After the Manchester bomb attack on May 22, the UK terror alert warning skyrocketed to ‘critical’, the highest possible level.
As soon as I saw that, I texted our brat who lives in London saying half-jokingly to take care on public transport and beware of crazed men with backpacks.
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We live 80km out of London, so I never thought that advice would be relevant to us.
On Saturday, June 3, it was. It came close to home.
It happened like this. Much of my wife’s bucket list involves jumping on trains to London. Top of the list was Sky Gardens, a 155-metre building where you get a 360-degree panoramic perspective of arguably the globe’s greatest city while sipping a civilised cocktail. So we booked tickets. My cousin and her partner came along with us.
Sky Gardens is on the north bank of the Thames, directly opposite the more famous Shard. To cross the river, you walk over London Bridge, which the whole world has now heard of.
The view is sublime. Directly below is HMS Belfast, a museum battleship permanently moored on the Thames that escorted the heroic Arctic Convoys during World War 2. To the west is St Paul’s Cathedral and east is the history-soaked Tower of London.
The Gardens are so popular that you’re only are allowed in for an hour unless you rob a bank and reserve a restaurant table. We didn’t know it, but that time limit was fortuitous, considering what happened later.
By 6pm we had again crossed London Bridge and as it was a rare beautiful evening, we strolled through Borough Market, a foodie haven serving seriously good cuisine. It’s the most popular market in the city.
We stopped at a pub for something long and cold. Next door was another tavern called the Wheatsheaf, which caught my eye as it bore the same name as Dicken’s favourite watering hole. Sadly, it wasn’t the same one, for London’s most famous scribe slaked his thirst in Fitzrovia, north of the river.
From there we ambled over to a Tappas bar which served better food than Spain. The evening was perfect; the company superb.
On the train home my wife got a text from a friend asking if we’d left London yet. Then she got another. All urgently worded and extremely concerned about us.
We soon discovered why. London was in lockdown. Three savages had driven a truck into pedestrians on London Bridge, then plunged hunting knives into random people.
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From there the sub-humans ran into Borough Market — where we had just been — and thrust more cold steel into more random people.
They then stormed the Wheatsheaf pub, which I had been mulling literary thoughts about earlier. More innocent people were knifed.
By the time we got home, seven people had been murdered and 48 injured — 21 critically.
The was a lot of heroism on London’s streets that night. The story I like most was when the savages were shouting religious slogans, a man called Roy Larner took them on with bare fists shouting “F… that; I’m Millwall.”
He was stabbed eight times. Millwall is the most yobbish football club in England. I once loathed it, but I’m now a fan. Roy’s still in hospital and mates have sent him a ‘how to’ book on running as apparently the word is not in his vocabulary.
The day after, singer Ariana Grande did a benefit concert for the Manchester bomb victims killed or crippled at her previous gig. I applaud her. I have no idea what music she plays, but like Millwall Roy, she’s got guts. In spades.
But when I heard that the concert’s theme was ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, a 1996 mega-hit by Oasis, I despaired.
Ariana sweetheart, if we can’t be angry when teenyboppers are shredded by a nail bomb, or families butchered while enjoying an evening meal, then what should we be angry about?
Like much of Britain, I look back on Manchester and London Bridge with burning, visceral anger.
An anger that is directed squarely at the political classes who allowed this problem to fester and now say suck it up because they haven’t the stomach to fight it.
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