Blitz Mentality

Did something fairly stupid today. I left my apartment in South Kensington and walked towards my university in central London. Being an overseas student with a cheap apartment means you are connected to the world only through your email, your chat box, or your online personality. The desire to reply to emergency emails outweighed the desire to avoid the possible aftershocks. The bombs had gone off at the tube stop i get off to go to work, and on a bus i use when i can't afford the tube. Ah. Who am i kidding, I wanted to see the whole mess of it.

I woke the same way I woke up on a morning in September, by a phone call from a hysteric mother ensuring my uniform bodily constituency in the face of militant Islamic fundamentalism. I remember feeling kind of excited when she first told me. I think i might have even voiced, "Wow, that's amazing." I got off the phone to call my mates, all three of them, and got the requisite responses. Wow, man, yeah.

I made a couple eggs and left the apartment. Everything in Kensington looked quite normal. Harrods was open, restaurants, shops, about half of them were still operational. As i got to Hyde Park Corner i noticed the sidewalks filling up with suits. I walked along Piccadilly, where 5 days ago a Pride Parade made its way away from the Live8 concert. Green Park was full of people that don't usually walk through Green Park, or who bother walking anywhere, besides to the curb to hail a cab. It occured to me there that at any hour in the London workday, maybe 15% of the population is underground. I walked past a few of the major stores, the Virgin Megastore and the Waterstones Bookstore. A group of men seem miffed that the bookstore was closed. Nobody was open in Piccadilly Circus besides the Pizza/Souvenier joint below an Adam's Rib restaurant. That's the worst pizza i've ever tasted.

Nothing was open from there to Bloomsbury besides a Subway and a video rental place. Everyone was walking in the other direction, and no one seemed particularly distraught. Most people were either walking in groups of three or four (laughing, joking), or else talking on their mobile. People were a little inconvenienced, maybe a little shocked, but no particular distress. Granted these weren't the people who had felt the heat of the blasts, or broken tube windows with their fists, but they did have to endure "heightened circumstances."

But they weren't doing it right! The were just walking home as if the boss had called in sick, or a The men and women in business attire seemed less worried about terrorism, and more upset that they couldn't pick up a novel on the way home. One of the most common expressions to insignificant events in London is, "can't be bothered." Terrorism seemed to rise to the top of no one's agenda.

Perhaps i wanted to see fear, I wanted to see recently dried cheeks and loosened ties. I wanted to see them get nuts, because if they could get nuts, this country, then maybe my country wasn't melodramatic for having done so. Maybe i could see some of the sorrow, or the militancy, or even the glint of revenge sparking in the eye. But there was no such reaction. Yes, yes, the IRA and all that. British resilience. Stiff upper lip. Whatever. I know there's a completely different, news-worthy story to be told about those stuck in a smoky tube carriage, or on the top floor of the double decker bus. But i don't know any of those people yet.

Things are running smoothly. The pubs are full of people getting pissed, as they (and I) normally would. All busses are running. The tube is back on tomorrow, mostly. There are a few lines cut, and a few diversions. There will be inconveniences. But its quite traditional in London to moan about such things. About the rest they can't be bothered.