Time

[liadnan]

I doubt I'm the only Londoner who looked back this morning to see what they wrote a year ago today. Not that I needed reminding. I meant to be in the office on time that day, taking my usual tube route of Northern Line to Kings Cross and changing there to the southbound Piccadilly, aiming to be in the office sometime between 9 and 9.30. Instead, probably as a result of a fair amount of whisky the night before, I woke up late, was in the shower when it all kicked off, and spent the rest of the day desperately hitting redial and waiting for the phone network to come back up, checking the rollcall community someone brightly set up. Along with vast numbers of others who overslept, went in early, arrived on the platform just as the Piccadilly train pulled out and swore. Many people rolled lucky dice that morning and our lives go on, probably changed little if at all. Others didn't.

I don't really have anything to add to what I wrote last year. I didn't personally know anyone who died, but two good friends of mine lost friends: the way London works an awful lot of us are only a step or two away from people personally affected. My thoughts with them and all who lost friends and family that day; and with the fantastic Rachel (writing this week on the BBC site again as she did in the aftermath last year, and a contributor to The Sharpener as well) and all the rest of the survivors and others living with the mental and physical after effects. And with the memories of all those who went out that ordinary July morning, with their hopes and fears and dreams and worries and thoughts about relationships and money and what they watched on television last night and the book they were reading and whether they were going to get a seat on the tube and would people please just move down the carriage and did the man next to them know about deodorant and what a rubbish advert that was opposite them and... and.

And never came back.

Comments

[anarcha.livejournal.com]

Long belated reply but... just wanted to let you know that I found this post quite moving.