Helicopters

Oh, yeah, and the helicopters buzzing overhead... It's like LA. Wanna see a picture of our neighboUrhood?
The Beeb today
That's what it says pretty much all the time now. We're leaving for a week in Barcelona & Sitges this afternoon.

Sirens

Sirens have taken on a whole new meaning here. You hear or see a bunch of police cars and ambulances speeding in a particular direction. Everybody notices. Everybody notices each other noticing. We know we're all thinking the same thing: what now? Yesterday I visited the Russell Square tube station (still shrouded in white plastic sheeting) and Tavistock Square (you'd never know except for the pile of flowers and book of condolences). Maybe I wasn't paying attention when the bombs went off, but the Tavistock Square gardens are dedicated to peace: the victims of Hiroshima; Gandhi; conscientious objectors; the "International Year of Peace" (1986). Every tree, rock, and statue is a monument to peace.

King's Cross

July 8th (the day after):

July 15th (the week after):

Timeline

Silence

All the Americans keep asking if the Brits have done anything to commemorate what happened last week. Rally? Candlelight vigil? Memorial service? But Steven & I had no idea. Then I gradually became aware (yesterday? the day before?) of a two-minute silence to be held at noon today. Everything stopped: cars, buses, people, businesses, the stock market, everything. On the TV coverage it looked like an episode of some SciFi show where a great capital gets frozen in time. Two minutes. So short. So long.

Not 9-11

On Saturday there were hardly any people at the Portobello Road Market. At first we thought this was because the city had been subdued by Thursday's terrorist attacks. It turns out that the more likely cause was that two of the tube lines serving Notting Hill Gate weren't operating, making it difficult for people to get there. After morning errands we took a bus to Turnham Green and then the part of the District Line that's still working to Kew. Steven hadn't been to Kew Gardens yet and as I predicted it shifted his perspective on London. We had a moment of homesickness in the redwood grove. Then we met Craig & Kath for dinner at a place in Fitzrovia, very close to Tavestock Square. After dinner we walked through Soho, Covent Garden and Mayfair, which were all very lively.

On Sunday Steven & I walked up through Notting Hill, North Kensington, Kensal Green and Kensal Rise to Queens Park (which had a very Park Slope-y feeling). We found the schmancy main drag of Salusbury Road and then headed over to Kilburn High Road, at the top of which we hopped on a train to Hampstead Heath. We had lunch in Hampstead and then wandered over to the bathing ponds, where Steven took a dip. Then we took the Northern Line back down to Soho to watch the throngs of people and have some dinner.

+ + +

On all the news programs you keep hearing, "Well, we had the IRA." And there are also Blitz references, as in "I was worried about my mum, who lives in the area. But when I tried to track her down, she was at her dance class. Well, she survived the Blitz -- I guess this isn't going to stop her." The only visible change in the city is that tube stations display revised maps with the Circle Line and parts of the Metropolitan, District, Piccadilly, and Hammersmith & City Lines greyed out. There's less grey with each passing day.

It felt like 9-11 changed the world. This just makes me think the change is permanent.

Aftermath

First off, thank you all for your kind words of support. We've heard back from all our friends, and nobody has been affected -- directly or indirectly. Email, cell phone & text messaging were all sluggish yesterday, so it took a long time to hear back from some people, and then floods of messages would come all at once. After the rain stopped I finally managed to pry myself away from the TV & computer and take a walk around Notting Hill. Things were very quiet. Many businesses hadn't opened or were closing early. There were still "normal" things going on: people in restaurants, doing errands, tourists, etc., just not as many as usual. Steven's flight was on time and uneventful. He was concerned that because there was no public transit it might take him a long time to get home from Heathrow, but the traffic was very light all over the city (which is still the case today). Our friend Liz is here with her boyfriend from SF -- their two days in London: win the Olympics; bomb attacks. Anyhow, we did manage to meet up at one of the open pubs and have dinner at one of the open restaurants in Soho. Most things, however, were closed. Steven's at work today, and we had been thinking of heading to Bath for the day tomorrow, then maybe having dinner with Craig & Kath back in town... Will continue to keep you posted.

Explosions

Nobody knows what happened. Whole Underground network shut down. We're OK. Steven's in Helsinki...