London Bombs

Woke up yesterday morning to news that a car bomb had been found and defused outside a night club in London's West End. Kind of creepy, weird. Just for the record I was no where near the area where the car bombs were discovered.

By days end it had become obvious that there were 2 bombs and so London really was lucky not to have had serious carnage.

Part of me is obviously clearly NOT thinking about it. I remember visiting London in the 1970s and going to a boat show with family and the show was evacuated because of a bomb or bomb threat. Its just the edge of a memory but now I'm wondering how a city deals with the threat.

Obviously London has been dealing with it for a long time with "the Troubles" -- which how they refer to the whole Irish period of strife. Its odd being an American here because while we shoot each other with alarming frequency, we haven't been that big on blowing each other up. There's something very disturbing about bombs. And how as an American, who is walking around with the baggage of 9/11, supposed to feel when London has decades of internal British strife and the terrible events of July 2005.

After the Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City, I started looking at buildings and vehicles differently. Of course the bombings in the Mideast, Afghanistan, Iraq all make you think about it - but it seems such a disconnected thing to your daily life. Which is odd given the history but there you go.