2005-07-07 - 1:38 p.m.

I can't help feeling a slight sense of disappointment.

When the explosions occurred in London this morning, I was safely mooching around my leafy suburb maisonette.

Now, of course I'm not saying I'd rather have been blown through the roof of a tourist bus, but if I'm to be excoriatingly honest, part of me would have liked to have been a bit closer to the action.

Doesn't everyone have a bit of Eyewitness Envy? To be uninjured and preferably inconvenienced, but close enough to have stories and people wanting to hear what you've got to say? To witness?

The further you are from danger, the less you feel alive.

Although had I been an eyewitness, I fear I may have taken the same prematurely darkly comic approach as a chap on the radio this morning. I fully understand why a man asked about what he'd seen would say:

"...women screaming, that kind of thing, you know, that you usually get in this kind of situation."

but hope I would think better of it. Similarly, my mind would also work this way...

"I've seen people under sheets outside the British Medical Association. Ironic, if you're going to do this kind of thing, that's the place to do it I suppose."

but again, hope that my instinct would remind me not to underestimate the second element in the equation:

Tragedy + Time = Comedy

Though some may argue this is an instinct I patently lack.

Hmm. You're still worried about me, but in a different way.

Incidentally, for those outside London who may be under the impression that the whole city is ablaze, these explosions are actually in quite a concentrated area to the east of the West End. Edgeware Road is a bit further west but it's otherwise a relatively focussed bit of town. The maps they show on the news perhaps give the impression that this is more geographically widespread.

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude