Padraig's safe and well

A nasty feeling it gave, to have travelled by tube into King's Cross just a few hours before the bomb, and to have been challenged by someone worried about security about the provenance of Pad's luggage.

My pal is safe and well. I'd left him at Knightsbridge tube station. Here's an extract from the email he sent me yesterday:

I'm safe and well here in London. I'm staying at the Olympic House
Hotel in Sussex gardens, Paddington-just a stone's throw from the
Royal Norfolk Hotel (where I stayed at the end of last cycle ) and
Paddington Station. I wasn't on the tube this morning between 9am and
10 when the bombs went off. The first I knew that anything was wrong
was when I turned on the tv in the hotel room at 11.30am this morning
and saw the breaking news headline on BBC News 24. The strange thing
was I had gone out to HSBC ATM machine next to Paddington tube station
to get some cash at about 9.15am. I noticed a lot of people streaming
out of the station instead of going in and there were a lot of
ambulances with blaring sirens outside. It took ages to get through the
crowds but nobody seemed to be talking so I didn't overhear anything
that might have prompted me to ask someone what was going on. I
returned to the hotel and went to my room and lay down to sleep
again. I was still recovering at that stage from the overdose of wine
from yesterday. I fell asleep and was awakened some time later by the
sound of a helicopter flying quite low overhead. I also thought this
was a bit strange but I turned over and went back to sleep.
When I eventually woke up and turned on the tv I just couldn't believe
what I was seeing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there
Read more

LTPTP XXV: We Shall Overcome

Image
We shall indeed.  It's a lovely wee tune to learn.  I've almost memorized it this morning, the idea being, when I encounter a piano, I want something to sit down and play on the bugger.  I've a feeling that my keyboard's keys are lighter than a proper piano's, and there'll be a bit of effort transferring the skills I've gotten so far.  Probably, at some point this year, I'll be in workplace with a piano.  I'll print off some simple music and scales, and work at it, but it's likely to be in a public place so I want something to avoid making a twat of myself initially. It feels right that this should be the first tune I learn by heart.
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more