2006.07.08 : Things I Did On The Anniversary Of 7/7
"It was intolerable to those narrow fanatics that millions of Londoners of every religion, race, occupation and sex, in the most varied city on the face of the planet, live side by side in a way that is overwhelmingly peaceful, good-humoured, generous, and with a range of choices that exists nowhere else on earth … it stands for everything they are opposed to. It is the world's most international and tolerant city. It is an abomination to bigots."
- Mayor Ken
- Woke up, for some reason, at half-six; couldn't get back to sleep.
- Put on my black armband and wore it all day. (This is the one I keep for September 11th every year, and which it now appears will be getting use twice a year.)
- Rifled obsessively through my volume of MacNeice, who didn't let me down.
- Leg day at the health club!
- Ran a couple of miles through Hyde Park – through the most crowded areas I could find, wearing my shirt that looks like this:
- Flipped through the Daily Mail, which had the faces of the 52 victims on the cover – with a caption to the effect that "By releasing their suicide bomber video yesterday, the terrorists wanted to keep the victims off of our cover today. They failed." Spared a few moments thought for those whose day will be much less triumphal: those taken, the many hundreds more hurt, and their bereaved families and friends.
- Rode a bus. (Only a couple of stops, but still.)
- Participated in the city-wide two-minute silence at noon (in Kensington Gardens, with Jacqui, who sweetly invited me to join her and her colleagues).
- Browsed Nerve Personals. (Because if I don't get a date, the terrorists win.)
- Rode on the London Underground. (Not the Circle Line as I'd kind of hoped, but still.)
- Went down the pub with my mates. (Going down the pub with your mates being the key element in London's reaction to the bombings. In this case, it was Ryan and Paul, and we actually went down the South Bank, and had drinks on the terrace outside Queen Elizabeth Hall, of a beautiful summer evening.)
- Saw free live theatre outside the National Theatre, featuring giant pig-men on stilts with waterhoses and butcher knives. (To no one's greater delight than mine, it surprisingly turned into a bit of pro-pig vegetarian agit-prop. I couldn't stop thinking about how much Danielle would have adored it, and wished ardently she were there.)
- Got shot down twice – first by a dusky medical student, then by a duskier Spanish theatre worker – both of whom had actually approached ME! (Neat trick! Try getting shot down by people who come up to hit on YOU!)
- Went up with Ryan and Paul (and, pointedly, no women) to the Late Lounge upstairs at the NT, where all were invited to participate in an interactive DJ set. (Paul jammed his iPod Shuffle into the deck; Ryan Bluetoothed a track over from his phone.)
- Rode the Underground home again.
<Cartman>Now, let me see . . .</Cartman> a year on from the bombings and . . . nope, sorry guys – London's still handily the greatest city on the planet. A bit better than before, if anything. Then, as now: "London to suicide bombers: sod off, you tossers."
Now off to the free music festival in Finsbury Park . . .
