Some days are not made for comedy, I guess.
It's something we've all been bracing ourselves for for so long and yet now it's happened it is hard to believe. I sat in front of the television most of the day trying to connect the things I was seeing with the town that I live in, hoping no-one I knew was hurt, whilst at the same time realising this was a pretty selfish (though understandable) way to look at it, as if it was several hundred strangers who had been killed and injured then it somehow wouldn't matter. I felt if I stayed in my house and just watched the events from here that somehow it might not actually have happened. I didn't want to have to imagine the horror that my unlucky fellow Londoners had gone through because of this despicable and futile act.
Yet horrible as it all is it was immediately clear to me that this disgusting attack on such a soft target was not going to frighten me or change my views or make me frightened to go on public transport. We've known it was coming and yet still we've not let it get in the way of our day to day lives. You take your life in your hands getting on the tube in any case whether there are idiots with bombs on them or not.
London and Londoners have endured a lot worse than this and whilst I am sickened by the loss of life and the horrific injuries to so many people, I know that it won't change anything, well not in the ways that the bombers want.
People emailed me and texted me to check I hadn't been caught up in it all. Me? Up before 9am? What were the chances really?
So is there anything humorous in all this? Of course there always is. Humour is the way we get through this in the end. "Those French really are bad losers" was a joke I heard a couple of times. There was a supreme bit of embarrassment on the London news as the travel girl discussed transport issues, "The one bit of good news...well not good news... is that the congestion charge has been waived today." She still looked red about it five hours later.
The only slighty humorous spin I can put on all this is that at least both Americans and Britains can unite in calling today 7/7. Though I am slightly annoyed that the terrorists did not go for the day before or the day after because then we could inflict our dating system on the Americans for once. "It's our tragedy, so you have to call it 8/7 rather than 7/8. Take that America! How do you like it?" Perhaps the terrorists did not want to confuse their own agendas,
by adding some support to my 11/9 campaign. But I suppose if I want to make people consider this point then I will have to commit an atrocity of my own.
Come on, Rich, that's not a good reason to kill people is it? Not like because you believe there is a big man in the sky who has created everyone but likes your flavour of people most and wants all the other kinds to die and burn in Hell.
Fuck it, we need comedy on days like today more than any other.
