
Hi all,
Well as you all know it's been a very very strange week in London and really quite scary. Everyone at home probably saw more of what happened than we did because it was the perfect live TV viewing time for you. I feel really strange and a little bit unattached because now that it's the weekend and I'm further away in outer London everything seems normal. Anyway everyone has their own experience of the London bombings, luckily mine was not a terrible one but I should just write about what I heard.
Thursday morning I got on the district line of the Tube at 8:40 and stood there reading as usual until we stopped abruptly just before St James station which is where I got off. We stayed in the tunnel for something like 15 or 20 minutes and we were all really hot and bothered as it was packed as usual and we were running out of fresh air. If this didn't happen all the time I probably would have been freaking out. The driver said we were stopped because of a signal failure further down the line and then we finally started to move and get off the train. I feel terrible to think of how grumpy and impatient I was when 10 or so kms down the line people were going through such hell. I work one building away from New Scotland Yard and when I stepped out there were hardly any people on the road but there were a lot of sirens and rushing cars everywhere. That isn't really that unusual for our street, there are men with machine guns patrolling every day but now I think about it, it was really eerie.
Half of my workmates weren't at work yet so I told my boss about the delays. Danii and Natalia showed up not much longer because they had been kicked off the tube at Victoria and Westminster station and had to walk. It wasn't until 9:40 that we started to hear that there was an explosion, and then after 10 we heard that there were more. I started to get worried about Adam because I knew he worked up near one of the explosions but I couldn't get in touch with him because the phones were down. It turns out Adam would have gone through two of the tube stations where explosions were that morning if he hadn't slept in. By the time he walked to the station it was closed and everyone was desperately clamoring onto buses. Apparently a little while later the girl next to him on the bus got a phone call from someone saying there had been explosions on the tube and to get off the bus, so he and several others rushed off the bus. Meanwhile Claire was freaking out at work because she knew Adam went through those tube stations in the morning and she couldn't get in touch with him and his work hadn't seen him yet. She was very very relieved when he showed up at her workplace to say he was ok, then he walked all the way home. You know something is wrong in London when half of the workforce is walking out towards the suburbs at 10 in the morning. In the office we didn't realise how serious it was until the news started to filter onto the internet. We stayed at the office until around 3 then Danii and I walked home, it took us both around 2 hours but we certainly weren't complaining... The feeling was quite strange with all these workers walking in droves down all the main streets from London. No one knew where they were going because they usually catch the tube, I walked part of the way with a French girl that was also quite lost and chatted to her.
My friend Sarah was stuck trying to catch bus or tube to her first day of work in the morning when it all happened and she ended up stopping at a pub in edgeware road with a French guy she met when sharing a streetmap with in the street. They sat there and watched it all unfold on TV for wo hours, she let the guy borrow her phone to try to call home, then a lady came in to the pub and asked to use sarah's map. The lady was standing there with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other and told Sarah that she had to go because she'd been stuck in the tube for a few hours and was late for work. The lady had soot on her arm and she was in complete shock, she'd been stuck in the edgware road train after the bomb went off for two hours with people screaming in the next carriage and bodies within view, and she was now standing in the pub talking to Sarah. Heaps of people have these stories.
My workmate Simon was also on one of the trains that had a bomb, the one at aldgate and liverpool street. It must have been the most awful experience, he was also in shock when he rang work. It's so horrible, I feel so sorry for everyone for all the longterm damage this has done to so many people.
Yesterday on the tube was pretty strange, it was really empty and everyone was staring at everyone else that got on the tube, inspecting them and their bags. I just tried to read my book and not think about it, I was so scared to get on at first but by the time I got into town I was just really happy to still be living my life and not stopping what I was doing. It sounds so corny but you really can't let bad things that people do get you down.
Our building had one security alert yesterday in the morning when a 'suspicious vehicle' was parked out the front. Everyone was told to go to the back of the building, but of course it was just a courier van. Police dogs were out in force on all the corners, I must be strange because I was just happy to be in town and be ok, I just wanted to cuddle the dogs! It was my official last day at work yesterday so we went out for drinks but of course it was really empty.
I don't know if all of this sounds really stupid or uninteresting or incredibly self involved, but it's pretty much all we've been talking about in the last few days. We didn't see much of it on TV so it's all a little bit surreal.
Thanks to everyone who checked up on me, sorry if I took ages to reply but the phone networks were down for ages.
Love you all and I hope to hear from you soon!
