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[Jul. 7th, 2005|07:25 pm]
Trin
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Heard about the London bombings when Des called me. I was in school about to begin a TSD rehearsal, and my heart just started pounding away in my ears. Called my mum and told her to check on my aunt and uncle who live in London, told anybody hanging around the studio and then SMS-ed people for good measure. Because I felt like screaming it. I couldn't stay for rehearsal because I kept shaking.
I went back home in a taxi and because I couldn't bear to listen to the silence of the car, I turned on my ipod and tried to listen to something, but everything was just British. The Libertines, Badly Drawn Boy, Coldplay, David Bowie - I kept on thinking, "Are they alright? Are they okay? Are Carl and Pete okay? Is... " which continued in a rapid strain of increasing hysteria until it reached "IS JOHN LENNON DEAD??" which obviously, he is.
I kept on thinking of when I last visited London. Before I hailed a cab, I was watching the TV in the school canteen, which had the volume turned up to blasting. I saw places I thought I'd walked along with my mum, my uncle dashing along the streets, walking twice as fast as us despite being four times our age. About how today my visa was just approved by Immigrations, and how Cheltenham gave me the go-ahead to take the subject combination I wanted for A Levels. Thought about how I was going there for school in a month, and how I was dead chuffed when London got the Olympic host title because I'd been rooting for them, and how pleased and amused I was when I opened the newspapers to see cheering Britons and David Beckham hugging a very surprised IOC official.
Thought about how my art teacher and I had been discussing, today, how nice London was compared to Paris. How huge the museums collections were. How you could miraculously see children being ferried around Renaissance artworks by a curator, and how they made up elaborate backstories for each painting. A TSD senior had come down to visit, complaining of bad food in her UK university, how she missed home. Even the fucking fics I used to write set in London.
How the apartment my mum bought to use while she was in London is just outside Zone 1. My uncle on a bus to Angel, the bus turning back because they'd closed the area. All the people I know, even if I don't know them in real life - the places, the streets I've walked on and heard of - the tiny webs that connect my life, fundamentally, to London, to its people - that shake, and tear, and made my stomach churn when I heard about this. |
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