I was on a Piccadilly Line train when it all happened. I had just got on the train, after a long wait, at Arsenal station - the long wait because there had been earlier service problems on the line. The train moved off into the tunnel towards Holloway Road. Halfway there, it stopped, and stayed stopped. The driver talked to us after a couple of minutes, about power failures on the line. For the next 20 minutes or so, the announcements talked of ever more severe power failures (but only of power failures). It eventually became clear that we were going nowhere, fast.
After about half an hour, the driver announced that there was a train behind us, which was going to drive up behind us, we would all walk through, and the train would drive us back to Arsenal. An operation of about an hour then ensued, as Tube staff moved through trains, and shepherded us all onto the replacement train. I say us all, probably only about 2/3 of the train managed to get onto the new train. For about half an hour, we were stuck in limbo - Tube staff were trying to get everybody crushed up together on the new train, but nobody would get that intimate without some guarantee that we would be moving soon. In the end, the train moved off and drove 2/3 of us back up to Arsenal station.
During this, I did start to wonder about the power failure. How could a train drive right up behind us, and why could our train not move? I knew that the Tube use "power failure" as a codeword for many things, and started to think about what could be happening.
Eventually, we unloaded at Arsenal station.
When we surfaced, it started to become apparent that all was not well. I had about 10 text messages, all saying "Are you OK" (or variations on that theme). The mobile network was in total meltdown (by now it was almost 11am). I went home, and took a couple of fellow passengers with me, to use my landline to call work. We got in, put BBC News on, and it all started to hit us.
About 15 minutes later, I found out that my girlfriend had been on the train in front of me. It had blown up between Kings Cross and Russell Square stations, killing over 20 people. Luckily, and very unusually, she was in the carriage at the opposite end of the train. She was at that end because of the earlier service problems, which made the train very busy at the front. Its not often you are grateful for Tube service problems, but they saved my girlfriend's life on this occasion. She was one of the first to be rescued from the train, and so got back above ground by around 9:20. She had spent 90 minutes in complete shock, worrying about where I was, whilst I was underground in blissful ignorance.
When we eventually met up again, at about 2pm, we talked about what had happened, then went out for dinner, to toast the fact that we were still alive (and because we had no food in the house). Most of Islington seemed to be doing the same, its amazing how London reacts to something like this - by going out for dinner!!
I'm not going to go into the political stuff on this, but I was amazingly proud of London and its people today. Life just goes on in London, it is far too big and important a city to be halted by anything like this (even though, for a few hours, our day was disrupted). Those of us that live in London accept the ever present risk that this may happen. The fact that it happened today was not a surprise, or even anything very unexpected. In many ways, tomorrow in London will be just like yesterday.
In memory of the 52 that lost their lives.
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