London life of late

Another absence… if you’re still bothering to check this, you’re probably wondering why I am such crap at it now… Time. Resources. The same boring excuses everyone has. And my brother doesn’t have one to compete with anymore.

So, life. Let’s start with something other than me. (Gasp!) London. The city is recovering. As most of you know, I now live in Windsor about 27 miles from the city centre. I was in on the weekend and it was reassuring to see everything back to normal. We went on the tube. We sat on the upper level of a double decker bus. We went to high traffic areas at peak times. So did everyone else. Of course such a horrific event changes people, but Londoners are too stubborn to be fearful. It’s great. Have you watched the difference in the British people’s reaction versus an American’s? The press are practically begging the Brits to say they’re scared, annoyed, angry, etc, but the don’t because they’re not. London has been expecting this. It’s the largest city in Europe and the second biggest player in the ‘war on terrorism’. It was ready, it will go on.

My story… we were getting reports of the tube being down and everyone went ‘ah, the bloody tube’. Then reports that is was the entire tube network, but it was just a power surge, they’ll fix it and go on. Once the report of the bus hit though, everyone knew. Everyone just tried to get hold of friends and family who may be in the area, which was difficult because the mobile networks were being completely overwhelmed. But we did and everyone was fine. Some too close for comfort, but okay. And we chatted about September 11 and ‘where we were’… and we went on with our day as usual.

We did see later that there was actually heightened security at the castle (remember my neighbour Lizzie – lives like a queen that one) and trains were all being checked but the one to Windsor was being fine combed at the stop before it reached us. And, as we are on the direct flight path to Heathrow (the wheels are out as they go over, they’re that low), air traffic appeared to be diverted (although never stopped ). But all was uneventful thankfully in little ole Windsor.