I'm shattered and want my bed after today's events. I'm sending you mine and Lynn's account of today's fun packed adventure. This I sent to an email list I'm a part of, but it gives you an idea of what went on. Suffice to say, we are safe, well and at home. It feels like being part of a dream...
Anyway, here's our stories:
At 8.10 we left for work. Lynn had risen earlier, intending to take Kizzie through the park behind our house before catching the tube. However, I slopped downstairs, had a smoke and coffee, and Lynn decided she'd delay,and instead come in as far as West Ham with me, where I'd take the Jubilee Line to Neasden. However, just as we were about to leave, I thought I might have left the back windows open, so I ran through the house, opened the back door and had a look. Fortunately I hadn't, but because I was conscious Lynn was hanging around outside the house, I got muddled, and tried to lock the front door with the back door keys which I'd stupidly kept in my hand. This delayed us for a few minutes.We then took the District Line tube. At West Ham our stories split.
Mine is sort of boring. The Jubilee Line was running a bit slow, and when it reached Westminster the driver announced that due to a power surge, it wouldn't be stopping there. We moved on to Baker Street, and the driver announced that the train would be moving slowly onwards because of a broken down train ahead. When we got to St John's Wood, we were told to evacuate the station. I was at the front of the train near the drivers cab and was listening in to the cab radio. Our driver had no more a clue than me as to what was going on. I then took a bus up to Finchely Road. Still no tubes.After half an hour I had caught up with the news of what was happening in central London
and decided that getting to work would only leave me stranded there. So instead I decided I'd try and get as far east as possible, and took the North London Line, fortunately still running as far as Hackney. At this point I knew that Lynn was safe and was being taken by a kind hearted stranger to Stepney, where Graham P would meet her. I went in to Marks and Spencer, bought us all some sandwiches and cream scones and asked the checkout woman if she'd heard any news . She told me that she'd heard none of the buses were running into town and that she was pleased because her husband was a bus driver, on his rest day. Indeed, the buses outside Marks's were all being terminated at Hackney , so I walked the couple of miles to Graham P's. There was certainly that sense of things going on as normal, rather like the second day in the War of the World book (the real story by HGW) where people carried on as if nothing had happened. Really odd.
Anyways...Lynn's story. The pre-amble, re the door key was just a way of demonstrating how bloody lucky some of us are. You see, Lynn got into Whitechapel station at about 8.45. She sat there for ten minutes and the driver announced that due to power surges the train in front had broken down. Soon after the passengers were given a rather strange announcement which sounded something like "at at at attention, please leave....at at atat tention", etc. It sounded as though some power cut had triggered a faulty automatic message. No one responded until the driver told the passengers to leave the station. Turns out that at 8.51 the train in front of hers, at Aldgate East, got blown up. I've just watched the news and the train was a District Line, and quite probably the one she would have taken had we not faffed around with keys and windows. She was then taken to Stepney where she met Graham, had a coffee, and eventually was united with me . This is the second time she's missed a head on explosion. When she was about 9 years old, she was walking through Belfast after school with herelder sister. Both of them were surprised at how quiet the street was. Both were grabbed by soldiers who asked them how they hell they'd just walked through a cordon without being stopped.
The street had on it a car bomb . A minute after the soldiers took her and her sister Sandra away, the car blew up. I too have missed a couple: me and my sis were in Oxford Street Debenhams an hour before it was bombed in 1981, I think it was. Also, I missed the Brixton nail bomb by 40 minutes. I'd been stranding outside Iceland (where the bomb was planted) at a bus stop with portable keyboard in my arms,purchased cheap from a mate round the corner. Got to Liverpool Street and found out how close I'd been.
We watched TV with Graham, then at 3-ish decided to try and make our way home. Eventually, after some farting around, we took a rather packed C2C mainline train to Barking, had a coffee, and headed home via bus. No tubes running then, none now as a I write. So there you go. Despite what you might hear on the news, for those not caught up in the bombings themselves , there wasn't a huge panic. There isn't going to be civil unrest mass hysteria. The sense of calmness is surreal really. I think we'll just get on with it. For those who were killed, R.I.P. But for everyone who made it through today, well done. We are lucky f*ckers sometimes.
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