Terror will not stop me returning to a city I love
FOR the past 25 years or so, I’ve occasionally frequented a tiny pub in London. It is hidden down a narrow, L-shaped laneway running between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road and, whenever I am in that part of the world, I try to drop in for a pint.
My most recent visit was one afternoon during the Easter break. I specifically remember that it was Good Friday because as soon as I walked through the door, Richard, the Corkborn manager, made a quip about the lengths an Irishman was prepared to go to in order to avoid the pub ban back home.
During the conversation that followed I mentioned a few things I had lined up for the days ahead, including a guided walking tour around Westminster the following morning. This was just three weeks after a 52-year-old killed four people with his car and injured almost 50 more nearby, before stabbing an unarmed police officer to death.
Wryly remarking on my plans for the following day, someone in the company said: ‘Brave man.’ But then we all agreed that there was unlikely to be any place safer in the entire country at that moment than Westminster, given the increased security measures following the attack.
Unfortunately, though, it is impossible to keep any big city 100% protected from terrorism.
The problem is all the greater when it is a place as geographically vast and with such a sizeable population as London.
The day after our Westminster tour, we made a much-anticipated return visit to the Tower of London. Due to it being a beautiful morning, we walked from Covent Garden up the Strand and Fleet Street, stopping off briefly to experience the Easter Sunday service at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The remainder of our route took us just past London Bridge, where Saturday night’s atrocity started. So I don’t mind admitting that as utterly sickened as I was by news of the attack, there was an element of relief in my reaction as well.
Granted, some observers point out that similar outrages in far-flung corners of the world seldom give us much pause for thought. But it is only human nature to be more affected by incidents we can closely identify with.
Worryingly, it is getting nearer to home all the time. These attacks are happening in places that many of us know well.
Even though I’m not particularly widely travelled, I am familiar with more of the murder scenes than I’d like. It was only after the Bataclan outrage in Paris, in which almost 90 music fans were slaughtered, that I discovered I’d previously stayed and socialised only a few minutes’ walk away.
Eight months later 86 people were killed on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, a seafront walkway that I’ve strolled on countless times. But the resonance is inevitably greater still when the people being killed are our nearest neighbours.
As well as the shared history between the two islands, we also have so many cultural reference points in common. We speak the same language, listen to the same music, watch the same TV programmes.
And now we have seen two dreadful attacks on London, arguably the greatest metropolis on the planet. The carnage in Manchester a couple of weeks ago was even more horrific.
Many of us have walked the same streets and been in the same venues. Huge numbers of us have friends and loved ones living in Britain’s major cities.
Nor should we forget that Ariana Grande took to the stage in Dublin just 48 hours before her concert in Manchester was targeted. But even if it is beginning to sound like a bit of a cliché, we can’t allow the terrorists to force us into changing our way of life either.
One evening last week, I saw an email in my inbox advertising cutprice air fares. On impulse, I booked flights to London for the autumn.
Only after I’d completed the booking did I realise that the dates rang a bell. In an example of an earlyonset senior moment, it turned out they clashed with an event in Dublin for which I have bought tickets.
At the time, I decided to forget the flights and go ahead with the original plan. But now I’m determined to do the opposite.