A few days in history

Well there has been a lot happening over hare lately, a new prime minister, 2 car bombs and one aimed at an airport. Then there is the job offer I have to consider and the good news that i got my visa and can stay for another two years of dreary rain.

Summer this year hasn't materialised yet, it has been a month of rain, whereas this time last year I arrived into a heatwave of terrible sweltering conditions. But I am confident summer is on its way! Seriously, I am!

So I have been offered my contract position as a permanent job. This does of course mean a pay cut, but then there are benefits as well. It is conditional on me getting my visa, and on us agreeing to a pay level. Fortunately I have received my visa, miraculously, after it survived the flooding in Sheffield affecting the Home Office, the Royal Mail office getting flooded, and finally the Postal Strike on Friday. Turns out it was delivered on Friday anyway, despite the postal strike. But the home office did have the good grace to tell me over the phone (with a bit of pushing), that I was successful, literally just in time for work to offer me the full time job.

So anyway, that just boring personal stuff about my future... More importantly, 2 car bombs were found in the West End, firstly on Haymarket, just a couple of hundred meters up the road from New Zealand House (i.e. the NZ Embassy), and secondly, a few blocks further south towards Whitehall. Plus there was the jeep driven into the airport at Glasgow. It strange, since this is the first time something like this has happened in London since I have been here, though it is a bit of an anticlimax in a sense because (fortunately) no one was hurt and half the perps have been caught already. But the terror threat remains "critical", meaning an attack is imminent. Not that they really know, but its probably a fair call. But life goes on - nobody is doing much of anything different, though maybe the west end was a little quieter last night. If anything, it could just as much be the rain that kept people away.

Living where I do, on a busy street with various "western" fast food outlets at my doorstep, I am half waiting for something to happen and find myself coming home to my room being blown away. OK, very unlikely I know, but more plausible that it could happen to me rather than someone else not on such a busy street. Perhaps the multiculturalism of the immediate area will stop it from being a target though? But I guess bombs and bombers don't discriminate when it comes down to it.

The fact is my "moments of danger" this week were the fight on the platform at Moorgate where one guy was threatening to throw another on tracks (after the other declined to "take it outside"), and then the P-high Brazilian on the tube who couldn't stop fidgeting, sweating and generally looking like he was about to completely go nuts!

I thought I might have something intelligent or all encompassing to say about these terrible events, but alas I do not. Its just as simple as get on with it, your more likely to be stabbed by a hoodie than bombed by an equally disaffected immigrant.