Interview with an office worker who was working close to the site of the London bombings on 7 July 2005.
‘I wasn’t hurt or at the scene of what happened, the office I worked at was close to Tottenham Court tube station and the bomb that went off in the bus in Russell Square was just 10 minutes away, so we heard the bomb go off.
I had taken an over ground train to Charring Cross and walked the rest of the way that day. I was oblivious that anything had happened until my best friend rang me as I was walking into my office building and asked if I was okay, she told me that there had been a bomb explosion in London, at that point in the day there had only been the one at Kings Cross tube station.
I remember everyone in the office was saying ‘what’s going on?’ No-one really knew what was happening. I remember when I got to my desk I called my boyfriend, he was in his office in the east end of London. As I was talking to him we heard the second bomb go off, it was so loud, I said “did you hear that?” It was incredibly loud, my office was only 10 minute’s walk away from Russell Square where it happened. We weren’t sure if it was a terrorist attack. I rang my parents and spoke to my mum, I didn’t know what was happening. The main thing I felt was confusion.
We didn’t leave the office until the afternoon. It was unusual to have so many people walking on the streets, but it was because nobody was taking transport. Me and my boyfriend decided to walk most of the way home which took hours. I can remember thinking that I didn’t feel safe getting on a train, so we got on the bus. I can remember when I got on the bus, seriously thinking about where the safest place to sit was if someone had a bomb, downstairs or upstairs. I can remember that I felt really relieved when I got off that bus. We went to our friend’s flat rather than straight home, it felt safer being with more people. It must have only been days after that when I got the bus again. There was this overwhelming feeling within the community, that we weren’t going to “let them win” people were saying that’s what they want, for you not to live your life.
I remember there was a woman I worked with who had been on the tube behind the one where the bomb had gone off at Kings Cross, she had to walk through the tunnels to get out, she said she wasn’t going to get on a tube ever again, which sounded extreme but understandable for her. I didn’t have to do that so don’t know how I would have been.
I remember I just wanted to ring my parents to let them know I was okay. In reality I suppose I called them to say I’m scared and I don’t know what is happening and spoke to my boyfriend to make sure he was okay.
I think because of what happened it became normal for me for a while to have to make a decision about something like where to sit on a bus and not feeling safe. There were loads of people, we were quite packed in and I felt so relieved to get off, not to be on transport because that’s where the attacks happened.
The thing that helped was being with others, there were so many people about. I guess if we had been somewhere more remote or been the only ones then it may have been different. We were with so many other people, London is so big, I was with my colleagues and we were all in the same building, it was a shared experience. I don’t think we had any emotional support at work. We had been hearing from people who knew people who had been close to it, but I didn’t know anyone who had been hurt. Another woman at work had been walking away from Russell Square when the bomb on the bus went off.
Talking to people helped, I think we all went into work the next day. It also helped that there was a sense of it being all over by then. We were watching the news all the time, we knew that they had caught the bombers or they had blown themselves up I don’t remember. I think we all felt relief the days after we were talking about it, is this it now, is it safe to go home? It helped that we were all in the same boat, we were glad to be in a big building, we were all stood around watching the TV, it wasn’t like a normal day.
I think this helped because we were together in a large room, and high up so it felt like we were all safe. I spoke to my boyfriend several times, checking in with each other, and being able to speak to my parents, having those connections helped.’
‘As time went on that day things became clearer and we were hopeful that this was the end of the attack. The longer it went on the more we were thinking, so where else is it going to be. If we weren’t watching the news we were asking each other is anything happening, it was confusing not knowing what was happening. Being with other people that had been through it as well really helped.
I think for some people who haven’t lived there, they might have been hesitant to go to London because of what happened and thought it wasn’t safe. I think as I had already lived in London for a few years by then, I had a sort of London resilience. For me it was just one day, it was a one off, I didn’t feel like the women who said “I am never going on the tube again”. It wasn’t a typical thing. It was frightening and awful but it didn’t happen every day. It wasn’t a huge amount of time after 9/11. I probably thought it was one of those types of occurrences and maybe it helped me to put it into context as a terrorist attack.
I guess I felt fortunate that I hadn’t been on the tube that morning as I sometimes did take the tube. I would have been inconvenienced if I had taken the tube, but we wouldn’t have known what was happening until we reached our destination. It wasn’t like there was Facebook or anything like that or Twitter.
I just remember thinking that I wasn’t very far away from where both of the bombs went off.’