Outside Context

Dear all,

Thanks for inquir­ing if I was ok here, its a little crazy right now.

Thursday: Well, I woke up on the late shift to find the tube down due to “power surges”. I waited at home for about 30 minutes munch­ing a slice of toast to see what was going to hap­pen and if the lines would come back up…

…then the bus exploded.

It all became clear then. After that I spent the whole day check­ing in with my wife who works near the first bomb and watch­ing the web­sites to plan her jour­ney home as well as curs­ing the names of the people who did this atro­city. A long day and finally the reward of Cesca being safe at home.

Fri­day: Cesca and I caught the tube into cent­ral Lon­don. We both thought that we would not let our lives be messed around with by these people. There were a lot of people on the tubes all look­ing like it was just a nor­mal day. As ever at these times I was proud at the stoic and quiet strength of my coun­try­men and women. Bri­tain will never lay down for any­one. At Lon­don Liv­er­pool st Sta­tion (site of one of the bombs) there is a large police pres­ence but they are let­ting people get on with it.

How­ever, the police have blocked access to my work build­ing because it is dir­ectly over the effected tube line. The Oper­a­tions man­ager has called me to per­form the Dis­aster Recov­ery pro­ced­ures. I am the IT guy here and have a shit load of pay­ment sys­tems and data­base serv­ers to recover over the week­end. I am cur­rently in the DR site wait­ing for our off site tapes to come down and crack on with it. Hope­fully, the police will let us back in to the build­ing soon…

Some good news is that Cesca has just been called to be told that she got the top job she was going for. This is great great news for us and will change our lives. The feel­ings I have are strange. I am tired, alert, sleepy, awake, happy and sad and I think I speak for all Lon­don­ers when I say that we also feel strong. There is an old guard here; WWII is ever in our minds. I remem­ber what my Grand­mother told me about The Blitz and makes me stand a little straighter and hold the head up a little higher. I tell you that if Eng­land ever goes down it will be with dignity.

Good luck all.

James (Basho)

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