One year ago - 7/7/05

The London transport bombings were exactly one year ago today. Since I did not start this blog until later last summer, I thought today is as good a day as any to remember it from my perspective.

Basically, my own laziness is what saved me that day. One of the best things about living in Europe is that no one in their right mind schedules a meeting before 9 a.m., and if it is just an internal meeting, it's usually more like 10 or 11 o'clock. One year ago, I was scheduled to meet up with a colleague at Paddington station sometime around 10:30 a.m. He was coming in from the burbs on a commuter train, and I was to leave my local tube station at Holloway Road, which is on the Picadilly Line.

I rarely watch the news in the morning (though I must admit I do now) so I was blissfully unaware of any trouble before I left the house. M was flying somewhere that day so I had just been talking to him on the phone at some ungodly hour his time, like 6 a.m. or something, when he was at the airport. So around 10 or so, I walked down to the tube station to go to my meeting.

It is only a ten minute walk, if that, but that day seemed so much longer. When I got there, the station was closed with policeman at the gate. When I asked what happened, they said, oh, just a terrorist attack in central london. When I asked how I was to get to paddington, they just calmly said, oh, I don't think you are going to go there today, miss.

So I turned around and started back home. I don't think I started to panic until I started trying to call my colleague to see where he was, and my mobile wouldn't work. Then I started trying to call M back, and got that frightening signal that basically means mobile phones are dead.

Of course when M arrived at the airport, he saw the bombings on the news and was freaking out, especially since he couldn't reach me on my phone either and the last he knew, I was walking to the tube station.

In reality, I was about an hour and a half behind the actual bombings. But it was my tube line, the Picadilly, that suffered the worst damage. It exploded around 8:45 or so, between Kings Cross and Russell Square, and 27 people died.

I spent the rest of the day first frantically calling and emailing people I knew to make sure they were okay, especially my colleague I was going to meet. It took me a good 45 minutes or so to finally get him on the phone. Then the rest of the day and into the next, I got frantic calls and emails from everyone else who knew I was here. It was a very long day. Finally, at the end of the day, after talking to my sister, I went out to a pub to have a beer and some dinner and try to relax. Of course I picked the dumpiest possible pub in my area, the Lord Nelson. Yuck! Dingy bar, creaky, dirty floors, and they didn't even serve food.

The Picadilly line was closed for a bit more than a month while they fixed it. I was amazed actually that they were able to repair it so quickly. I rode it the day it came back online, and a reporter joined the train from Kings Cross to Russel Square and interviewed people riding it (not me). It was a very creepy feeling.

All in all, I was very lucky that day. But it sure brought the whole terrorism thing much closer to home for me and made me realize that I am now living in a completely different world than Portland, Oregon.