This City...

[rosiphelee]

This is London. Boudicca burnt it. The Vikings invaded it. The Peasants' Revolt marched through it. The Black Death and the Great Plague ravaged it and the Great Fire of 1666 razed it. Within the memory of living Londoners the city had survived the blitz and the prolonged IRA bombing campaign.

Do you petty, cowardly little people really think you can intimidate the people of this city?

Comments

[wispywillow.livejournal.com]

Wonderful spirit, Jenna!

And dammit, I will visit that city one day soon!

[rosiphelee.livejournal.com]

It's a great city. I played tourist on Wednesday and took loads of photos but what with everything I haven't had a chance to sort through them yet. I will have a tour of Lincoln's Inn and Waterloo Bridge for you all sometime this weekend.

The attitude here at the moment is one of determination. Everyone's just getting on with things. There's still work which needs to be done. Changing our behaviour in response to this would be letting them win. It also helps that we were prepared. It seemed to me that until 9/11 America believed itself to be invulnerable and part of the shock was the realisation that that wasn't true. That was never an issue for London - even my generation have grown up with the awareness of terrorism in the background and a lot of Londoners have lived and worked through IRA attacks. Everyone in London is aware of the daily risk of being in the city and has chosen to take that risk.

[wispywillow.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I'm very glad Londoners are picking up and moving on, not letting this thing bring them down.

That's very true. Too many Americans relied too heavily on that false sense of security. The younger generations, for the most part, seem to have a different mentality than some of the older ones. Most of the people (that I know) in my age group are left-wing, unhappy with the state of our government and country, all know (now more than ever) that safety is an illusion. I'm glad that people here are realizing that now. People are a bit edgy, wondering if we'll be next--but at least there's not the panic that there might have been a couple years ago. I believe that our behavior changed after the 9/11 attacks, but it was a necessary change. We couldn't continue walking around as a country with its eyes closed.

It's always good to have open eyes... not to mention open minds.