07.07.05

Nil Desperandum

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:39 pm by GaZ

It finally happened.

Following a day of dreams coming true, today was a nightmare. It has generally always been assumed (at least by myself) that a terrorist attack on London was inevitable, and it looks like today was that day. The bombs rocked the heart of the city, and although the fatalities seem relatively minimal thus far (when compared to other atrocities such as the Madrid bombing and 9/11), the psychological damage to the citizens and social reprecussions could be immense. The attacks seem to have been fairly well orchestrated, timed to go off during the morning rush on the day of the G8 summit opening, indicating that there was a good deal of planning behind all of this. Fortunately the London emergency services have also gone through many hard hours of training for exactly this kind of situation and are coping well, from what I can gather.

My primary concern was for my brother. Although the attack was in the morning (my brother, being a student, knows little of life outside of bed before noon) he has been doing occasional volunteer work at the Shadow Robot Company (the location of which is fairly close to where today’s events unfolded), and the thought went through my mind that he could have gone in to do something today. But, as you may expect in such a crisis, the mobile phone networks were jammed as people tried to contact loved ones in the capital. He doesn’t have a landline at the moment as he’s currently living with friends while searching for a new house for next semester, and there was no sign of him on MSN. I tried calling the robot place, but they hadn’t seen him today either. After a couple of hours and several more attempts at communication (including SMS, email, and smoke signals) I finally received a text message from him along the lines of “fine thanks. how are you?” It turns out he had slept through the whole thing and had woken up to find several messages on his phone, without having any idea of what was going out just outside his door.

Hmm… this is the 2nd time i’ve travelled from Texas to Britain on a day surrounding a terrorist attack, the previous time being when I travelled from Houston to London on September 10th (landing in London on the 11th), 2001. Coincidence? I think so.

My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone else in London, and their families.

Actually, i’ve just remembered my cousin is also in London, though I don’t think she lives in the very centre nor has any business to be there in the morning rush… but i’ll go and double check.

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