Yesterday

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 08 July 2005 09:26:13

I was always bound to write something long in the end, and I'm writing from home, not work, as it would feel wrong to do this one with the distractions of work. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. I'll tell you a little bit of how it was for us.

I still can't comprehend that people got up early yesterday morning knowing that they were going out to kill innocent commuters on our Tube network. When I think of yesterday, that's probably the most shocking thing, that people live and move among us who want to do that sort of stuff to people they don't know. Naive, or what for that to be the thing that really hurts - I should know that some human beings are like that by now.

My husband and i were late to work yesterday (for which Thank God) and we both went in on the train together (another point to be really thankful for from our point of view). When we got to our suburban train station, since we don't use the Tube, they said all London Underground services are down. I rang my news editor, who said it was a power surge. Odd, but we've had power problems in London before.
So I didn't realise it was anything more than that until I got to London Bridge, and my first inkling, as I walked over the bridge, came when I looked into the face of a man as I crossed the road. He looked terrified - and I remember thinking "what are you afraid of?", and when I passed the window of Charles Schwab, a broking firm, I saw crowds looking into the room onto the big screen of news that is projected there. When it said "bus explosions," every fear I've had for London for the last few years was horribly confirmed.
It's hard to pray and race to work at the same time. I wanted to be safe, and kept skirting round the buses (still running at that point), and all you could hear across the capital were sirens and bangs. People were crying, and Moorgate was cordoned off. It was like some kind of nightmare, and all I wanted to do was get into the office.
As you can imagine, we are all screens and newswires at work, running a mess of correct and incorrect information. When I got to work, Transport for London were still insisting it was a power surge, but National Grid had denied it. Half the staff were not in. We work just by Moorgate station, and our news editor was doing a good job of taking calls and checking everyone was safe. I rang my dad, while the phones were still up, and checked my husband had got to his office.
Thanks all for "not envying my job" yesterday - but I think what confirmed that I am a true hack is that I couldn't have done anything else. There's some combination of a powerful need to do the job and inform people and advanced nosiness that made me want to take Jonathan (our photographer for the day) and go out into the Square Mile to interview eye-witnesses. It was eerie. Everyone was congregating in pubs and drinking, their eyes on the screens and their mobile phones glued to their ears. Most didn't work. I interviewed terrified bus drivers, one of whom, a Muslim, was practically weeping after he heard that Al Quaeda had said they were responsible. I talked to commuters, who just wanted to get home, but were cordoned off by police tape. And I received and made (when I could) endless texts from friends, who wanted to know I was safe in the office. But I couldn't tell them that. But it felt like that calm after, by the time I was out again. Like when you've been sick and you know you aren't going to be sick anymore. A kind of lightness.
I was stuck outside the office for twenty minutes when they cordoned it off because of a suspected bomb. They were inside, and I was out. If it had been a bomb, I suspect we'd all have been in trouble. And when I got in I had to write quickly, because we weren't sure where we would produce the paper if City and Canary Wharf were evacuated (a very real possibility at that point). And all the time the sirens were going and the news was rolling on the wires. Half of it right, half of it wrong.
It's always amazing how life goes on in a newspaper office, because the paper has to come out. We held conference, we wrote the paper. I took more and more calls and emails from people. God bless you all. I am so glad for everyone of you who emailed to tell me you were safe or ask if I was. Every community I belong to sprang in to action yesterday and I heard from people I haven't talked to for years. The instinct to know everyone is safe is so strong. A colleague phoned from Australia. "Are you all OK?" And my Gran, last night, who had already talked to my Dad and knew I was alright, phoned "just because I had to hear your voice". My husband's building was evacuated in Waterloo, and I was more scared at that than by my own forays into the City. And getting home was easier than it should have been for us. I was back in under an hour. And the phone never stopped last night - and nor would I have wanted it to. A small, sad observation? Every church I went past yesterday - including the City's biggest and most famous, was locked or inaccessible. There was no sign of chaplains or vicars on the street praying with people or taking care. Where were we when it mattered?

This ends with a prayer. Thank you Lord for London, for the people who helped each other yesterday, and did their best to minimise the damage caused by a few angry people. Lord, in the midst of atrocity there is light, courage, strength and the will for healing.
Calm the anger of those who are afraid. Give every faith group in the city the strength to face this together. Comfort all those who came home last night to a world changed beyond their recognition by loss, injury and fear, and heal those still in hospital.
And for personal friends. Soph and Jo and Selina, trapped in a tunnel for an hour and a half. Katherine, who spent yesterday washing glass from that bus blast out of her hair (too close, my love, I'm nearly crying thinking about it). For Graham who took the wrong train, and Jim who overslept, and all my friends and family who aresafe. Thank you Lord. And for those who, as the news seeps out, will find they lost people they never imagined, bring your balm and your love. Lord heal this city, these people. Because I know you were wandering the City with me yesterday - and I saw you in the faces I passed.
And you were crying.