One Minute

I'm making jokes about being in training for synchronized swimming via my bathtub. Playing 'fantasy 2012 Gold medal / design your own iceskating costume'
The next London is in mourning.

Amy and Hannah, two of my close friends get caught up in the horror. Amy stumbles past Algate tube as the first casualties are emerging.
Nicki, in Dublin panics when she can't reach any of her East End girls.
Ailsa fights to stay calm within a skyscraper at Canary Wharf.

The Mile End road is weird. The Royal London, the hospital taking the largest number of casualties is just down the road. The sirens fill the air. The traffic on what's normally one of London's busiest roads is light.

The pavements are crowded with more foot passengers than I've ever seen. People walk as if asleep. There's little conversation. I think I see fear in the faces of the plethora of Muslims in traditional dress who inhabit the area. I wonder what the reaction from those who already judge on race and religion will be. Fear for an area where the atmosphere has become palapably more nervous post 9/11.

The phone rings relentlessly, I repeat the same mantra over and over' I'm fine, Amy's fine, far as we know everyone is ok'

The Prime Minister appears on telly, Shaken, stirred.

The timing on day when the west was finally getting to grips with the need to make significant policy changes on Africa and climate change, adds to the anger. I look at my 'make poverty history' wristband, the vomit rises in my throat.

Sainburys call, 'sorry your internet shopping won't be delivered this evening'. The lift engineers are parked in Simon's parking space, the lift is fixed but presumably driving through the major road route to the most overwhelmed hospital has been ruled out by a senior exec at Crown Lifts Europe Ltd.
everything seems trivia, 'uh huh, course' I say to sainsburys. Find myself disgusted at the fact I'd even noticed the van and contemplated how Si would get his car in.

Given that 24 hours ago the mobile networks were jammed with ecstatic Olympic euphoria, it seems so cruel to deflate the mood so totally, in a city where climate, size and smog make reveling a rarity.

It seems doubly ironic to target the transport network, so notoriously neglected, the day after there's a smidgen of hope of improvement.

The panic, the fear, of being stuck underground, with an inkling that you're in the midst of a terror threat and smoke obscuring the route to the surface plays directly into the worst nightmare scenario. The sob sodden frames of victims and ashen faced reporters bring the horror home in waves.

Gradually the information trickles out. The memories of other attacks cause certainty that the worst news is yet to come.