Did I mention the cats?

This is Alfie. He's a bit of a cheekie chappy, pictured here when he first came to live with us about a year ago, but he is the most loving of our cats, who's always up for a bit of a cuddle and a tickle.

Unfortunately, when I took them to the vet's the other week, it was noticed that he'd broken two of his front teeth, possibly by falling. He doesn't seem too bothered, but when I heard how much it would cost to fix (well into four figures) I did. However, he's fully insured, so it's only the excess I have to pay. Thank god for making that decision.....

All I have to do now is to catch him in two week's time............

Well, what a week!

Jobs, eh. Who'd have'em? It's been a hell of a week, not really helped by the fortunately incompetant bombing attack on London last week. Again, one of the attacks was just around the corner from work, in Warren Street.

It's a hell of a time to be living in London. I've been here for just over three years now, and I have to admit that I lost my nerve a little sitting opposite a girl on the 1850 from Charing Cross. She was fiddling with her rucksack, checking her watch. Am I being over sensitive? Perhaps. Probably, even.

I'm not one of the 'We are not afraid' brigade, but, dammit, I'm not. Not really. Perhaps it's denial, or perhaps I'm one of those who thinks the pedestrian crossing outside Holborn underground is far more dangerous than anything on the underground network.

But, for now, we're here. And here to stay.

I live in south-east London, don't you know

London is great, isn't it? (Sorry, gratuitous photo of the Abbey after which my manor is known).

After work, with no need for anything other than public transportation, I have been out for a few drinks, had some dinner, and come home to stroke my lovely pussies. Cats. You know what I meant ;)

I know living in SE London can be a bit of a challenge sometimes (sitting in a restaurant next to several charming though illegitimate children [look that one up]), but sitting out in Blackheath tonight was a million miles from Russell Square, the bombs, the suspended tube line, and, mostly due to the charming-though-slightly-annoying band, just like being on holiday in Spain.

Sitting outside, sun setting over the heath (with the slightly bizarre sight of Canary Wharf just peering over the heath), I was, again, transported away from the London that has been in the news recently.

And it was fabulous.

And then there was silence........

Well, that was a strange experience.

Hundreds and hundreds of people in a square in the centre of London and, if the grass were even harder, you could have heard a pin drop. It might not have been one of the media-favourite centres (King's Cross, outside St Pancras church, etc), but the workers from around Russell Square streamed into the gardens and observed the two minutes' silence like no other silence I have heard before.

Yes, I'd done 9/11 (as an aside, I am sorry that has bypassed 'the eleventh of September' as the moniker), and the Asian tsunami silences, but this was the first terrorist outrage to hit London since I moved to this fair city and, well, as I said before, it has really started to come home to me.

We were just yards from both Russell Square tube station (don't get me going on the difference between the tube and the underground.....) and the Tavistock Sq/Upper Woburn Pl bus bomb, and yet there was a feeling of complete calm, of resignation in one sense but also a steely determination.

Dammit, for better or for worse, this is what we *do*.

I, for one, will carry on doing it. If I die, it will be me (hopefully), and not the demented suicide bomber, who goes to heaven. I'll take tea (or gin, more likely) with my fellow victims, and look down on the perpetrators in hell for ever.

Crickey, that sounded a bit strong. I promise to give you a cat update again soon.

Russell Square post 7 July

I work near Russell Square. Just around the corner from two scenes of devastation which were, last time I looked, still shrouded in secrecy behind large white screens.

I can't say 'that could have been me', though, as my morning journey takes me from south-east London to Holborn or Charing Cross, each of which is followed by a hearty walk. So I don't get the Piccadilly line, nor do I regularly go up Tavistock Square, the site of the bus bomb, except if I'm on my way to the British Library at lunchtime.

I wasn't even at work last Thursday. One of my fillings had fallen out, so I made an appointment with the dentist and arranged to work from home. Just for good measure, I then arranged to take Meggie to the vet's, to ensure her ear was ok after the fight.

I didn't come into work on Friday (we were basically told not to), so all I had seen of the various incidents only yards from my office were the images on television, and on the BBC news website. I barely left the house all weekend.

But coming into work on Monday, walking past these big hoardings and looking at the floral tributes, it really came home to me that this had happened not in the 'out there' distant world of television, but here, the part of London where I work, where I go for drinks with friends, where I pop out to the shops at lunchtime.

It's been quiet around here all week, really. A funny feeling, sort of empty but sort of business as usual. Hmmm.

Cats. Who'd have'em?

Well, that was a bit of an adventure.

We have three cats, rescued from the Celia Hammond place in Lewisham. These two are the boys, Alfie and Oliver. We got these particular cats because we didn't want kittens that anyone would go for. We wanted to rehouse 'difficult' cats, cats that had been without a home for some time.

So, about a year ago, Meggie came to live with us, together with her boys, Alfie and Oliver. At that time, she was two years old, and the boys were a year old. They had been in the shelter for about nine months, having been rescued from a garden where they were living rough.

They had gentle nurturing, first in a pen, then in a bedroom, then in some of the house, then, after about ten months, we let them out. And now they're just cat food tarts. Come in to eat, and then go out again. Didn't someone tell them they were supposed to be pets?

Anyway, Meggie has been in a bit of a fight, and has a cut ear. We caught her (not without its own little adventure) and treated her with a cream, but she escaped in a bid for freedom which will, I'm sure, be made into a film one day. They're all due to go to the vet's on Saturday, so we decided yesterday to start to get them all in.

And we've just got Meggie, the last one to come in. My arm is still bleeding. Considering we feed her and all, she's pretty ungrateful, I have to say. Anyway, they're now shut in my study, so I fully expect my books to be in shreds by the morning. So if you see a man crying on the train to Charing Cross tomorrow, you'll know it's me.

Ho hum!