barcade and the london underground

There was me, that is Hannah, and my droog, that is Christy-Claire, and we sat in Barcade trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening...

oof, i can't tell you how good it is to be back in the big a. up until last evening i was actually feeling kind of displaced, 'cause going back to london had felt weird, then coming back here felt like - well, i guess kind of like coming home, but i felt a little guilty admitting that. and i hadn't seen anyone - apart from running into suarez briefly outside whole foods when he was on the phone. oh, and randi on broadway on my way to class. but you know what i mean - so finally hanging out last night in the 'burg, getting falafel on union then heading up to barcade to nurse drinks and talk shit - and pose with my copy of the NME, apparently [i think that's one of the dudes from My Chemical Romance or something, but not entirely sure] - was good good good. back to the norm.

[man, a clockwork orange is just brilliant. read the book. see the film. i urge you.]

so anyway, back in london, i went for dinner on saturday night with my childhood best friend. she's exactly a week older than me, i've known her my entire life. i like that we're still close. so we were eating dinner and her mum was asking me about thoughts on london, if anything seemed to have changed, anything that surprised me. my answer? the tubes.

i haven't been back to london in five months or so, and in that time there have two terrorist attacks on the London Underground, one successful, one not. having seen how much security was stepped up over here - a very visible police presence at almost every station, random bag checks etc - i thought it would be pretty similar in london, seeing as that's where the attacks actually happened.

not a thing. the tubes seemed be running as ever - mostly okay but still with random line closures here and there, frequent delays and so on, but there didn't seem to be any extra security, apart from the odd PA announcement on the tube about suspicious packages. but london has endured the IRA bombing campaigns, so people were - or should have been, it was certainly something i grew up aware of - suspicious packages and unattended bags and so on. the only time i saw police was at liverpool street station (one of the targets of the successful bomb attacks) on the first sunday there, after brunch with james d, james h and leith, and hanging out in bethnal green, on my way home there were policemen milling about the main entrance to the tube lines there. but that's *it*.

then this morning, on my way to work, there are like five officers standing at the PATH station, someone's been yanked aside and is having their bag inspected...

i don't know if that whole furore with the brazilian electrician being shot after mistakenly being identified as a potential suicide bomber has made London wary of being too OTT on preventative measures or something, but it seems like they're doing nothing - nothing visible, at least - to possibly stop future attacks or reassure the public. i'm not saying i agree with bag checks, and i'm glad that london has got itself going again after the attacks, but it just seemed odd to me that it was as if nothing had ever happened...