Current mood:	serenely defiant
Current music:	London - Philip Jeays

England abides
I remember the evening of September 11th 2001; we were already booked to go pubbing (vivid_blue's birthday) and heavens know we were glad of the drinks, because it felt like the beginning of the end. Last night just felt like a relief. We've known for ages that something was going to happen; now it has, and it was conventional, and fairly lame. They did their worst, and they managed to disrupt our transport network and get fatalities in the low double figures. That happens on a fairly regular basis anyway, you twits. What's your next trick - a fiendish weather control device which makes it rain on a bank holiday weekend?

I knew that if I went out on Friday I'd only end up putting my fist through something with an Olympic logo, so it was a night in with the plastic merlot, reading of Flashman and Slaine and their defences of Britain; this felt entirely appropriate at the time, but is even more so in hindsight.

Running a bit late on Thursday morning, I come to the station to hear that not only is it closed, but so's the whole network. My immediate thought: Why couldn't this have happened 24 hours ago, *before* the IOC vote?* At this stage, there's still talk of power surges (well, I suppose a bomb blast is technically a power surge), so I decide to drop off some library books and head for the buses. En route, ringing the parents to confirm that I am intact, I bump into missfrancesca and direct her to the bus she wants, an act I will later fear has consigned her to her doom. Waiting for the buses, I bump into oneofthose and events take a rather carnival turn. "How long until it's acceptable to start looting?" "Well, I think it's like a buffet - you don't want to be the first, but you want to be in the first wave." He gets a report of 30 fatalities, but it's from a messageboard which is apparently always full of sh1t; five hours later, the first decent official figures say 33. Then we hear that buses have started blowing up, and there's blood on Sky News, and suddenly it;s no fun anymore. I walk home across Finsbury Park, because if there's one thing that's not worth blowing up, it's Zone 3 parks. It's around this point that I went off the grid, causing some alarm; in retrospect, the reason I couldn't 'phone pippaalice is that I might have been trying to detonate her.
I watch TV, glad that there was nothing decent on this week anyway. The situation's never too dire for me to find fluffs like "at least 35 people have been died" amusing, or to wonder how anyone can say they're "shocked" by something this inevitable. An American voluntary worker whose parents were in the Twin Towers was near the site of one blast; I want to know this man's name and whereabouts so that I can be sure our paths never cross. London Underground's Tim O'Toole *is* Vic's American Eagle from Catterick. Someone describes the bus as "one of London's most enduring landmarks" and I think, that was no Routemaster. The footage begins to repeat itself and I leave it on, but need something else to do; I decide that it is fitting to iron, and to drink quite stupendous amounts of tea. Later, it is equally fitting to go to the pub, and generally to act in whatever manner would seem most likely to be abhorrent to fundamentalist scum. This is our city, you d1ckheads - you barely even scratch it, and we're meant to be terrified?


What follows was written on Wednesday afternoon, but I think it's even more appropriate now:
But I've written quite enough of late about how I'll never be anything I hate. So now I'll smile, mention some things that I like, how I'd have a happy life if I did the things I like. There's plenty on my interests list, of course, but among the other things that are ACE are deciduous trees, chartreuse, snapdragons, the Albion, Albion, finches, Saint Etienne, eyes, 'It Doesn't Mean That I Don't Love You If I Forget To Call You Back', Crouch End, Drew Barrymore, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, kissing, F Scott Fitzgerald, 'You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)', girls in male formal clothes, Le Grand Meaulnes, Christ Church Spitalfields, Johnny Depp, 'Virginia Plain', getting your hair just right, The Ark, mid-size dogs, tea, boys with fringes, shield bugs, Angelina Jolie, Dodgeball and outlandish rock formations.

*I know it's talk like this which saw jamesward blaming me for the attacks. Admittedly one speaker yesterday described them as "acts of almost unspeakable depravity", the Projected Novel's first paragraph does include the line "even before the bombs you couldn't trust the Circle line", and I was in a foul mood. But seriously, if I had the capability to do this I would have done it as prevention of rather than revenge on the IOC vote. And I certainly wouldn't have attacked stations I use as frequently as Russell Square and King's Cross. Personally, when I saw the blast victims covered in soot and grime, I was reminded of darkmarpi's claim that one cannot travel through central London without needing a shower, and wondered who else on LJ might have a point to prove...