REPORT 30    JULY 2005

Getting back to normal was the only proper response . . .

It seems presumptuous, after all that has been said and written about the London bombings of last week, to add a few words but our experience, although mercifully vicarious, seemed close enough to be worth reporting.

Penny and I were on the 7.35 from Plymouth to Paddington train when, somewhere in the middle of Wiltshire, the ‘train manager’ (‘guard’ in old-fashioned English) came in to our coach and said there had been an “incident” in London as the result of which our train would be “terminated” at Reading. I think those were the words used but English, especially on railway public address systems has changed a lot recently!

At this stage, of course, none of us in the packed coach had the first idea what had happened but the immediate and universal reaction was to get out a mobile and phone someone. As a result we very quickly knew that at least one bomb had exploded on the London underground. We were sitting opposite a grandmother and grand-daughter who were on their way to a matinee of Mary Poppins – a long planned birthday for the girl. Their immediate reaction was like most people’s within earshot one of irritation, frustration and disappointment. They wanted to find a coach and get into London by bus. I said it sounded to me as if London would be effectively sealed off and it would be impossible to get in even if the theatres were still playing.

Before we arrived in Reading the train manager came back to say that the train would, after all, be going through to Paddington but only to take people out of London and get them back home. Passengers (“Customers”?) were strongly advised to get out and return to base. We were reluctant to do this but we agreed that the first priority was to do what the police wanted and not get in the way of whatever security operation had been mounted. As the advice seemed pretty unequivocal we got out at Reading but when we saw a group of uniformed police on the platform I asked their advice and was told that Paddington had actually re-opened and that if we wanted to carry on at our own risk and knowing that there would be no transport at the other end we were perfectly at liberty to do so.

As our London base, appropriately enough at the Frontline Club, was within walking distance of the station we got back on to a now almost empty train. Next to us were two Polish girls rather desperately hoping to get to Cambridge and, to my amazement, Trevor Fishlock and his wife Penny. Trevor is a very old friend and newspaper colleague who now lives in Cardiff. We covered Prince Charles’ Investiture together back in the sixties, played squash in New York etc. It seemed, as we hurtled towards Paddington and we knew not what, quite like old times. Trevor had been busy on his mobile and told us that there had been four explosions.
Back in the seventies and eighties, of course, Londoners (like us then) were used to bombs thanks to the IRA but we were now out of practice. It all seemed like an unpleasant novelty. I was reminded of two incidents in the old days. One was on the Daily Express one morning when I was sitting in the Feature Writers room and the phone went. The Features Editor, Robin Esser, took the call, listened attentively and then put the receiver down and said to me. “That was the IRA. They didn’t like Cyril Aynsley’s piece in today’s paper so they’re going to shoot him when he arrives for work. Would you go down to Blackfriars station now, meet Cyril’s train, tell him about the threat and bring him in by the back entrance”. Cyril was the paper’s chief reporter, had been a bomber pilot in World War Two and a foreign correspondent in Korea so he didn’t frighten easily. So I hurried down to the station, found Cyril and brought him round the back as ordered. Nothing uneventful took place and I’d be very surprised if this was more than a nasty hoax.

The other incident I remembered was sitting in the Peterborough Office with Bill Deedes when the alarms went and we were told to evacuate the building because of an IRA bomb. “Don’t move”, said Bill, characteristically, “That’s playing in to their hands. That’s what they want us to do. “But Bill”, I whinged, “I’ve got four small children…” As a concession Bill let me draw the curtains so (he said) that in the event of an explosion we wouldn’t be hit by flying glass. Half an hour later the all clear sounded and everyone else trooped back into the building looking rather sheepish while Bill and I smiled smugly.

So the four of us on the train from Reading had a slightly blitz-like laugh as we hurried through Slough, then we got out, wished each other luck, and walked briskly past the queues waiting forlornly for taxis, and on to the Frontline which was doing business as usual. We had a restorative drink, left our cases and walked through the drizzle to the Groucho Club in Soho where there was supposed to be an Old School Media lunch. This was cancelled as most of the Sherborne and Waterloo-bound contingent had been ‘terminated’ at Woking. So we had an agreeable lunch on our own before trying to get on with the other things we’d planned.

Penny said that London seemed like something out of “The War of the Worlds” – half-deserted, ambulances everywhere, helicopters overhead, police cars speeding along with the sirens going. By afternoon however the buses were running again and life seemed to be getting back to normal. It seemed callous to be doing so when we knew that many people had been killed or maimed but, as everyone kept saying, ‘getting back to normal’ was the only proper response.

Over the next day or so we went to the wonderful Stubbs exhibition at the National Gallery, to a brilliant "Death of a salesman” in Shaftesbury Avenue, where after the performance, the cast applauded the audience as we applauded them, and spent most of Sunday at Lord’s watching England get beaten by Australia at cricket.
I’m glad we carried on and didn’t allow ourselves to be ‘terminated’ at Reading. In the paper a day or so later I read that other people in other countries were shocked at the apparent lack of public anger, grief, and display in London. Personally I was relieved to find London being, on the whole, so phlegmatic. Sad, yes; cross, yes; cowed no; panic-stricken, certainly not. Of course that could change; of course, in the overall scheme of things this was only a little outrage and not to be compared with what happened to New York or Madrid or what goes on every day in Bagdhad, let alone what London endured in the blitz.

Anyway, for the record, that’s what we did and how we felt. I take no pride in it and I’m afraid that my main feeling was a dull resignation at the futility of what had happened as well as a gloomy pessimism about the future. I also had an eery sense of déjà vu. “Oh God!” I said to myself, “Here we go again!”

Tim Heald

Report Number 30  JULY 2005                                                                               Return to Homepage