my goodness, is there anything to say now?

breaking my heart to see people reporting with bandaged heads, and yet still in composed voices with only the slightest touch of bewilderment on their faces. perhaps a sense of resignation too? just to remind everyone that they've seen this before? who can say.

only the inappropriate things are coming into my head. whenever i watch Tony Blair, i always think of the guy in Dead Ringers and start mentally putting in "concerned forehead, agitated baldspot". partly from Blair, partly from my uncle (who, luckily, was at Liverpool St an hour earlier than usual), i wonder what the sound of millions of upper lips twanging to attention would be.

i realise the effort not to draw connections with the Olympics. but worried thought that bombs were also set up to go in Paris, New York and Madrid, just waiting for the word of the IOC. and then quietly dismantling the bombs and the plans in the cities lucky enough to miss out.

response from political leaders puzzling as usual. Nic, you're completely right about the hypocrisy thing. it made me wonder what would happen if, rather than all the "strength", "resolve" and "unity" rhetoric, what would actually happen if the leaders said "this is terrible, please don't kill anyone else. how can we resolve this?".

i'm not being an idealist about this, i'm actually just curious. (to demonstrate that i'm not an idealist, my money would be on very little changing at all, except perhaps the leaders).

John Howard gave a very unpolished and stilted address. The highlights for me were his oddly timed pauses (i couldn't work out if he was also thinking of the Dead Ringers version of Tony Blair, or if he was trying not to be distracted by people out of shot making faces and dropping their pants at him) and the strange message i got from it that the worst thing about anyone who goes around killing lots of people is that they are far from normal and average. gosh.

and always, always sad and sorry to see a horrible act and a terrible day used for economic and political advantage. i can't believe that this particular brand of weldschmerz disgust has become routine.