Very scary

It is a strange and terrible thing to be phoned at work by a very dear and concerned friend asking how I am, and saying "So, James didn't go to London today, then?" and upon being informed that he did, responding "But he's OK, then?" It is at this point that icy fingers, hackneyed metaphor that they are, really do start creeping around your throat, choking you with incipient panic, as horrible suspicions start to arise. "Why? What's happened?" "There's been some... explosions. I think you should ring him." Needless to say, he's OK. I wouldn't have spun it out like that if he wasn't. But it's terrifyingly close to his work - on the doorstep of Liverpool Street Station - and the first explosion was on the line that he will be taking to his new office, which I believe they were already supposed to have moved into. I can't feel too sorry for myself, or in fact him, given that we're both OK - the worst that's happened is that he's got a difficult journey home, and I had a very fretful fifteen minutes - I only wish that everyone could say the same. But I know that there will be distraught people for whom there is no wash of relief as they hear their partner's voice on the phone, people who will realise that as they were lounging in bed feeling sorry that they had to get up, friends or family were indeed caught up in searing violence, and those who will have to come to terms with the fact that the last thing they said to their partner was indeed something banal about tonight's dinner. And I feel for them more than I can say.