7/7: "Safe as Houses"

"Let me know that you're safe,
Safe as houses."

On 7/7 I was on my way from East London to Swindon, Wiltshire to meet my new boss. She was based at our new offices there while I was based in ancient offices just off Regent’s Street. I was crossing London on the tube to get to Paddington Station to pick up the overground train to Swindon at 9.15.

I started off on the Central Line. My intention was to change at Oxford Circus and there take the Bakerloo Line to Paddington. When I got to Oxford Circus an announcement declared there were severe delays on the Bakerloo Line. Muttering imprecations at the inefficiency of the London Underground, I stayed on to Bond Street, to pick up the Jubilee Line. This took me to Baker Street where I changed again to the Hammersmith & City Line. I was cutting it fine by now – it was about 8.45. From Edgware Road, the next stop, we started pulling out of the station. The tunnel opens out here, the line bends and trains going in opposite directions pass each other side by side for a short stretch. An eastbound train started to pass us. I could see its passengers through the lit windows. Then there was a bang and the lights went out. The train slammed to a stop. I was standing at the time and was thrown sideways. I held onto the ceiling strap to avoid being thrown to the ground. I could just glimpse behind us the lights of Edgware Station from where the line bends.

The carriage filled with soot and smoke. We had obviously crashed. There were initial cries of panic, of fear that the carriage was on fire. Many of those still standing then crouched down on the floor. Like a child I stayed standing, feeling foolish. Two young men threw themselves to open windows. After some minutes the soot and dust settled on us and it became clear that we weren’t on fire.

I thought at that point, and for some time later, that the crash was the result of a fault on the train or track. The bang might have been something falling from the undercarriage or an obstruction on the line or something projecting from the carriage which passed us. A few years before, on the Central Line, part of the undercarriage of a train had come loose and wrecked the track. This had closed the line for several months for repairs.

There were cries from the carriages in front. An emergency light came on, but it was feeble. After some minutes the emergency crew entered from the carriage behind through the connecting doors, told us it was OK and not to move till told. They went through into the carriage in front. I heard moans. A man’s voice saying he was trapped. I couldn’t position the voice in the dark. A member of the emergency team eventually managed to locate him, trapped between one of the emergency doors and the track below, further down the train, and talked to him calmly, reassuring him help was on the way. Other members of the emergency team were leading passengers from the carriages ahead though ours. Most had facial cuts from flying glass. We stood aside to let them pass.

After about 45 minutes all the light wounded seem to have been got out. We were then lead back through the train, descended onto the track through the last connecting door and walked along the track back to Edgware Road Station. As I came out of the station wounded passengers were sitting along the wall holding cloths and bandages to their wounded faces, some weeping, most calmly awaiting the ambulance.

I ducked under the tape that the police had stretched around the entrance to the station. Someone said there had been a power surge and the whole London Underground was shut down. I confirmed this when I tried to get back onto the Central line at Marble Arch. I managed to phone the office from a call box, to say I was going home to clean up.

I started to walk eastward along Oxford Street and hopped on a bus going in that direction. It was one of the very new double deckers that had just come into service with a TV screen on the upper deck. At the time this was full of the news that London was to hold the 2012 Olympics.

“We can’t even run a proper underground system,” I thought. “How the hell are we going to manage with the Olympics.”

The bus passed a Starbucks and I saw on its TV screen headlines about London bombings. At that point I didn’t think it was the underground that had been bombed, but that it had been shut down for security reasons and the “power surge” explanation was the excuse.

We were chucked off the bus halfway along Oxford Street. I managed to board another further along and this got me to Hackney Town Hall. When the police got on and searched it. The penny started to drop.

I got home around noon. I found the mobile phone I had forgotten to take with me. I phoned my wife, now distraught after failing to contact me for two hours, to say I was safe.

I switched on the TV and sat down stunned.

I was prompted to write this by listening to Eddi Reader’s song “Safe as Houses” which she wrote in response to the 7/7 bombings. She also writes of her feelings at the time.

“All we could do was think about everyone we knew and pray that they had survived and were alright. I amazes and relieves me that intense hate, although incredibly destructive, can also encourage great and intense love.”

“Safe as Houses” is part of Eddi’s lovely album “Peacetime” recorded in 2006.