08.07.05..5:31 pm

My mum called me yesterday afternoon. It was about twelve o�clock. After we hung up I flicked through the papers, the news seemed strangely unimaginative, oddly irrelevant. I got on with reading my books and filling my head with still more questions to put towards the growing list I hope to answer with my thesis (What is the Name-of-the-Father? Is it the Father-Who-Knows, rather than the Subject?), and frowning quietly to myself. It seemed all I could do when several miles out of the city centre with acute warnings to stay well away.

Two and a half hours earlier M had been running late. I was ready to go idly watching the television screen with morning eyes: without taking in what was being shown, and so with the sound muted it was nothing more than a series of uninformative images that could represent anything and anywhere. M�s phone kept going off while he was cleaning his teeth and (sound up to three jagged lines) it looked like yet more tube trouble. Some sort of explosion. Electrical failure? It�s ok, we were going to cycle in anyway. And then the buses were being talked of as well. Still wouldn�t effect us. Except the pictures kept coming. I�d only put the news on three minutes before. Why was it escalating so quickly? What were three electrical failures doing on the underground? Why did the announcer keep saying they didn�t think it had anything to do with that bus exploding? Why won�t his mobile shut up? Finally I pick up the jangling mobile, the ringtone irritated me which it never did before. And it was Gaz on the other end:

�Has Grundy left for work yet?�
�Not he�s upstairs cleaning his teeth.�
�Good. Have you..? I mean if he�s still there, maybe��
�Yeah, I know I was just watching�Where are you? Are you at work?
�Yeah, got in at 8. Don�t know how I�m going to get home.�
�Hang on, I think he�s out.. SWEETS? It�s Gaz.�

I waited a while downstairs looking at the strange and calm faces; the fat cop straining the suspension of his tiny Vauxhall as he sat daintily on the end pulling his protective gear up over his great fat feet; the bent twisted yellow stakes jutting out of the branches of a distant tree. M came down and said he was under strict instructions to stay put by his boss.

�It�s always Gaz who calls up with bad news,� M mused. �Gaz called when 9/11 happened too.�

So we had breakfast. It was so far away, there was nothing else to do. Cornflakes I think. And I went along to the caf� for some coffee, annoyed with myself that I had made a silent promise not to smoke and that seemed sorely ill-timed, relieved that they � unlike us � had toilet paper, still a little shaken. Still nothing really seemed out of place. Out here in our little (suburban, if I�m honest) nook of London the only thing that stuck out was the absence of buses trundling out of schedule on the main road. Middle class people headed to the caf� right on time to read the paper and catch up and avoid doing the work they�re paid to complete from home �offices�; school kids skived in clumps at the wooden tables, the air that surrounds them a heavy mix of seduction by espresso and adolescent sophistication, still bitching about history classes and what a waste of time they were; the usual cacophony of mums and wailing babies breathed in second hand smoke and peered happily at each others organic purees through the blue atmosphere. And then my mum called and suddenly I realised that the panic in her voice, the relief, the fact she was calling my mobile at 45 cents a minute across 3000 miles and it was not quite seven in the morning her time, was all due to those twisted yellow stakes poking obscurely out of the trees at painful angles, the bleary yellow images from inside the wreckage way under the city, the fat cop stepping into his rubber suit that played out on an endless loop. Because it was now being repeated across the ocean, and my mum, boiling water in one hand, had dropped her end of toast to run to the phone to make sure I was ok.

As it turns out no one I know was hurt. No one I know was effected too badly, not even R who lives at King�s Cross, not Rayya who lives in Russell Square. Sarah�s just angry more than anything, Liz relieved everyone�s safe.. Most people were either working or researching; most people continued to do just that, though the day might have been peppered with more frequent, more urgent texts. Perfectly normal and a little surreal, is all, is all.

Thanks to everyone who emailed and called. It's a funny thing, but I agree with the heeland lass, you can't help but pull together. In a situation like this one persons pain is another's, and with luck we'll be wise enough to maintain that sympathy indiscriminately. I just wish everyone could have been as lucky as I am. As my old friend sarsar (in Toronto) said this morning:

A lot of people here are devastated and there's lots of "we're next" talk. But what can you do but try to be optimistic and get on with things.

That pretty much sums it up. She's good like that, sarsar. And for the record, I didn�t smoke. Not even a drag. (Although M did AND it was in front of me, but then again he - unlike me - rarely smokes, and I - unlike him - would not have had to go past any of it on my way to work because my job has finished.)

****emmms