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Once again woke up to find horrific headlines on my phone and this time another attack on my home city. But as clearly horrendous and appalling as these acts are, I am proud of the way Londoners reacted and the incredible speed that the emergency services dealt with it all. Donald Trump predictably stuck his oar in whilst attempting to extract his head from his arse, even though he still hasn’t commented on the two Americans murdered after standing up to a racist with a knife in his own country. And whilst Sadiq Kahn advised Londoners not to be alarmed by the increased police presence, Trump took his words out of context and mocked Kahn for telling people not to be alarmed by terrorism. Either he’s evil or he’s stupid. Either way America, it doesn’t look good when something like this happens and your President is almost the worst thing about it.
But London won’t allow itself to be alarmed. We’re sickened by it but wearily resigned to it. It’s another in the list of possible but unlikely things that might harm us and we know there’s only so much you can do against people with knives and vans who want to hurt you. Increase security in one place and these pricks will just go somewhere else. Terrorists remain low down on my list of concerns. Two of the last three times I have driven back from Hertfordshire I’ve had to make evasive action to avoid some other road user driving into me. Today I had no time to double check my mirrors as the car next to me started pulling into my lane without indicating or bothering to look and see that I was there. More people are getting killed by fuckwits who don’t know how to drive then the fuckwits who think that killing kids and people having a drink on a summer evening. We’ve already defeated fundamentalist religion once, but we can go through this all again if we have to. Ditto fascism. We’ve won these arguments, but if you insist on running through them again...
We are not unmoved by all of this, of course and it’s impossible not to let it scare you, as is the main intention. But it’s possible to not fulfil the other aims of the people perpetrating it. To not give up our freedom, to not be divided by it. If you do what the terrorists want then you’re on the terrorists’ side. So yes, it’s a but concerning that the leader of the free world seems priapically keen to do exactly that. But the man holding on to his pint as he ran and the man returning to the restaurant to pay his bill and the hundred other moments of heroism and humour that came out of this horror make me think that ultimately we’ll move forwards. But we do need to address the real issues behind it all rather than chucking fuel on to the fire.
But fuck it, although a radio station I was going to be interviewed on cancelled that show (understandably) I carried on as normal, risking my family’s life by driving to my in-laws, watching my wonderfully innocent daughter squeal with delight as she played football with her grandpa. My feelings tempered by hollow doom, but ultimately determined to cherish these moments, because even if hate doesn’t erase them, then time soon enough will. This two year old girl will not be here for long and all being well I will blink and she’ll be sixteen and surly and giggle at nothing.
Life goes on. I took Phoebe for a walk in the wood at the bottom of the garden and unknowingly stepped in some wild animal poo which I dragged into the house and then had to clean up. And I still felt like the unluckiest man in the world. And tomorrow I will head to central London to do my podcasts, not because I won’t be cowed by the terrorists but because what choice do I have? What the terrorists forget is that statistically we’re more likely to die in our own homes anyway. I am so scared by that fact that I refuse to go home just in case.
