We heard the Tavistock Square blast. It was just around the corner.
I was checking emails, and Barbara was on the phone, when there was this sudden almighty boom. I ran to our outdoor walkway to look out. Seagulls overhead were circling, squawking. Beyond that there was an odd eerie silence. The echo of sirens seemed to start fairly quickly, and grew.
We both thought it had been Euston, or perhaps King’s Cross. Barbara ran out and came back saying there was a bus blown open on Woburn Place. Then my phone went dead – couldn’t dial out. I kind of knew straight away it was a terrorist attack. Maybe it comes from growing up amidst the whole IRA business. Maybe it was the sheer volume of the blast. Maybe it was the faint certainty that buses don’t often turn themselves inside out without good reason.
BMA Evacuees
I checked online, shortly before the BBC site crashed (as it did often throughout the day) and saw only the report about Liverpool St. Helicopters began to circle overhead. We decided to head out to the street and got caught up in the crowd of evacuees from the BMA being relocated to Cartwright Gardens. An emergency officer urged us to go with. One young woman was visibly shaking. She said she had seen the bus torn inside out, that it looked like an odd metallic orange peel. She said she had seen bodies lying all around but didn’t know if they were dead or alive. That there were severed limbs in the road. I phoned my mum and told her that I was safe, and not to panic. Having not heard anything that was happening, my mum immediately began to panic. We waited in the gardens for a while, and then decided to head on to an associates office on Euston Road to see if they were all right.
They hadn’t heard anything when we got there about the bomb. We checked the websites and discovered the (then erroneous and garbled) reports of explosions at King’s Cross, Russell Square, Old Street, Liverpool Street and Aldgate, and an unconfirmed report of a total of three bus bombs. Having brought doom and gloom, we returned to our office to find the whole area cordoned off. The phone was ringing as we got in, and we began responding to calls from colleagues assuring them that we were fine. My boss’s wife rang, and I was unable to give her any real reassurance. He was at a conference right nextdoor to Old Street and I hadn’t been able to reach him on his mobile.
We tried to get on with our work, but we just couldn’t concentrate. I was still trying to reach my friends who worked in King’s Cross, and the phone was continually ringing by people wanting to know if we were safe. I kept thinking about all the people who had lost their lives. People had died only metres away from me. That this wasn’t Westminster, or Downing Street, but this was nextdoor, where I have my lunch everyday. Then I would get angry, incensed at the perverted logic of someone who can justify wanton murder in the name of God. That anyone could rejoice in the death of innocent people. That a human being could try and kill as many other human beings as possible, and make a spectacle out of it, and wake up the next morning still a person. Then my head would start to spin, and I would go numb. We felt a need to get out of the deathly quiet office.
The area surrounding Woburn Place totally sealed off.
We walked over to King’s Cross. Euston Road was shut off between the two stations. On the way I was able to get hold of my sister who was stranded in Bayswater from the night before, and several of my friends who had been nowhere near King’s Cross when the explosion had happened. Everyone seemed to be fine. I could still not get hold of my boss. My phone continually gave an engaged tone. We ended up at our old offices on Gray’s Inn Road. We noticed the sign above them advertising them as fully serviced offices. Life goes on we agreed, purposefully. Then we turned around and walked back.
The rain fell in fits and starts, sometimes heavily and other times as drizzle. Barbara suggested I leave early to begin the long walk home and I urged her to do the same – walking to Highgate is doable. Walking Greenwich from Euston is an entirely different story.
We got back to the office, and as before the phone was ringing as I we stepped in. It was my boss, safe and sound, if not a little stranded. Everyone seemed to be fine, but my mobile was still constantly buzzing with voicemails and texts from people who couldn’t connect over the busy network. Barbara let me go early, and I met up with Gary.
We sat in the pub watching the news as it came in, not quite believing it. 37 dead, hundreds injured. Gary said he had heard rumours that the bomb on the tube at Kings Cross had been a nail bomb, and that the man had emerged from the station clutching some of the nails which were then confiscated by the police. Who knows. I hadn’t even thought what kind of bombs had been used – mere explosives, or incendiaries, or even dirty or chemical bombs. Any of the latter were possible. It could of course have been so much worse. A man swaggered up to us and asked if we were watching the tv, because he and his mates wanted to watch “the race”. I didn’t see any reason to dignify the question with an answer.
TV footage in a local pub
I walked home through the slowly calming madness of the city, my home that I had only the night before, on these very pages, realised my deep affection for. Messages from friends came in as I trekked back, checking to see if I was okay. Several in fact I found very touching – some from people I had barely known for long, others from friends I hadn’t seen in months if not years. I had thought because most of my friends had forgotten my birthday last month that I was alone, that they didn’t care. Birthdays really don’t matter. When the people who care for you believe your life is in danger, they will not forget you.
It’s been such a surreal day. I had barely begun any work when we heard the blast, and then slowly discovered everything that had happened. Yet I am totally exhausted.
Much as I hate political spin and stirring soundbites, I agree absolutely with the messages that the Prime Minister and the Mayor have put out – the city is not afraid. More angry. Always fear the man who knows he is right, but one cannot fear cowardice.
