Yes, I Remember

It's hard to believe it's been almost eight years since I left England--I have not yet been back, sadly. I will get back; I feel like my life is finally on that financial upswing, so hopefully I can save some money and make it happen. A visit is long overdue.

It's also hard to believe that it's been eight years today since the London Transit Bombings, a day that hit very close to me, as some of the target points were places I had some sort of emotional connection to, like Liverpool Street Station, and King's Cross.

My reaction to the events that day was, of course, pure horror. I was not in London, but I was close enough to it that these attacks made me feel more personally vulnerable than the September 11 attacks on the United States did. I struggled, that day, to come to grips with my grief for the city and the people in it (and I look back at my "God Bless London" posts with interest, as I have become, in the last eight years, far more agnostic than I was then). Within a couple of weeks of the transit bombings, however, I was back in London, riding the Tube, not worried. I refused to let the terrorists ruin my favorite city for me.

I've never forgotten that day, how, even as the city recoiled from the attack against it, it also banded together in solidarity. Britain has known its share of hardship in facing its enemies, but it always comes out stronger.

I adore London. I can't wait to go back, to walk the streets, so steeped in history even as the modern world bustles around. I want to hear the automated "Mind the gap!" on the Tube and walk along the Thames. I want to see a West End play again, and revel in the delightful chaos of Leicester Square, Camden Town, Oxford Street. I want to take a train east into Essex, watching for the River Crouch to appear, and arrive in Burnham-on-Crouch to see my friends there, to wander those dear, familiar streets and see the river that calmed me so many times that year I lived in England.

And I will. England, I haven't forgotten you, or the terrible day the terrorists attacked you--and, by extension, me.

The Marina in Burnham

Clock Tower on the High Street

Burnham's High Street

St. Mary's Church. I could see this from my classroom across the street.

The River Crouch at Sunset

White Harte Hotel, along the quay.

Big Ben from Trafalgar Square

British Museum

Kensington Gardens (or maybe the Hyde Park end?)

Kensington Palace a few minutes before the sun went bye-bye, the
clouds opened up, and I got SOAKED under my wimpy umbrella.

Marble Arch. London won the Olympics on July 6. They got bombed on
July 7.

King's Cross Station