Kingish.com It's a way of life

Today, London was bombed by terrorists (again).  I just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time: King's Cross at ten to nine in the morning on my way to work.  It's been a very odd day.  The scenes I saw were by no means the worst of it, but still enough to shock.

We in London are somehow hardened to this sort of thing, and we can thank the the IRA for that.  I've seen other bomb attacks in the past, or at least, the results of them.  The attack on Canary Wharf years ago I saw and heard from my garden.  Being in the thick of it was very different, and I count myself as lucky not to have been even closer to the 'action'.  There were people being tended to by paramedics twenty feet away from me, black and covered in soot from the tunnels.  I was standing next to a British Transport Policeman who was sat on the floor in shock, being treated by a colleague.  He could not walk, or talk.  He just stared.  I'd rather not think about what he must have witnessed.

I really was on the outskirts of it all.  I'd just got off a Piccadilly line train and was half way up the escalator at Kings Cross what the lights went out and the escalator came to an abrupt halt, throwing people forward.  The lights came back on after about a second.  Everyone carried on as normal until I got to the Circle line platform when the station was evacuated.

The official news was that a power outage had occurred.  Everyone was directed towards Euston station to continue their journey.  By the time we reached there it too was shut and the rumours about what had happened started.  I returned to Kings Cross hoping to catch a bus instead which was became impossible due to the numbers of people queuing and the gridlock that had ensued.  To me it was blatantly obvious that either a crash had occurred or a bomb had gone off as people with minor-ish injuries were appearing and being treated by the police, fire and ambulance crews already at the scene.  I have to say that they were all superbly efficient.

I did manage to contact friends and relatives before the phone networks were jammed, and most were saying "get out/go home".  We did manage to get some news of sorts because every pub had all of their TVs switched on, however as they were not open yet the crowds had to watch the breaking news through closed windows.  The message was clear, and what that message meant to us was very clear (we were all slap-bang in the midst of a terrorist attack), but people were only interested in what they would do next.  There was zero panic everywhere I went.  I milled around the Kings Cross area for about 2 hours in a daze, unsure of what to do, eventually taking a long walk to Paddington.

It was surreal.  The permanent sound of sirens everywhere.  Every station I passed was cordoned off and swarming with Police.  Edgware Road was completely insane, with the police and ambulance crews rushing us past.  The sirens are still going even as I write this, although they're no longer permanent.