Criminals? Cowards? ... Heroes..?!...pond life!

Ironic, yah, that people in the above categories (depending on who is telling it) bombed our city just after I published the Taoist Blissful Summer Retreat and Tai Chi Camps blog. Who was it said the winner writes the history? either Churchill or Hitler.

Did no one tell them its been done before, often, and didn't work then? I was born in a bomb blizzard and spent much of the first three years of my life being carried into cellars, underground shelters - wetting my blankets sleeping on a crowded platform in the Tube and my mum's look of compassionate embarrassment - even under a billiard table when the sirens had been too slow. And once, when there had been no warning at all, my Nan brushing my hair, a turquoise brush with black bristles sticking out of pink rubber, we saw from our high window chimney-tops falling from the house across the road. They were big houses, built for girlfriends of the rich and famous: Lily Langtry had lived in one.

If you've read previous blogs you'll know I don't have much time for politicians but my heart began to sing when Ken Livingstone talked about London and Londoners. I understood exactly what he was saying, because I had chosen to live in this city because yes, it does allow me to be myself and live the way I want, and yes it does allow our millions to live mostly in harmony. In some of the places I've lived before, Bomb Thursday would have provoked huge and horrendous retaliation against any community seen as connected.

We allow another point of view, even if we don't agree. But now we are being tested.

We can be proud of ourselves. We are a tolerant and compassionate city, and although we don't much talk to strangers, we do risk our lives for them.

Afterthought: what an elegant two-fingers from the Queen to the pond-life as she rode through London standing in an open vehicle just three days later.