July 8, 2005

Too Close

My cousin George Miller, who writes the London Calling blog, has posted his thoughts and recollections yesterday's London terror bombings, a day he was "closer than I ever want to be to such suffering and such evil." Here's an excerpt, though I really do think you ought to go and read the whole thing...

I arrived at Kings X at 9:20, minutes after the bomb exploded in the tube line under the mainline station. At that point, the station remained open, with only the tube lines closed. I left the station to try to get a bus to work, but found the buses hopelessly overcrowded. So I turned back to the station, not really knowing which way to go. By that time the station was closed and more and more police were arriving.

All this time the strongest rumour about what was going on was that "there's been a power surge at Moorgate, and it's closed the tube lines." I am quite used to things going wrong at Moorgate - nearly once a week trains to Moorgate are cancelled for the morning. So my first reaction was simply: Can London sort its transport problems out by 2012?

It was becoming obvious that there was a major transport problem, so I walked over to a cashpoint in the buildings opposite Kings X. While getting the cash, the man behind me offered up some gossip about there being a fire on the tube, and pointed to a woman who was covered in soot making her way up the Euston Road.

I managed to text a couple people the message "what's going on?" but got nothing back (til much later in the day). I walked up to the British Library, thinking I could get a coffee and not sure if they had internet pc's available for public use (they don't, though they have a nice intranet service). It's a wonderful interior, in any case, and the coffee wasn't bad. The staff there were completely oblivious to anything happening outside (how like academia, I think in retrospect).

As I was leaving the library, an elderly American man approached and said that there was a bomb on a bus at Russell Square. He then said (I swear I am not making this up): "It's George Bush's fault." I replied, "Whatever."

Outside, there were more and more emergency vehicles whizzing about, and I, rather foolishly in retrospect, tried to ask a policeman who was walking toward Euston Station: "Do you think Finsbury Park Station is open?" He shrugged his shoulders and walked on.

I crossed the road by Camden Town Hall, and that's when I saw the young (American-looking) girl, with bandaged hands and a sweatshirt covered in dust and blood splats, walk right past me, also going toward Euston Station - I'm pleased to say that, though tempted, I didn't ask her what was happening - though she actually looked quite composed.

Soon after that, I found a window to some sort of student lounge with Sky News on the tele - I couldn't hear it, but the ticker tape on the bottom of the screen told some of the story. I went around the corner then, and had a pint with a business man named Robert, from Bedford, who uses Russell Square every day and would have been on the tube train had he not been slightly late getting to work that day. We watched the full horror of the attack on the pub tv.