In the good news column…

• I haven’t vomitted in 5 days
• Going to work feels normal again, not like nothing happened last week, but that we’re all just moving on (well, those of us without the need to really recover or grieve)
• Maria and Joel are now coming to the wedding!
• I have been able to stomach meat for the first time in ages

In the not so good news column…

• Apparently some people are trying to turn last Thursday into something called ’7/7′ and telling Londoners that the world cries with them. This reaction to that does make you smile… I don’t think it’s going to turn into something bigger than it is. This city has dealt with a hell of a lot before, before I got anywhere near here, like continued IRA bombings. There are enough other people out there waxing philosophical about it all before I start…
• Thursday and Friday like no work got done at all anywhere here. For someone who has the next 9 days to accomplish 50 million tasks at work, this is not good news. I started off attending a day of training today that I was meant to be at, then ended up leaving about an hour in and just had to go get things done…
• My pants (jeans in particular…ouch) are getting uncomfortable. This is not to say they don’t fit, as they do, it’s just that I feel the need for elastication right now… Must purchase sweat pants and wear them 24-7…
• I’ve lost part of an old cavity! There is a small crater in a molar at the back left and I can’t stop flicking it with the tongue. The good news story in relation to this is that I get free dental care (during pregnancy and I think 1st year too) – the bad news is that I will be lucky to find a dentist around taking NHS non-fee paying patients.

The revised timeline of events last week somehow makes me feel better too. It turns out that the bomb at Edgware Road went off much earlier than had been first reported. This means that when I got out at Baker Street at exactly 9am that morning (I remember) from the Met Line, it had already happened. Which means that when I looked down onto the platform with all the people standing on it waiting for the Circle and/or Hammersmith and City Line as I walked out to get my bus, those dozens of people were safe and did not die. I was thinking that many of them had possibly gotten on one of the trains. So far, I don’t know any of the people that are missing thankfully.

We had two different messages this morning – ‘don’t make any effort to get into central London’ and ‘carry on as usual’. Well, Mark was going to Neasden by car and all my lines into work were running as normal so we went in. The Jubilee line was very quiet, as we all sat there reading Metro newspapers full of horrible stories and graphic images of what happened on the tubes and buses. Baker Street station was very quiet, where I get out to change to a bus. There were extra police around, and it was jarring to have two ambulances scream by as I waited for the bus.

We had a general staff meeting and BBQ today, and it was still going ahead as planned. There were probably more people there than I thought there would be. I got a few bits done but was planning to leave early anyway as I have some reports to write and wasn’t planning on hanging around at the BBQ all afternoon.

Mark called and said he was at his office that is right on top of the tracks at Edgware Road, and would I meet him there on my way home as he is going to have to go back to work tonight. More on that later.

I really wish I hadn’t met him there as it was completely awful. Edgware Road station was a bombing location yesterday. All the roads around the station are blocked off with large metal barriers, police tape and police standing guard. You can’t see anything near to the station entrance – thankfully. There were also flowers everywhere, and some media hanging around. More disturbing was the casual passerby with a camera or camcorder – not exactly what I would want to record for posterity. I could barely even look at it all. So I had to walk around the perimeter of the site to get around to his office, whereas we normally meet there in the doorway of the tube station. I realised the whole road was blocked off when I got around to the other side, to the door of his building. I’d emailed a colleague at an office on that road earlier today as I need to get some stats from her for an auditors’ report; I guess I will have a good excuse if I don’t get them in on time. I hope all at Voluntary Action Westminster are okay.

This is the one that is closest to home for us as we both use that station all the time – I’d just used it earlier this week to see another colleague at VAW for a lunch meeting, Mark is at the office there at least once a week, we both go to the M&S there. It’s quite close to much of my work with partners and others. It’s the only one that was hit in Westminster which is our patch; I almost never use any of the other stations, and I’ve probably never been on the number 30 bus.

So because of what happened yesterday, Mark has to audit some checks on tube train seats tonight from like 10pm to 5am. Apparently there is a big stink now about the fact that on some trains there is a seal that indicates whether or not a seat has been lifted up – with the possibility that something has been left in it. There isn’t any information that this is what happened on any of the tube trains with bombs – but the fact that it’s a vulnerability is highlighted. They’ve know for ages that it was, but haven’t really had the budget to do anything about it. Perhaps now.

I was going to put some crass comment on here about how London Underground staff should start banning me from tube stations as I keep decorating them with vomit but in light of current events I think they have bigger things to worry about than me.

Yes I decorated a hallway at Green Park yesterday. But managed to alert staff to get a cleaner.

Public vomitting is really humilating. I never see anyone else doing it in the morning! Why only me?! They all probably think I am drunk… Oh I have so had enough of it.

In other news I seem to be getting a strange stretching feeling in my abdomen lately. Perhaps the bump is beginning… Mark told me he thought my stomach looked bigger but he sort of mumbled it apologetically as if I would get upset. Now if he had said ‘Oi, fatty what’s with the gut’ I would have been upset.

More people know at work but not quite everyone – I am swamped, and plus I am no good at the big announcement. Not into the attention. Email is much easier for me!

