london bombs

The contrast between the day when we heard that London had the Olympics and the day of the bombs has often been mentioned. In both cases, Ken Livingston described London as a place where people were "free to be themselves". It's certainly a place where you meet people whose origins are all over the world, yet consider themselves to be Londoners.

I see myself as a Londoner - it's more like a different country than the Capital of England/Britain, and so even though I don't live there now, I identify myself like that. It's more than 'my hometown', but a way of describing myself for those that understand.
I feel uncomfortable with the "we're all Londoners now" idea, even though it's meant in very good faith. The thing about London is that it's NOT full of stoic Brits. It's full of a lot of people, some good, some not. We have plenty of 'our own' murderers and rapists, and it can be a dangerous place to live as every Londoner knows. Because of that, many of us lock our car doors and don't walk home alone late at night. Where I used to live was studded with yellow police notices saying "witnesses wanted for armed robbery/ assault, murder". My feeling was that the main risk for peace-loving citizens like me , apart from mugging, was getting caught in the crossfire between a quite different set of people out to kill each other.

None of this has stopped me from greatly loving London and enjoying myself when I go back. And feeling touchy when other people describe the place in unrealistic ways. The hype about the Games was as superficial as much of the talk about the bombs and the bombers. Will either of those change London? almost certainly because in its nature it's a changing kind of place.