Things will be quiet around the blog for the next couple of weeks as we're off to Italy on our summer holidays. We're planning to spend a week in Tuscany and a week on the Amalfi Coast. I expect pretty near Internet silence, and for once I'm really looking forward to it. Back later in the month. Until then, Ciao!
As a Londoner, it's hard to ignore when my city is in the news. The newspapers scream it from the mastheads. My colleagues flock to the televisions. And eventually I even confess to getting caught up in the buzz, or the sorrow, or whatever the mood the news invokes.
And so, I was refreshing my browser regularly at 12:46 yesterday to see if, miraculously, London scored the 2012 Olympics. And I cheered when they did, a little "well done!" fist in the air. And then I started to think, well, I didn't really give a toss if London went for it, but, hey, now that they (we) have it, well, what a good thing (I know, TM) that is. What exciting news. What re-energising news. Not for our neck of the woods, necessarily, and not for our generations (I'll be 45 and our kids will be pre-teens then), but really, yes! for our neck of the woods. Why not? I love the spirit of the Olympics, and I think the decision to choose London over Paris says something abstract about progress; about unselfish, more universal vision. It isn't the last word, naturellement!
And then today. First, news of a power surge. A power surge that causes explosions on the Underground - that kind of power surge. And then all the details, trickling in, unconfirmed until officially confirmed. The long wait. The bus. The death toll higher than you knew they were saying.
September 11th stunned me. Shock and awe like warplanes could never replicate. That silent moment when the tower fell. Oh. My. God. I didn't have a God. I do now.
Madrid showed me. When the terrorists strike, they don't think, they just do. They can't think. They have no way out of their nihilism. Their vision of death perfected. That is not God, it is Evil playing God. It does not compute.
And now it's come to my home town. That sounds weird. My home town. I didn't grow up here, but somehow I've come to call it home. And today a few cowardly men decided to do what we've never stopped anyone from doing. We've never stopped them because we don't want to live in fear, straitjacketed, probed and sniffed, registered and biometricked. We don't believe that, whatever your politics, whatever your rage, you need to turn that on innocents. We don't want to live in that kind of society, and so we don't. We just don't. Not in my home town, we don't.
Today, my colleagues reflected a kind of uniform response to the atrocities in London. "When, not if." Stoic. "It will never get to us." "We will continue to take the risks." "We won't do anything different." British bulldog pride. "We will, when we have to, continue to bear the brunt." "We need never to over-react." That 'stiff upper lip' thing.
When we have shown our resolve, like every politician has said today. When our vision attracts the world's trust for a uniting spirit. When we've stood against cowardice and said no pasará, well, all we can hope at the end of the day is that reason, moderation and, hell, dispassionately passionate politics will prevail. Here it will. Hope. Justice. Because we believe in these things. We may not always show it manifestly, but we get there because we believe in progress and we hope for the outcomes. Like Geldof. Like Live 8. And because we know that, we won't lose hope. And where there's hope, there will be solidarity; love. And then, if only person by person, and if I am only speaking for myself, then I know for myself, I've seen, and I've learned that love has to prevail. Tomorrow is more yesterday than today.