London. Wednesday 6th July 2005. A city full of celebration. Against all the odds, we had won the bid. East End regeneration, improved infrastructure, a festival of sport in a world-class city; no longer mere rhetoric for after anger, tension and near heartache, it had been confirmed - the Olympics were coming to these fair shores in 2012. Yes! And more importantly, we had beaten the French.
Within twenty-four hours, this euphoria had been replaced with despair.
I was going out that Thursday evening to see Jack Dee perform in Hammersmith, so rather than cycling to work, I was getting the Tube. I was at Tower Hill station just after half-past nine. The place was rammed. A man in an orange jacket said there was a power failure on the whole underground network. Best to take a bus.
I looked across the road. There were twice as many people at the bus stop, than there were waiting outside the Tube station.
I texted my brother: "Typical. The one day I need to get the Tube and there are problems on the line."
I decided to walk.
It all felt rather odd. And then my brother texted a reply. Part 2/2 read "Go back." I had no idea what Part 1 said, as it didn't come through.
I stopped at a phone box and tried ringing my brother, but got no reply. I tried calling the office to tell them I would be late, but no reply also. I tried again and the phone seemed dead. I tried another payphone and that was dead too. And no mobile phone reception.
I took a moment to listen and observe what was around me. I could hear sirens and helicopters, and see lots of worried and confused faces.
"Go back." Why? Sirens. Helicopters. Worried. Confused. Something was seriously wrong.
I gave up trying to get to work and headed home. A man driving a white van stuck his head out of the window. He looked visibly angry and upset. He was listening to speech radio at some volume. He held up three fingers and shook his head, "That's the third one." Something told me he wasn't commenting on the travel news.
I ducked into an office building on Upper Thames Street to see if they had the internet. The receptionist broke it to me:
"Bombs. On the Tube. At least three, maybe more.” I stared at her with a mixture of disbelief and sombre acceptance. “Think I might take a taxi home", she added, nervously.
© Mojo Wellington 2020
I got back home to find my housemate still in bed. He'd been struggling to sleep-in because of all the choppers circling overhead. I told him what had happened.
We sat in front of the telly, trying to absorb the news.
The only solution was alcohol. So we went to the pub. But we couldn't take our minds of it - the TVs were on and no one was really in the mood for talking: the bus in Tavistock Square, the injured survivors outside King's Cross, the stretchered-man being resuscitated in the back of an ambulance, the American media wanting to compare it to 9/11.
The disbelief, the hurt, the anger, the confusion, the relief it wasn't one of us, the guilt that it wasn't one of us.
For the next few days, weeks, the Tube trains were eerily quiet. We sat uneasily, reading papers detailing the bombings. A rucksack was suddenly a murderous weapon. Even a padded jacket.
Queen + Paul Rodgers were scheduled to play Hyde Park the weekend after the bombings. It was moved to the following Friday; free tickets were distributed to police officers, fire fighters and medical crew.
Roger Taylor performed Say It's Not True - a song about finding out you were HIV positive. He made some puerile remark about the band all wearing condoms that day. We needed to protect ourselves, yet with such bitter, cruel irony, recent events had reminded us of our vulnerability.
At the end of the show, Brian May dedicated We Are The Champions to the emergency services. I'd always disliked the song, but one line had never been so apt:
"I've done my sentence, but committed no crime."
