London Update

Here's another email I recieved from Helen. If I remember right she lives in Queens Park and starts her day on the Bakerloo line (probably jumping on a cirle line train after that). - Erick

Hey

How was your weekend?

It's all still a bit weird in London this morning, partly because it's largely business as usual, apart from at the crime scenes. The tubes were pretty quiet this morning though. My train stopped in a tunnel this morning, and it was a few minutes before the driver announced that we'd been delayed because a passenger had been taken ill on a train ahead of us. People were getting a bit anxious though, it was kinda weird.

The latest figures stand at about 50 confirmed dead and about 700 injured, but they still haven't been able to recover some bodies from the russell square blast. Because the train line is really deep there, and the tunnel so narrow (they're about the same size as the trains themselves), the damage was more extensive and there's no room to get past the wrecked carriage. Reports say there's still about 20 people un-accounted for since Thursday, so chances are they're on that train.

It sounds awful, but the death toll is actually pretty low for an attack on the underground - they could have done a lot more damage, which makes the security services concerned that this was essentially a practice run to refine plans for a bigger attack. Makes me very happy that I won't have to use the underground when I start my new job!

The bus blast was a bit of a mystery - didn't fit the pattern. There's 2 theories in the paper today: one that the bomb was intended for an underground train but the bomber got spooked and bolted, leaving the bomb on the bus; the other, more cynical theory, is that the terrorists intentionally targeted those heading onto the buses after escaping the trains, because it went off about an hour after the bombs on the trains.

The papers are all reporting a mood of defiance amongst Londoners, to not let the terrorists win, but to be honest I don't think it's so much a vigilance thing as much as just getting on with it. At the end of the day, things like this will happen in London, this won't be the last time, and if you're lucky enough not to get caught up in it, the only thing you can do is just get up and go to work as normal.

Anyway.....

Hope you're having a good day. How's the house purchase going - when
are you moving in?

Take care
H
x