After getting drunken last night I perhaps understandably completely overslept this morning and was awoken by a phone call from my work. I was expecting the standard bollocking, but instead they were checking i was ok, they knew I was near the nastiness yesterday.
To be honest, I was feeling fine. But didn’t really want to let on that actually I was just a bit hungover. My boss said that it’d be fine to not come in, or to ocme in late, not to worry.
I felt a bit bad, but then went back to sleep.
Some ten minutes later the big boss of everything rang me, offering me counselling services and things say “I understand you saw the actual bus explosion” Talk about chinese whispers, I explained that I saw the bus, but it was sometime after the kablooey.
He told me to take day off, fully paid (a unique experience under my temp contract). I thanked him and then hung up the phone realising that I was probably going to hell.
Except, over the course of today I’ve realised that actually I am a little bit shocked by it all. I was going to meet a friend for a drink, but actually, the prospect of getting a bus right now does freak me a bit.
It’s all well and good to be plucky and to get right back on the buses, but I can honestly say that the moment I saw the bus wreck will never, ever leave me.
Over the last few days we’ve all seen pictures of the bus from every conceivable angle ,we all know what it looked like. But this isn’t what will leave me. Neither the fact that there may or may not have been bodies strewn around, I was a bit too far away and certainly didn’t notice anything. More importantly, whenver any of you have seen a picture of a bus it was usually pre-empted with a sentence along the lines of “here is a picutre of a bus that exploded” I had no continuity announcer preparing me for it.
What has tattooed itself onto my mind is the moment I saw it. Bearing in mind that there was subdued chaos all around the area. Lots of people walking around dazed in the street, everyone swapping these power surge stories around. By this stage I was pretty sure that whatever had gone on was a bit more serious than a power surge.
But walking down a road and without any warning whatsoever seeing a double decker bus in pieces, as one crass Sky News reporter tried to emote in what he doubtess hoped would be a prize winning news report “The bus, the symbol of London, in tatters”. But it’s true. I see these things every day, I rarely see them with their roofs blown off.
It was in that second that I knew it was a bomb, it was in that second that I seriously knew that lives were (including my own) in danger.
I didn’t see the explosion, I saw little more blood than some people with cuts on their faces. But I saw the bus shell with no warning. And it really has quite freaked me.
I’m glad I took the day off.