After the bombs

摘要

The capital's Underground rail system has never been a comfortable place to travel. Crowded, unreliable and smelly, it is endured by Londoners rather than loved. Since three simultaneous bombs went off on three Underground trains at 8:50am last Thursday, followed just under an hour later by a bomb on a bus, the discomfort has taken on a macabre quality. Backpacks attract nervous looks. People try too hard not to catch the eyes of young men with brown skin. Much has been made of Londoners' Blitz spirit in the past week. But the comparison jars: people went down into the Tube to shelter during second-world-war air raids. Now the. up escalator feels like the route to safety. In one sense, London is almost back to its teeming normal. Passenger numbers on the Tube are only slightly down when the reduced service is taken into account. Companies had emergency plans to cope with disruptions to their businesses, an innovation since the attacks of September 11th 2001, but decided not to put them into operation. The stockmarket took just a day to recover, indicating that investors were hardly surprised that London had become the target of a successful terrorist attack-and that they thought it had come through the ordeal.