bombs in london

Of course there are plenty of bloggers in London who can give you far better accounts of today's terrible events than I can; Andrew and Quin, amongst others, were there and are OK. Working in Chichester the news didn't filter through to the office until around tenish, and then the awful hunt for information began. Working in an office with several hundred people, networks of communication were quickly established, carrying concerns and frustrations through the building. But despite the internet's wonderful capacity for providing information quickly, the demand was clearly too great. We spent two hours, most of us, watching slow-loading screens, trying to keep up. It goes without saying that the pictures, which I'm only just seeing, having been straight out to band rehearsals after work, are worse than I imagined.

Concentrating on work was very difficult; for every moment where the distraction of the awful events receded, the distraction of another's reaction would step in. It was incredibly hard to tune out of the many conversations running along in the background; of course, plenty of us knew friends who worked in London, or had family there, or were aware that a colleague of ours was there today. Occasionally someone would point out how statistically unlikely any such person being a victim would be, given the vast volume of people in London, but somehow this doesn't help at all - if anything it emphasises the brutality of it. The chance, the horrifying chance. Statistics are no use in the face of something like this.

Update: I'm getting loads of hits from people wanting to read about what the attacks on London - I'm sorry I don't have anything profound or new to say. This is the post you need to read. Thanks to Troubled Diva for drawing it to my attention.

Update 2: Paul's written a brilliant post on the subject which is well worth reading:

"I believe that killing is wrong. I believe that defending yourself can result in behaviour to which normal morality does not apply. The untangling of these moral ambiguities is tortuous - akin to undoing a Gordian knot. Often we just cut through it."

Read it here.