In 2000, on my way home from three months in the USA, I stopped off in Guildford for a week to visit two friends from Malta who had both moved there. My arrival coincided with a massive petrol shortage, so we didn't get out much, but I was happy to just putter around. One of my friends insisted that I couldn't leave without seeing London though (and I'm glad she did), so on my last day we went into the city and spend the day there before my evening flight.
We got the train up and then used the Underground to go to Heathrow and drop off my rucksack and suitcase, then we had lunch in the Texan Embassy, fed the pigeons in Trafalgar square, visited 221b Baker Street, oohed and aahed in Harrods, and went to the Science Museum where I had to make the difficult decision about whether to look at the actual museum or else at the Star Trek: Federation Science exhibition that had just opened. The geek in me won (I used to be something of a Trekkie when I was a kid).
Afterwards I joked that we spend more time below London that day than above it, but I didn't mind because I thought that the Tube was really cool, and following the maps was fun. I couldn't afford the T-shirt, but my budget stretched to a tin of mints...
I can't imagine how horrific it must have been to be on the Underground this morning - the images coming out are terrifying, especially those that seem to have been taken by a camera phone while walking out through the tunnels.
Today was my first day of work at a part-time job doing secretarial work, and I was isolated from my usual news sources, until my boss's wife came down and said "Did you all hear what happened in London?".
Later on she had the TV on and I heard the reporters on Sky and realised that it was very bad. I asked my boss if he minded me logging on because I wanted to check if Sharon was ok - she's the only person I know in London. I figured that even if she couldn't blog, some other Maltese bloggers were sure to have news of her.
It was a relief to see that she's OK.
Immanuel, Toni and Jacques write about their ties with London and Russell Square, Nina has managed to account for almost all her friends and family, Kenneth wonders what would happen if such a thing happened here in Malta, and Owen points to the Flickr London bomb blasts pool of photos.
Aw kerha (as one says affectionately in Maltese), thank you for thinking of me. So many people did, it was quite overwhelming.
Posted by: Sharon | July 08, 2005 at 01:53
We love sharon, we do!
Posted by: MaltaGirl | July 08, 2005 at 10:42
There you have in the last paragraph - a spontanous unintentional 'Carnival' blog - even though the subject is obviously sad because of what happened.
Posted by: Arcibald | July 11, 2005 at 23:03
Well Robert does this sort of thing all the time, but the point of a Carnival is that the bloggers themselves choose the post they want to submit :-)
Posted by: MaltaGirl | July 11, 2005 at 23:08