Well as you all know it's been a very very strange week in London and really quite scary. Everyone at home probably saw more of what happened than we did because it was the perfect live TV viewing time for you. I feel really strange and a little bit unattached because now that it's the weekend and I'm further away in outer London everything seems normal. Anyway everyone has their own experience of the London bombings, luckily mine was not a terrible one but I should just write about what I heard.
Thursday morning I got on the district line of the Tube at 8:40 and stood there reading as usual until we stopped abruptly just before St James station which is where I got off. We stayed in the tunnel for something like 15 or 20 minutes and we were all really hot and bothered as it was packed as usual and we were running out of fresh air. If this didn't happen all the time I probably would have been freaking out. The driver said we were stopped because of a signal failure further down the line and then we finally started to move and get off the train. I feel terrible to think of how grumpy and impatient I was when 10 or so kms down the line people were going through such hell. I work one building away from New Scotland Yard and when I stepped out there were hardly any people on the road but there were a lot of sirens and rushing cars everywhere. That isn't really that unusual for our street, there are men with machine guns patrolling every day but now I think about it, it was really eerie.
Half of my workmates weren't at work yet so I told my boss about the delays. Danii and Natalia showed up not much longer because they had been kicked off the tube at Victoria and Westminster station and had to walk. It wasn't until 9:40 that we started to hear that there was an explosion, and then after 10 we heard that there were more. I started to get worried about Adam because I knew he worked up near one of the explosions but I couldn't get in touch with him because the phones were down. It turns out Adam would have gone through two of the tube stations where explosions were that morning if he hadn't slept in. By the time he walked to the station it was closed and everyone was desperately clamoring onto buses. Apparently a little while later the girl next to him on the bus got a phone call from someone saying there had been explosions on the tube and to get off the bus, so he and several others rushed off the bus. Meanwhile Claire was freaking out at work because she knew Adam went through those tube stations in the morning and she couldn't get in touch with him and his work hadn't seen him yet. She was very very relieved when he showed up at her workplace to say he was ok, then he walked all the way home. You know something is wrong in London when half of the workforce is walking out towards the suburbs at 10 in the morning. In the office we didn't realise how serious it was until the news started to filter onto the internet. We stayed at the office until around 3 then Danii and I walked home, it took us both around 2 hours but we certainly weren't complaining... The feeling was quite strange with all these workers walking in droves down all the main streets from London. No one knew where they were going because they usually catch the tube, I walked part of the way with a French girl that was also quite lost and chatted to her.
My friend Sarah was stuck trying to catch bus or tube to her first day of work in the morning when it all happened and she ended up stopping at a pub in edgeware road with a French guy she met when sharing a streetmap with in the street. They sat there and watched it all unfold on TV for wo hours, she let the guy borrow her phone to try to call home, then a lady came in to the pub and asked to use sarah's map. The lady was standing there with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other and told Sarah that she had to go because she'd been stuck in the tube for a few hours and was late for work. The lady had soot on her arm and she was in complete shock, she'd been stuck in the edgware road train after the bomb went off for two hours with people screaming in the next carriage and bodies within view, and she was now standing in the pub talking to Sarah. Heaps of people have these stories.
My workmate Simon was also on one of the trains that had a bomb, the one at aldgate and liverpool street. It must have been the most awful experience, he was also in shock when he rang work. It's so horrible, I feel so sorry for everyone for all the longterm damage this has done to so many people.
Yesterday on the tube was pretty strange, it was really empty and everyone was staring at everyone else that got on the tube, inspecting them and their bags. I just tried to read my book and not think about it, I was so scared to get on at first but by the time I got into town I was just really happy to still be living my life and not stopping what I was doing. It sounds so corny but you really can't let bad things that people do get you down.
Our building had one security alert yesterday in the morning when a 'suspicious vehicle' was parked out the front. Everyone was told to go to the back of the building, but of course it was just a courier van. Police dogs were out in force on all the corners, I must be strange because I was just happy to be in town and be ok, I just wanted to cuddle the dogs! It was my official last day at work yesterday so we went out for drinks but of course it was really empty.
I don't know if all of this sounds really stupid or uninteresting or incredibly self involved, but it's pretty much all we've been talking about in the last few days. We didn't see much of it on TV so it's all a little bit surreal.
Thanks to everyone who checked up on me, sorry if I took ages to reply but the phone networks were down for ages.
Love you all and I hope to hear from you soon!
2 Comments:
so glad to hear that you are safe. its funny how many stories there are of people who would have been on that train if they didnt sleep in or miss it. quite strange indeed... but very happy to hear your safe and sound!
i agree with your dad becky- & you couldn't be less self-involved. that was excellent.
Post a Comment
<< Home