Today is good day overall as I managed to not get sick AND make dinner for the first time in about 2 weeks. Meat is not my friend right now so it was bean enchiladas – not bad at all. Cooking dinner used to be a joy and now it’s a nightmare of bad smells and textures. But today was okay.

Okay this person :

is not me (on the left).
Tami found this somewhere and though it was.

This is me – different clothes, no oxygen mask!

All is fine with us, really.
Hmm someone told me my face looked thinner.
I told her it wasn’t possible but now I am wondering.
It’s all that retching I’ve been doing, working wonders
on my neck muscles.

Anyway, if the person with the gas mask is ever
idenitified by anyone, they look too much like me and
we clearly need to meet.

I appreciate all the emails and messages we are getting! It’s nice to know how many people are concerned. Mark picked me up from work about an hour ago and we just got in. Roads weren’t bad but as we didn’t have to get into the centre of town I think we managed to miss any pandemonium. Not actually sure if I should have left work or not but I had to take the opportunity to get the lift or I may have been walking 8-10 miles home…

Getting a bit more news now – not surprised by the numbers of casualities as you don’t really need a big device to use it to great effect if you are in a tube train in a tunnel or on a bus. To be honest it sounded worse first thing this morning – I had heard that buses were being blown up all over the place, which is when it was confirmed it was a terrorist attack and not the power surge they had explained it was earlier. So the bus I had been on was not hit, neither was the Jubilee line which is the one that runs to our house. Sounds like all the emergency plans they have in place here were used to great effect and it’s all gone according to plan. Although of course you never really want to use the plan when you write it, do you?

Mark’s dad is still in the centre so we may need to pick him up later. He’s been staying with us for a couple of days working for someone in Holborn as a consultant, so he will have been in the thick of it today. But he’s fine.

So back to watching the news, taking the dog for a walk, and life goes on…

Poor London. Yesterday it was euphoria – we actually won something, everyone was slagging the French off (as they do here anyway – but a bit more smugly than usual after Chirac’s comments), and even though the Olympics will probably be a nightmare to manage and all the extra people in the city, no one was thinking about it cause we were all really pleased.

Then today, someone decided things here shouldn’t work properly and some people should die – although we aren’t even getting very good information about what has happened. I took the tube and a bus to work this morning but obviously luckily it was at the right time. I have heard that a number 18 bus exploded from a staff member here, which is the bus I was on, but I haven’t seen it confirmed through any media.

I was in a management meeting this morning where they decided that business was more important than what was happening, but since then not very much is happening at work other than people finding landlines to use to call people as mobiles aren’t really working. I was lucky that Mark and I managed to actually talk on our mobiles this morning as he had been calling frantically to see if I was okay. One of the tube explosions where people are confirmed dead, at Edgware Road, is like walking distance from this office and I could have been there.

We can’t go anywhere right now, we’ve been told by the Council that all staff and students should stay in the buildings because it isn’t safe outside. All my staff are accounted for expect for one who doesn’t normally work Thursdays so I hope he will check in by email soon.

Mark is at Neasden depot (with the car, which is good) but also can’t go anywhere. They’ve had to move to a part of the building away from the tube trains in case there is any more bombs. But I am thankfully in the right part of town today, and not at my actual office in Victoria, as that would be much more difficult to get home from. If we can mobilise at some point today, it shouldn’t be that difficult for him to pick me up somewhere relatively near here.

One of my staff had ridden her bike to a meeting in Soho and she’s just shaken up about how quiet it all was. It’s very quiet here too, I don’t think there is any traffic outside right now. And none of the league of buses that would normally be going by.

So we will wait and see what we are supposed to do now… Bit difficult to get any work done though.

Happy Canada Day. Turned out to be a bit much for me, with way too many people crammed into all the rooms at Canada House, but we were there for the important bits – comedian Phil Nichol (ex Corky and Juice Pigs, we’ve seen him a few times) cracking jokes, Mel Cappe the high comissioner speaking briefly, the anthem, the cutting of the cake, and the free drinks. Of course I was stuck with warm OJ instead of cold frosty beer (so okay I had a sip at one point as I was sweltering). We saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company do a mini bit and then a reduced Romeo and Juliet but left before musical acts like Kinnie Starr.

After that we sat for a bit at the front of the building reading Macleans’ magazines. I forgot how much smaller Canadian magazines are compared to UK ones – standard UK paper sizes are bigger, that’s why my resume actually fits well on 2 pages in this country!

It’s funny today, with Live 8 – all the other concerts are in the big idenitifiable around the world city centres. They have to keep explaining that it’s in Barrie, CANADA. I did see a clip of my new pal Bryan earlier on stage. Not much other coverage here unfortunately – focusing on London (clearly) and Philadelphia. Anyway, back to the story of last night…

We then went home where I tried to recover from feeling squashed, dehydrated and with sore feet. Oh what fun… (and pretty pathetic in the way of celebrating the national holiday). At least I wore my Sloan shirt (you know, ‘one thing I know about the rest of my life, I know that I’ll be living it in Canada). Luckily no one at work really read it.

The unphotogenic man’s tie was a hit again. Oh boy I look like crap too! But I felt like it.