Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 July 2005 14:26:32
I was sent out this morning, back into the City to cover the two minutes silence at Liverpool Street Station. Since I am still, for a little while, a financial journalist - i was surprised and apprehensive because interviewing shocked people is not something I have a lot of experience in doing.
London is a strange place. At 11:30 liverpool street looked no different, but after that hundreds of people came flooding in with flowers to lay at the entrance to the station. Responses to corporate grief form such a wide spectrum. I've never been a "flowerlaying" type of person - nor really a public grief kind of person. It felt intrusive asking people for interviews (and weirder when i had a photographer there to take their pictures too). i try to do it as kindly as possible and take as little time, but it's not, as I said, something I've much experience at yet and the London bombings are a bit "in at the deep end". But everyone was kind. I was particularly saddened by a 16 year old kid I interviewed who was obviously very deeply upset. I wanted to hug him, he looked so alone.
It was reassuring to see the different cultures and religions represented at Liverpool Street. And I don't think I've ever heard the City silent before - not even at night. That was the most moving part. When the silence finished applause rippled all the way round the station edge. Even a hardbitten old hack like me gets shivers down her spine when she hears things like that.