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Friday 7th July 2006

Brave London carries on.
I don't think we're really very brave - we just don't have a choice. We have to get to work in order to be able to buy food and the only practical way in to work is on the tube or the buses. We could get up two hours earlier and walk in or we could cycle, but that kind of cowardice takes some kind of effort. We're not brave, we're just lazy and pragmatic. There's a chance we could get blown up for this, but it's not a big enough chance and to be honest on a day of heightened security like this, we were probably as safe as we could ever be. I thought about taking advantage of this extra cushion and just spend all day travelling round on the tube, but I had stuff to do. If I had been in Al Quaida I would have bombed something else today, whilst all the heat and expectation was on the tube and the buses. But Al Quaida are bigger cowards than the worst Londoner and only have a go at stuff when they are likely not to get caught. It would be a waste for them to do another atrocity on the same day, because it would cause confusion about which 7/7 people were talking about. "Do you mean 7/7a or 77b?" would be the inevitable question. Also if they bombed on 7/7 again they would really raise expectations for a 7/7c. I they failed to bomb next year then they would look like pussies only capable of two consecutive 7/7s. And people would get wise to the 7/7 pattern and just take the day off so the terrorists would only be blowing up themselves and the trains and a couple of Japanese tourists who wouldn't be aware of the significance of the event.
But like the rest of brave London I took some buses and tubes today. There were no nervous young men with gigantic rucksacks anywhere to be seen, but had there been my guess is that brave Londoners would have given them a wide berth. If we were really brave we would go and sit on the knees of anyone who looked a bit suspicious. Or maybe just sit on the knees of any hard looking men in general, perhaps trying to kiss them on the lips.
We're not brave, we're just getting on. But as last year showed, when it comes down to it, if we get caught up in the middle of an horrific, unreal situation we are capable of heroism. It would be nice to think that it won't happen again, but it will. Ah well, makes life interesting.

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