Thursday 7th of July 2005 – London Bombings
Today turned into a complete nightmare of a day! Angela has been staying at our flat for a little while, as her and Michael are moving to Liverpool. Michael went first as he had a job and she stayed down here until she could get a job too. She’s been staying with us since I went to Italy, nearly a month now.
She always said she didn’t like children, but the two of you get on so famously she’s changed her mind! It’s been lovely having her stay and you like her a lot too! So, this morning we got up and got ready to leave, and left Angela at the flat (she always leaves after us). We got to Caledonian Rd. and the station was closed due to some ‘security alert’. We got a bus to King’s Cross and then the Picadilly Line to Earl’s Court at 8:10 am. We made it to East Putney just a little later than normal and I dropped you at school just before 9 am. I arrived at work and news started coming in of the whole of the London Underground being closed due to a power surge. I thought nothing of it, as the London Underground is so old, stuff like this is bound to happen… I was just glad we weren’t stuck in a tunnel while it happened. I was reading Urban75, while I had my breakfast, like I always do, and the horror of the bombings started to unfold on this thread…
to read the thread http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=121208
The rest, as they say, is history… After that Urban75 turned into the main news site I looked at as everyone was posting the information they had from people who were at the scene, people who just arrived at work, and news from other sites… It’s early days and we’re still not sure what’s happened, but it was some sort of terrorist attack and so far 50 people are unofficially confirmed dead, 1000 people were injured… What an awful feeling as it suddenly dawned on me what happened, and how lucky we were to have missed it! I also spent 3 frantic hours trying to get a hold of Angela, the mobile networks were down and the last I’d heard she’d got on a bus trying to get to work! Considering there were buses exploding, I got very very worried indeed. She made it to work eventually and is fine. She’s now on her way home… It’s 16:11…
We can’t get back to North London, the tube is closed, there are no buses on Zone 1, so we’re stuck here. Tonight you’re staying at your dad’s and I’m staying at J’s.
(more urban thread here, http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=121209)
Pages and pages with news updates. There was also a thread to check that everyone on Urban75 was accounted for, and so far everyone I know is fine. One of my friends’ (Cloo, we shared a chalet in Italy) work colleagues had a collapsed lung, but nothing worse seems to have happened to anyone… I’ll write more once things become clearer. It seems the attack was by one of the so called Al Qaeda cells… This all seems to coincide with the G8 summit, although that’s in Scotland, so maybe that’s wrong. A group allegedly claimed responsibility and mentioned revenge for England’s part in the Afghanistan and Iraq’s wars…