I had lots of ideas for posts this week but there’s only one thing on my mind now – my lovely London.
Politicians are going to urge us to stay strong and carry on – and we have no choice. We can’t be protected against madness and evil every second of every day. Child Two was guiding a school trip around the House of Commons a couple of weeks ago, I sit on a committee that meets there every now and again, Mr X works there, all of us sail past Westminster on a regular basis as we rush around the capital. Chance plays a huge – and sometimes horrible – part in all our lives. I grew up with the IRA, lived round the corner from the Camden bomb, heard the Harrods bomb go off, spent years living with the inconvenience of not being able to throw old train tickets away at stations because bombs were left in bins (until they introduced see-through plastic bags, yay!). It’s the same old, same old. I’m reading a book set in 17th century England and there is skulduggery aplenty. As long as there have been people, there have been evil people too.
But there will also always be the good – like the staff of St Thomas’s hospital who ran to Westminster Bridge yesterday, before having any idea of what was going on, simply to help others.
The only message I can take from this is that for every bad deed, there’s a good one. And, as my school motto declared, ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’ – love conquers all. Rather an odd, and rather racy, slogan for a girls’ school, but an excellent one for London today I think.