Finding a way home
20 years ago today I was working for Imperial College Library at the Charing Cross site (confusingly located in Hammersmith for anyone not based in London). I lived in Plumstead and my commute into work involved having to get into central London and then out West, and involved at a minimum a train and a tube train, sometimes taking in variations of train- tube-tube or train - bus-tube or on really bad days bus-tube-bus or the worst, bus-bus-bus. The long commute was slightly annoying, but had actually been helpful in giving me time to write my masters thesis - assuming I could get a seat, I got at least an uninterrupted hour of writing time a day.
Of course we all know what happened on 7/7 in London twenty years ago and there have been years where I've thought about it and years where I haven't. This year it's in the news headlines a lot and so a lot of old emotions are back swimming around.
I got on, what it turned out, was to be the last Picadilly tube heading out West that day. At that point the staff knew there was a "problem" further up the line. On the platform, they told us there had been a power surge, and yelling over the crowds that if we wanted to get where we were going, we needed to get on the next train or forget it. So far, so normal. Sigh. We were Londoners and getting wedged into already full tube trains was a regular occurrence. We packed ourselves in, worrying about being late for work and hoping there weren't more people wanting to get on at the next stop. It was chaos but it was always chaos - packed trains going both ways, a smile of grim acknoweldgement if you accidentally caught the eye of someone getting on the train on the opposite platform.
When I arrived at work we were comparing notes about our awful journeys - of course everyone had had a tough time, and only a couple of people lived relatively locally. It's hard to remember that 20 years ago we didn't all have news alerts and smart phones, things took time to filter through. The library was eerily quiet. Maybe one or two library users had made it in. One of us had the news on their computer and maybe about 10 o clock by this point said "guys, it wasn't a power surge". We gathered round his desk and watched the news break. Updates trickled in. We all tried and failed to contact our friends, call home etc. The early mobile networks buckled and nothing worked. I remember getting hold of my mum maybe about 11.30 and saying "I'm ok" and she said "what are you talking about?" She wasn't watching the news - why would she be in the middle of the working day? London bubble syndrome.
At some point we realised we were going to have to get home without public transport. We got permission to close early, and locked the library doors. We walked from Hammersmith to Central London together, myself, Richard, Pip and I think a couple of others. We all had A-Zs in our bags of course, it was part of London life in the time before sat navs in your pocket. Everyone else in the City was doing the same - finding their way home, around all the cordons and unfamiliar routes. Given the bleakness of the day, it was weirdly sunny. Everyone smiled kindly at everyone else. Not very London. We were all wondering why we didn't walk round the city more often (I remember walking past the Albert Hall thinking how beautiful it was). I don't recall at all how I found my way home from central London to Plumstead. I would have gone to the Intrepid Fox in Soho where my then partner was working, it was somewhere to go and be with people. I can't recall whether it was open or not. I think maybe the buses restarted later in the evening. It seems strange what stayed with me and what didn't. We had to rely on buses for a good week or so afterwards, that they got the whole transport system up and running again at all after that seems miraculous to me even now.
I've always felt guilty about having feelings about this day. I wasn't on one of the tubes or buses that blew up - I think it's likely I passed one going in the opposite direction, but I've never wanted to look it up and work it out. Lives changed for so many people. Sliding door moments. I've hated tube travel ever since that day. Weeks after were filled with evacuations and alerts about abandoned bags. I still do my utmost to avoid packed trains. I frequently pass the BMA building and have occasionally been in it for work related purposes, and being there usually moves me to tears. It could have been any of us. A few weeks ago I had a panic attack on a train here in the North West when someone took a photo of the train coming into the platform and much of the memory surfaced. Later I would move to Aldgate where one of the trains had been blown up and myself and UltraFloop would write a song about how awful the place was. Someone emailed us to ask if it was a song about the bombings. It was not. It was about the fact our flat was a massive pile of grimness. We found a way home, and life moved on, even if some of the memories didn't.
Blip: rain gathered on the outside table, maze-like enough to remind me of the A-Z map.
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