A year ago yesterday, I was in Trafalgar Square, celebrating, alongside tens of thousands of other Londoners, the surprise decision that London had won the competition to host the 2012 Olympics. Just being there was strange to me because I had, up until the moment we won, opposed the Olympic bid – I thought it was a waste of money since London was unlikely to win, that the extra tourists brought by the Olympics would be an unnecessary burden on an already creaking public transportation infrastructure, that the event was unlikely to bring any long term benefits to people in London. But as soon as we won I was caught up, like many people in London, in the excitement. I mean, we’d actually won something important…
The next day, one year to today, brought more than a bad hangover. I was intending to travel with my then fiance (now wife) and her sister to London on the 09.26 from St. Albans, where we live. When we arrived at the station we bought tickets despite delays starting to appear on the screens above the ticket desks. Then an announcement came that the entire tube was shut down due to an electrical surge and subsequent failure. I remember turning to my fiance and saying that the tube would never be shut down in it’s entirety unless there had been a bomb of something similar. We decided to go home and turn on the news whilst I went online to look for information. Within a few minutes, photos taken by members of the public started to appear online it became obvious to us that something more sinister than a simple electrical fault had occurred – the tube had come under attack from terrorists.
Had the 7/7 terrorists been just 20 minutes later we would have shared their train from Luton into Kings Cross. My now wife and her sister would have, as they had planned, taken the Piccadilly Line South and I would have taken the Victoria Line South – both trains ill faited that morning. Even had we missed those trains, it’s possible that any or all of us would have headed outside to Euston Road and picked up the bus that then exploded as the final bomb went off.
52 of my fellow commuters died that morning.
On the following day, I had to go into London, as usual, for work. The tube was suspended between Kings Cross Thameslink and Oxford Circus so I walked, first passing Kings Cross where dozens of photos of missing victims had already been posted on the plywood hordeings surrounding the construction there, and past the media circus that had developed in the side streets.
I walked west down Euston Road, past the side street where the bus had exploded and the huge army green tarpalins that had been strung across the street by police. Again there was a large media scrum with cameramen and news anchors jockeying for position as family and friends of victims laid flowers at the foot of the nearby church. I walked down past Warren Street station where, a couple weeks later, there would be an attempted bombing – another one that, by luck, I’d miss, just like one a few minutes earlier at Shepherds Bush, which I also missed by luck.
I don’t really remember when, I guess a few days later, London stood united again – this time, not in excitement and joy like we had on 06 July, but in defiance, and I think some fear, for a two minute silence. I have never felt so by any event in my life other than, perhaps, the birth of my daughter. My colleagues and I emptied the building and stood, alongside thousands of other office workers, in complete silence, observing the moment, thinking of how lucky we’d been, and of the unlucky and their loved ones. I never imagined London could fall so hauntingly silent.
A couple months later I won a photo competition (my set of photos from the aftermath) with a photo of a journalist taking a photo of one of the many handmade posters of the missing. It turned out, the subject of the poster was an ex-bbc colleague who, we later learned, had died. Winning that photo competition wasn’t a happy moment. It was, instead, a moment of quiet and sad reflection of the day that our great joy and optimism was turned, so cruelly, into fear, anxiety and mourning.
For weeks after the bombing, the British Asian who sat behind me at work consciously avoided wearing a backpack or heavy jacket to work. People on the tube looked at each other in suspicion, particularly where the person across or next to them was a man of dark complexion. And that, I think, will be the lasting image of the London bombings for me – that the bombers succeeded for a short time in making us fear one another.
Today, one year to the day of the London bombings, I will, like over a million other Londoners, use the tube. I think that, like on most days, everything will be just fine – the tube will be hot, crowded and uncomfortable but it will get me to work.
Am I worried? Well, if I’m honest, yes, I am nervous and there probably is good reason to be although no more or less today than any other day. In fact, today is likely to be just like any other day. When I get to work I will say hello to friends and colleagues. I will phone my wife at lunch and at the end of the day I will take the train home and kiss my daughter when I get there.