(no subject)

[madwitch]

I should go to sleep. There is a very real chance that I will be about a quarter of the IT department tomorrow. The rest may find it hard to get in, word around the BTP having been that there will be very few trains running into London tomorrow.

But I don't want to. I wish there was a way onto the roof here. I want to sit somewhere high up and watch the city in all its midnight glory and listen to its fabulous racket. There's something about this place. There's something about this country, but here especially. You see it every time something like this happens. The Stiff Upper Lip, the Stubborness of the British Tommy (this is *my* trench, I dug it, it's smelly and rat ridden and awful and I hate it, but I dug it, it's mine and you're not having it, you bastard), whatever. Call it what you like, amounts to the same thing.

You bomb us, you kill and injure people. We go the long way to get to work. We walk home. We fail, on the most part, to panic. We run, and we help. Our city fails to grind to a halt. We don't demand our government make concessions to your cause, and would probably be really annoyed if they did. We're sad, but we turn that into fuel to keep us going. We're *good* at this.

Take a good look at our history. We're very very bad at giving in or giving up. Every group probably thinks they'll be the ones to make us give up and beg our government to stop the horror. Every group is wrong. You'd think they'd have noticed this by now.

Sadly, they haven't. And people get hurt because of it.

And down in the subconcious pulse of Londoners (and beyond, yes, but the pulse here is intense because it's closer), we've remembered all of them. All the dead, all the wounded. And that just makes us all the more determined to never give in, never be scared of our City, love it all the more and get on with life.

We are a *very* odd bunch of people. And I love us all.

I'm going to go watch my City breathe.

Comments

[incursus.livejournal.com]

That's quite poetic in it's own way.

I like to sit and watch my city as well. It's very comforting to feel part of something larger, that even though you know it's made of concrete, glass, brick, metal and stone, is still somehow alive.

[flamma-lupus.livejournal.com]

I sadly can't see much of the city from here, but would be doing the same if I could.

London's still very much alive, even now.

[zenmeisterin.livejournal.com]

I agree and if I had a rooftop I would be doing the same right now. My city got hit - the city that accepts me and that I call home. But it's still here and so are most of the people and places in it. It's amazing how fast an intense srge of anger and growling defensiveness over one's city can transmute in practicality and sorting people & shit out.

But this is London. It's too big - too diverse and too full of people who have already seen and lived through just about everything that can ever be thanks to this amazing and strange city. They can't bring it down with a few oversized firecrackers in confined spaces ;-)

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Nope. They can't. They can, indeed, Bite us. :)

[malakite.livejournal.com]

A Scotsman and I were having a discussion about what makes the British the British, and consequently the English the English, the Scots the Scots and the Welsh the Welsh last year. The best way of describing it we could come up with together was that the British as a whole are something like a family. We slag each other off, wind each other up and generally not be complementary towards each other but if someone who's not one of Us buts in, we all round on that person. It might be more apt if we described it as something akin to a pack mentality. Nobody pushes one of us around except one of us.

Indeed, as you said, we don't do this whole 'giving up' thing. The perps obviously didn't study the British psyche properly.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Exactly. As I said. A very odd, but wonderful, bunch of people.

[medusa-nw.livejournal.com]

Nor the psyche of the millions of foreigners who live in London, me being one of them. :-D
Thick fuckers, if you want to bring a city to its knees by bombing it to smithereens, don't pick one that has lived with the threat of IRA bombs for 30 years. 'Cause we're used to it, and will get on that number 30 bus the next morning just like we always have. You'd have to kill Every. Single. One. of us before we'd let it change our lives!

And that walk home yesterday afternoon was quite something... Thousands of people not being scared, just having a nice walk home in the sunshine, stopping off for a coffee or a pint on the way. Very pleasant, and not at all panicky!

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

That is, without a doubt, the best icon *ever*

[glensc.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd knock a quick one up just for you then.
Hmm time for a quickie >;)

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

*speechless*

That, my dear, is just too damned wonderful for words....

Thankyou...:)

Damn skippy!

[vilenspotens.livejournal.com]

And A-fucking-</>men

[glensc.livejournal.com]

There is a very real chance that I will be about a quarter of the IT department tomorrow.


Do you think your IT dept would want an IT work placement until 23 Sept? I've got MCSA and MSCE in Win2K and am sort of house trained. If so could you find out who I'd have to get in touch with for me.

Cheers.